The Highland Line is an oblique one, in the main facing south-east; and in much the same direction, between the head of deep inlets, extends the cleft of some threescore miles that cuts the Highlands into near and off halves, the former far the harder worked as a tourist ground, the latter retaining more of its Celtic poverty, while not less richly endowed by nature. From either side smaller glens and straths, each the "country" of some clan, debouch into Glenmore, bed of a chain of lochs and streams linked together as the Caledonian Canal, their varying levels made navigable by the locks that come easier to a Sassenach tongue. This canal is now nearly a century old. In the century before its trenches were opened, King George's soldiers had islanded the farther Highlands by a road between three fortified posts, in the centre and at either end of this Great Glen, thus used as a base for dominating and civilising a region over which the fiery cross ran more freely than the king's writ. The northernmost of the three, Fort-George, above Inverness, is still a military station, serving as depot for the Seaforth and Cameron Highlanders.

Inverness is called the capital of the Highlands, though it lies on an edge of Celtic Scotland, at the north end of the Great Glen, and near the head of the Moray Firth. This is not a Gaelic city, whose inhabitants had at one time the fame of speaking the best English in Scotland, or, for the matter of that, in England, a merit sometimes traced back to a colony of Cromwell's soldiers. Of late years, to tell the truth, the speech of Inverness has hardened and vulgarised somewhat in the mouths of a very mixed population; yet still in some of the secluded glens of the county may be heard a tongue not their own used with a melodious refinement unknown within the sound of Bow Bells.

Smart, cheerful, and regularly built, Inverness has the air of a lowland town, spread out on a river plain, across which fragments of the Highlands have drifted from the grand mountains in view, as the Alps from Berne. The Ness has the distinction of being the shortest river in Britain, shorter even than London's New River ; but its course of only a few miles, from Loch Ness to the Moray Firth's inner recess, is enough to make it a resort for big salmon and small shipping. Hector Boece records a former great "plenty and take of herring," which vanished "for offence made against some Saint." Sheltered from the winds of the east and the "weather" of the west, the district has a genial climate where, indeed, the air often "nimbly and sweetly recommends itself unto our gentle senses." Shakespeare, not having the advantage of Black's Guide, says little about the scenery around, which has been much described in Wild Eelin, William Black's last and not his worst novel, though it has the deplorable fault of

Inverness from near the Islands

bringing in real personages not less thinly disguised than Inverness is as Invernish.

The famous Castle still stands by the river-side, in its modern form serving as a court-house and prison for ungracious Duncans made both drunk and bold; while the grounds of its "pleasant seat" are a lounge for honest inhabitants, kept in memory, by a statue of Flora Macdonald, how Prince Charles Edward's men blew up the old blood-stained walls. Opposite, across the river, is the modern Cathedral of the Episcopal Church, here a considerable body which once had a soul of Jacobite sentiment. Inverness shows several fragments of antiquity, most revered of them that palladium Clach-na-Cudain— "stone of the tubs," now built into the base of the restored Town Cross. A little way up the river its "Islands" have been adapted as a unique "combination of public park and natural wilderness, of clear brown swirls and eddies under the overhanging hazels and alders, and open and foaming white cataracts where artificial barriers divert the broad rush of the river." This beauty-spot of wood and water no stranger should fail to seek out; then not far beyond he may gain Tom-na-hurich, "hill of the fairies," which makes a picturesque cemetery, commanding what a pre-Wordsworthian writer describes as "a boundless view of gentlemen's seats, seated generally under the shelter of eminences, and surrounded by wooded plantations." Another fine prospect can be had a mile or so behind the station from the heights called "Hut of Health," on which have been built extensive barracks.

The hotels of Inverness are not too many to accommodate the crowds that flit through it in the tourist and shooting season. It has two annual galas, when accommodation may be hardest to find for love or money. The first is the "Character Fair" in July, so called because then some half a million changes hands over dealings in wool on the security of the dealer's character, not a fleece being brought to market, nor even a sample, unless of human brawn and beards well displayed in the brightest of tartan and the roughest of homespun. The second is the Northern Meeting in September, gayest and smartest of those gatherings by which the old Highland games, dress, and music are kept up. But ah ! this touch of local colour is too like the artificial bloom on a faded cheek. The glow of tartans here revived by what a German might call "Sunday Highlanders," is but a Vanity Fair. The stalwart athletes, some of them "professionals," who exert themselves to make a London holiday, have little more of Arcadian simplicity than the fine folk who look on. The clansmen forget old feuds; the chiefs no longer command the old loyalty; the greyness and greed of our practical world are settling down over the Highlands, conquered by gold, as hardly by southron steel.

