Scotland

Note the author does not attempt elaborate word-pictures, that would seem pale beside the artists colouring. His design has been, as accompaniment to these beautiful landscapes, an outline of Scotlands salient features, with glimpses at its history, national character, and customs, and at the literature that illustrates this country for the English-speaking world. While taking the reader on a fireside tour through the varying airts of his native land, he has tried to show how its life, silken or home- spun, is a tartan of more intricate pattern than appears in certain crude impressions struck off by strangers. And into his own web have been woven reminiscences, anecdotes, and borrowed brocade such as may make entertaining stripes and checks upon a groundwork of information. The mainland only is dealt with in this volume, which is followed up with another on the Highlands and Islands. Contents CHAP. I. THE BORDERS . VI. THE HIGHLAND LINE . VII. ABERDEEN AWA VIII. To JOHN 0 GROATS HOUSE . IX. THE GREAT GLEN X. GLASGOW AND THE CLYDE XI. THE WHIG COUNTRY . XII. GALLOWAY S PAGE . I List of Illustrations IN COLOUR BY SUTTON PALMER AND G. F. NICHOLLS I. Beneath the Crags of Ben Venue, Perthshire . 2. The Bass Rock-A Tranquil Evening, 3. Linlithgow Palace . . . 4. Abbotsford, Roxburghshire . 5. Melrose, Roxburghshire . 6. The Scott Monument, Princes Street, Edinburgh 7. Holyrood Palace, Edinburgh . . 8. Edinburgh Castle from the Esplanade . 9. Edinburgh from Rest and be Thankful . 10. Veiled Sunshine, the Trossachs, Perthshire I I. Stirling Castle from the Kings Knot . I 2. Callander . I 3. The Silver Strand, Loch Katrine, Perthshire, 14. Forth Bridge . . 15. The Castle of St. Andrews, Fifeshirc . . 16. Perth . I 7. Gleneagles Golf Course . . 18. Crieff . . Frontipiece FACING PAGE . I List of Illustrations FACING PAGE 19. Blair Atholl . . . 1x4 20. Dunkeld and Birnam from Craigiebarns, Perthshire . 129 2 I. Pitlochry I33 22. Old Mar Bridge and Lochnagar, Aberdeenshire . . 140 2 3. Balmoral, Aberdeenshire . 144 24. A Peep of the Grampians, Inverness-shire . I49 25, The River Glass near Beauly, Inverness-shire . . 156 26. The Isles of Loch Maree, Ross-shire . . 161 27. Inverness from near the Islands . . 176 28. The Grampians from Boat of Garten, Inverness-shire . 193 29. The Falls of the Clyde, Lanarkshire . 213 30. Kilchurn Castle, Loch Awe, Argyllshire . . 220 g I. River Awe flowing to Loch Etive, Argyllshire . . 225 32. Glen Sannox, Isle of Arran . . 240 Sketched- Map of Scotland facing page r BONNIE SCOTLAND CHAPTER I THE BORDERS THE dawn broadens, the mists roll away to show a northward-bound traveller how his train is speeding between slopes of moorland, green and grey, here patched by bracken or bog, there dotted by wind-blown trees, everywhere cut by water-courses gathering into gentle rivers that can be furious enough in spate, when they hurl a drowned sheep or a broken hurdle through those valleys opening a glimpse of mansions and villages among sheltered woods. Are we still in England, or in what at least as far back as Crornwells time called itself Bonnie Scotland It is as hard to be sure as to make out whether that cloudy knoll on the horizon is crowned by a peat-stack or by the stump of a Border peel. Either bank of Tweed and Liddel has much the same aspects. An expert might perhaps read the look or the size of the fields. Could one get speech with that brawny corduroyed lad tramping along the furrows to his early job, whistling maybe, as if it would never grow old, an air from the London music-halls, the Southron might be none the wiser as to his nationality, though a fine local ear I 2 Bonnie Scotland would not fail to catch some difference of burr and broad vowels, marked off rather by separating ridges than by any legal frontier, as the lilting twang of Liddesdale from the Teviot drawl...