If the pensive tourist seek a purer vision of the past, let him go out to the lonely station of Culloden Moor, some half a dozen miles from Inverness. From the great viaduct that here typifies modern enterprise, he may hold up the Nairn to the roughly overgrown field on which are half buried those pre-historic stones of Clava, monuments of a past beyond Scott's ken. Then, crossing the river and mounting the heights, he comes on the commonplace road that will lead him over Drumossie, where the romantic cause fell hopelessly when Cumberland's red-coats mowed down and bayoneted its jealous, sullen, and weary champions, more than a tenth of them dying here for the Prince who, according to one story, fled basely, but others report him as forced from the field. Fir plantations and fields have now clad the wild nakedness of this tableland ; but by the roadside are seen the mounds beneath which lie each clan together, still shoulder to shoulder, and the monumental cairn that is yearly hung with votive wreaths by a certain perfervid Jacobite. If these men gave way before disciplined valour and artillery, if their own martial spirit was marred by quarrelsome ill-temper, let us remember how many of them joined or rejoined the cause when it was as good as lost, after the Jacobite squires of the south had held back from its first flush of success. The next time the Cockney be moved to his sneer about bawbees, let him consider how neither bribes, nor threats, nor torture could tempt these poor Highlanders to betray their prince in his desperate wanderings with a price set on his head. And let us all forget, if we can, the cruelty with which the victors followed up that last rout of sentimental devotion. One poor fellow took hundreds of lashes on an English ship of war, without opening his mouth to confess how he had ferried the fugitive to a safer isle. Such stories of humble fidelity are too much forgotten by historians who bear in mind how the heads of certain houses — father and son — ranked themselves on opposite sides with a politic eye to escape forfeiture, whether James or George were king. The most romantic case, if true, is that of the Macintosh in the royal ranks, said to have yielded himself prisoner to his own wife, who had taken his place at the head of the rebellious clansmen. Another family manoeuvre turned out luckily for a Lowland peer who, as preparation for taking the field with the Pretender, treated himself to a foot-bath which his prudent wife made so hot that her valorous spouse could not boot nor spur for many a day, and thus was kept out of political hot water. The same story, indeed, is told of another couple, whose sympathies were divided the opposite way on.

Where are the sons of the scattered clans? Many of them peacefully settled among law-abiding Lowlanders, many of them gone to America, where among other mountains, on fruitfuller straths and by mightier streams, they often cherish their Gaelic and their kilts, sometimes against sore pricks of climate and mosquitoes, sharper than the ancestral itch of dirt and poverty. In one district of Nova Scotia alone, there are said to thrive three thousand of those Macdonalds whose offended pride hung back from the clash of Culloden. Before the '45, emigration to America had already begun with the colony settled in Georgia by General Oglethorpe; even earlier indeed hardy Highlanders and Orkneymen were in demand for service in the wilds of Hudson's Bay; but after Culloden the exodus became considerable, increasing as the chieftains, turned into lairds, found idle and prejudiced dependants only in the way of improving their estates; and "another for Hector!" came to mean a fresh clansman shipped across the Atlantic to see Lochaber no more. Harsh as it was, the wrench proved often a blessing in disguise, when the last look at those misty Hebrides had softened into a tender memory with the farmers of New Glengarry or ice-bound Antigonish. Our day saw two Prime Ministers of Canada who, if kept at home, might have

Tomdoun, Glen Garry, Inverness-shire

been carrying the southron's game-bag, as one of them perhaps did in his bare-legged youth.

Perhaps the most remarkable Highland-American has never been duly brought into the light of history, as neither has that mysterious soldier of fortune Gregor MacGregor, "Cacique of Poyais," who made such a stir in two worlds, but is now hardly remembered unless by the mention of him in the Ingoldsby Legends, and the banknotes of his bankrupt kingdom, treasured by collectors of curiosities. Did the general reader ever hear of Alexander MacGillivray, who was born at once a Highland gentleman and a Red Indian chief? His career, which I hope to write some day, if once able to bridge over certain gaps in my information, makes an extraordinary mixture of romance with very opposite features, better fitting the vulgar idea of a Scot.

Some time during the Jacobite disturbances, one Lachlan MacGillivray emigrated from Inverness to the Southern States, where he became a prosperous Indian trader, and, perhaps in the way of business, married a "princess" of the great Creek Confederacy. Alexander, the son of this mesalliance, was well educated and brought up to trade, but early in life betook himself to his mother's people, among whom his attainments as well as his birth gave him influence. Rank, by Indian law, as by "Lycian custom," being inherited on the spindle side, before he was thirty he had been recognised as chief of the Creeks, and for many years played a leading part in their fitful politics. Little is known of his rule beyond the main facts, our clearest accounts of him being derived from a rare book written by another young adventurer, the Frenchman Leclerc Milfort, whose story, in plain English, seems not to be always trusted.

According to himself, Milfort, having also wandered among the Creeks, was chosen by them as their war chief, an office separate from the civil headship of an Indian tribe. Then the Scotsman and the Frenchman appear to have governed the Creeks for years, making a congenial disposition of power, the one the head, the other the hand, of a powerful though somewhat unstable body politic. MacGillivray had no stomach for fighting, was even a coward, if Milfort is to be believed; but he was crafty, resourceful, and of a clear Caledonian eye to the main chance. Milfort found him living in a good house, with herds of cattle and dozens of negro slaves. Another source of profit he had in a secret partnership with a firm of brother Scots at Pensacola, to which he directed the trade of the Creek nation, jealously intrigued for by their British and Spanish neighbours. The Revolutionary War had nearly caused a rupture between these Creek consuls. MacGillivray's sympathies were with the British; Milfort had no scruple in fighting against the Americans, but when French troops came to take part in the struggle, he was disposed to side with his compatriots. His colleague, however, persuaded him to remain neutral; and by this Scotsman's influence, the Creeks seem to have been kept from throwing into the scale the weight of their war parties. The canny chief entered into a maze of tricky negotiations with the various bordering Powers, pretending to each to be in its special interest, receiving bribes from all, throughout, as far as his dealings can be traced, "true to one party, and that is himself."

The States having secured their independence, the eagerness of American settlers to press over the Creek bounds had almost brought about an Indian war with the great republic. Scenes of bloodshed took place on the frontier; and if MacGillivray was cunning and not warlike, he showed the civilised virtue of humanity in sparing and rescuing captives. Peace was negotiated by an Indian deputation which he led to New York. A secret article provided for his being appointed a general in the U.S. service, with a pension of $1200. At the same time, or soon afterwards, the wily chief accepted similar distinctions and payments from the British and the Spanish Governments, and between them he must have enjoyed a considerable income for steadily promoting his own interests, while impartially betraying all his rival employers in turn.

But the arrangement which he brought about with young Uncle Sam roused the Indians against him. A rebel leader appeared in one "General" Bowles, who, originally a private soldier, in the course of many dubious adventures more than once played the pretender among the Creeks. A civil war raged in the Confederacy; MacGillivray at one time was driven to flight; but, still backed up by Milfort, he succeeded in partly restoring his power, though not with the same firmness. In the middle of his tortuous policies, he died at the age of fifty, leaving a son, who was sent home to Scotland, where old Lachlan is said to have been still alive in Inverness-shire. It was his half-breed nephew, William Weatherford, who, later on, led the last struggle of the Creeks against American encroachment.

As for Leclerc Milfort, he was left for a time struggling against Bowles and other rivals for authority. According to his own story, the French Revolution brought him back to France, where he laboured to persuade Buonaparte how easily an empire might be won in America. It is said that the First Consul was taken by the idea, and that in 1801 a small French expedition had even been prepared to conquer the Creek country under Milfort's guidance. But vaster plans interfered with any such scheme, and in 1803, Louisiana and the great South-West were sold by France to the United States. The ex-chief had a chance to gratify his taste for fighting at home, when France was invaded in 1814; but he did not return to resume the authority of which he boasts in his book, so rare that I have never seen a copy except my own. If one only had all the truth about these two white adventurers, what a strange romance it would make!

The Highlands may be all the more prosperous for the new husbandry that drove so many of their sons to seek fortune in distant lands, often to find fame. It might be well for the people to have such enterprise roughly forced on a conservative spirit which scowled at the introduction of potatoes, turnips, and other improvements to their backward culture. What their good old days were in truth may be guessed in the smoky huts where they still love to pig together, stubbornly refusing to adapt themselves to an order in which sheep are found more profitable than men, and deer than sheep. The big sheep-farmer from the south makes more of the land than the easy-going crofter; yet the smallest drop of Celtic blood cannot but stir to see a clansman touching his hat for tips from

A Shepherd's Cot in Glen Nevis, Inverness-shire

southron stockbrokers, and serving as obsequious attendant to the American millionaires who enclose his native heath. Naturally the Highlander is a gentleman, for all his faults, with instinctive courtesy to soften his somewhat sullen pride. More than once I have had a tip refused by a Highland servant, as nowhere else in the world unless in the United States before their social independence, too, began to be demoralised by the largesses of successful speculators, who, after piling up dollars by "rings" and "corners," find they can buy less observance for their money at home than by corrupting a race declared by Mrs. Grant of Laggan, herself reared in America, "to resemble the French in being poor with a better grace than other people."

The Highlander was a born sportsman as well as a gentleman, who by his paternal chiefs would not be called closely to account for every deer and salmon that went to eke out his frugal fare. Now he can shoot or fish only in the way of business, the very laird making two ends meet by letting out his moors and streams to a stranger, in whose service the sons of warriors play the gamekeeper and gillie, with more or less good will, loading the gun and carrying the well-stocked luncheon basket, perhaps not always very hearty in hunting down those Ishmaelite brethren who do a little grouse-netting on their own account for the supply of London tables by the 12th of August. Sometimes the Gael takes revenge by being able to hint his scorn for the sportsmanship of these new masters; but as often, to do them justice, they will not give him this poor satisfaction. A well-known southron humorist tells a story which needs his voice to bring out the point, how he missed a deer, to the disgust of the keeper, and how, trying to conciliate this worthy by admiration of a fine head, he got the dry answer—"It's no near so fine as the one ye shot this morning—a-a-at!"

Deer-stalking is a sport that still demands manly skill and hardihood, however many menials can be hired to mark down and circumvent the great game. So much cannot always be said of other shooting, when the noble sportsman entrenches himself behind fortifications to which the fierce wild fowl are driven to be shot down by gun after gun placed in his hands. Sport, that was once a bond between classes, becomes more and more a monopoly of the rich. The very meaning of the word suffers a change in our day from the doing of something oneself to a performance where most of the activity is by paid assistants or "professionals." One good feature of Highland sport is in not lending itself to the collection of gate-money from a mob of lookers-on ; but the dollar-hunting and coup-landing chieftain need not expect to be loved by those whom he would fain bar out of his solitary playground.

I, too, have lived in Arcadia, and was duly entered at this craft, not that I ever took very heartily to it, or that a big capercailzie, then a rara avis in Highland woods, ran much more risk from me than from Mr. Winkle. But I know the free joy of tramping over wet moors behind dogs, shooting for sport and not for slaughter, lunching off bread and cheese, or a cold grouse, with fingers for forks, and coming home to a dinner won by one's own hands. That old-fashioned muzzle-loading work is scorned by the present generation who, indeed, pay such rents for moors and coverts that they have some reason to be keen after a big bag. Well I remember a true Nimrod's scorn for the first great noble in our part of the world who sold his game! We children in the nursery would be fed on grouse and salmon to use up what could not be sent away as presents; and, for my part, I have never quite got over a stickjaw conception of these expensive dainties.

There was a Highland shooting which in those days seemed a paradise of schoolboy holiday. It belonged to a well-known Scottish peeress married to a French nobleman, on whom it was thrown away, though their son grew to be of a different mind. Thus it came on a long lease into the occupation of keen sportsmen of my family, who naturally did not care to build for their inevitable successors. The "lodge" was a short row of white cottages, the centre one turned into a parlour, the others into bedrooms; and as youngsters grew up, extra accommodations were provided in the shape of a tent and iron shanties, the whole group backed by a thin clump of wind-blown firs visible some dozen miles away on the bare mountain side. All through the summer months it made an encampment for a band of kilted youngsters, "hardy, bold, and wild," taking in the Highland air at every pore, with miles of moor and burn for their playground, which they knew not to be haunted by the victims of Druid rites. Not that more sophisticated guests were unknown at this eyry of eyases. The great little Earl Russell, at that time, if I am not mistaken, Prime Minister, was tenant of a neighbouring moor. One day he had come over for a sociable beat, broken in on by a messenger, hot foot across the heather, bearing a huge official envelope superscribed with the name of a ducal colleague. The statesman requested a private apartment in which to examine this communication, but the only-closet available was a bedroom, where he opened the cover to find—a caricature of himself from Punch !

I have been led away by a grumble at the self-indulgent and well-appointed sportsmen who in this generation invade my native heath. But, however much they make themselves at home here, we chuckle to think that they at least cannot tune their ears to the native music. For what says the poet—

A Sassenach chief may be bonnily built,
He may purchase a sporran, a bonnet, and kilt;
Stick a skean in his hose—wear an acre of stripes—
But he cannot assume an affection for pipes.

Another comfort taken by the dispossessed son of the mist is in hearing the weather abused by strangers, who may as well stay at home under shelter of their Twopenny Tubes and Burlington Arcades if they are afraid of rain. Dr. Johnson was not, and a gentler critic of his time observed that the Highlanders minded snow "no more than hair powder." In the warm south of England, I once caught a cold which stuck to me all summer and seemed like to settle on my lungs. Late in autumn, in a kill or cure mood, I went down to the dampest side of the Highlands, got wet from morning to night, and in a week my cough had gone like dew from the heather. But nature's hydropathy does not always work so well, even on seasoned constitutions. The severest loss of our Volunteer force, as yet, on British soil, has been from that soaking royal review at Edinburgh, when Highlanders were killed and crippled by a long railway journey in drenched clothes, even though at the way-stations matron

River Awe flowing to Loch Etive, Argyllshire

and maid brought them patriotic offerings of dry hose, with which at least to " change their feet."

Now let us turn to the tourist, who has neither lust nor license to ruffle the least feather of grouse or gull, but calls forth angry passions when his red guide-book or her sunshade come scaring the prey stalked by lords of Cockaigne and Porkopolis. He and she, by coveys, swarm in various directions from Inverness, but chiefly by the Caledonian Canal, that highroad of pleasure, as once of business, between the North and the South Highlands. Had we seen this road "before it was made," we should find little difference to-day, unless for a few more modern mansions that have swallowed up many a lowly home, still, perhaps, marked by patches of green about the ruined mountain shielings where, as on Alpine pastures, Highland Sennerin made butter and cheese through the long summer days. A steamboat carries one right through the Great Glen, beneath mountain giants, clad in nature's own tartan of green and purple chequered by brown and grey, with bare knees of crag, and streaming sporrans of cascade, and feathers of fir-wood, too often wrapped in a plaid of mist, or hidden by a mackintosh of drenching rain. Else, against the clear sky-line, one may catch sight of a noble stag on the hill head, displayed like its crest, sniffing motionless at the steamer far below, unconscious of an unseen enemy stealing up the rearward corrie with heart athrob for his blood, which, at the pull of a trigger, may or may not stain the heath.

From its port below Craig Phadric, believed to have been the stronghold of a king older than Duncan, then past the hill bearing his name, the Canal soon takes us through the fertile strath into the wilder Highlands. The first stage of that grand panorama is through deep Loch Ness, where on one side Mealfourvonie towers like a hayrick, round which goes the way to those remote Falls of Glomach, called the noblest in Britain, and on the other are more easily reached the Falls of Foyers, chained and set to work by an Aluminium Company that did not tremble at the rhapsody of Christopher North:—