A Companion and Useful Guide to the Beauties of Scotland/Chapter 12
CHAPTER XII.
From Kenmore to Killin, it is sixteen miles. The south road is somewhat more than the north; both are hilly, and include a great variety of scenery, and rich too throughout. About the midway of the lake, the huge Ben Lawers raises its craggy head, with verdant sides; and Benmore, with its two pointed tops, high above its neighbours, is seen in the utmost distance.
At Killin, it is said, the bones of Fingall are deposited; and I was told also, that Lord Breadalbane had had the ground, about the supposed grave, thoroughly examined without success, as to the finding the bones. The space about the grave looks as if it had been enclosed for a burying ground, and the old kirk of Killin stood near it. The present church seems by no means of modern erection; the church-yard is in a very romantic situation near the river Lochy, there joining the Tay, and both entering the lake within sight. The Lochy river issues from a glen of that name; which, about Killin, is finely wooded, and through that wood, under a crag, peeps a picturesque ruin of a large castle, once inhabited by the Breadalbanes. Both the rivers Lyon and Lochy, take their source from some small lakes, and the high mountains, which tower to the north of Tyndrum, and near it, on the right of the road, from thence to Fort William. I had on a former visit to Killin seen some part of it, but Glen Lochy I had not entered. I ascended, by the Manse, a very steep hill, hanging over the winding road from Killin to the bridge over the Lochy, leading to Taymouth; and as I had heard there is a tolerable fall of the Lochy above, at no great distance, I descended the precipitate side of the mountain, very near the bridge, where I found a Highland town, and all hands busy at housing hay; which they were carrying from every quarter of that verdant, smiling district. The crops of hay seemed abundant; but this must be a backward climate, as it was then the 9th of September; much later than at Appneydow (only twenty miles distant to the east of Killin), where, a few days before, they were busy in corn-harvest. As I was creeping down the crag side, the children and women came to the doors to gaze at a fearless female stranger, scrambling alone amongst the crags. Comerie hache (how do you do), and la-mah-chuie (good day to you), were nearly the only Galic words I could say to them; but here, as well as in all the other sequestered Highland glens, English is in some degree spoken. As I have a great passion for water falls, I wished to reach that of the Lochy, but knowing distances in Scotland to be often misrepresented, I much doubted the accomplishment of my desire. The Scotch wee bit is nearly equal to their mile, and a mile with them is almost double the distance of an English measured mile. However, I enquired at the village, and was told it was not so much as one mile; nearly which I walked, and met a man with a cart loaded with hay; the driver told me he believed it might be a mile and a wee bit; another Highlandman soon came in my way. "How far is it to the fall of the Lochy?" "I ca'nae say, but it maun be twa miles or mair." I still advanced, not from any further idea of reaching the fall, but to take a nearer view of a house prettily situated before me. The evening was closing fast, when meeting a woman, I had the curiosity to question her about the distance to the fall. She could scarcely understand me; but bywords and signs she, as I suppose, at last comprehended I meant the fall of the river; for she shook her head and said, "mony miles; it maun be pick mirk ere ye'se gate at the fa'!" I then totally abandoned my project, and turned about; but I could hold no converse to signify with the gude wife, who soon left me to my own thoughts, which naturally turned to the impossibility of getting at facts, such as they really are. It was dark when I re-entered the inn, where my servants began to wonder what was become of me; but seeing me go towards the Manse, they fancied I had therein found another good clergyman like Mr. Mackay, of Glen Lyon, who, in like manner, might be regaling me with the wonders of Killin.
The Lin at Killin is very striking, curious, and very uncommon. The Tay advances to it from Glen Dochart, and widens to a very considerable breadth as it approaches Killin; which is a row of small houses, facing the Lin; the road only between it and the houses. The broad bed of the river is there choaked up by large masses of rock lying one upon another, in every kind of form and direction. These fragments of rocks have been most of them, at least, washed thither by floods, and in a course of years have collected soil that has cemented many of them together, forming rough islands, covered with beautiful bushes, and trees of no great size; but starting from every crevice, branching and weeping over the rocks, in a style that delights the eye. Two small bridges, from rock to rock (but not in a line), lead from the south to the north side of the river. Just at the bridges the river is divided by the head of a small rocky high-banked island. This nook is the terra firma between the bridges; against which, and the rocks before it, and at the arches of the bridges, the water dashes, foams, and roars to such a degree, that it is scarcely possible to hear the sound of a human voice, close at the ear. I wonder the inhabitants of Killin are not all deaf (like those who are employed in iron and copper works), from the loud and never-ceasing noise of the rushing waters. Standing on either of the romantic bridges, the scene around is prodigiously grand, awful, and striking. To the west, is the river winding from a narrow opening, between green mountains and crags, rising almost perpendicularly from the margin of it. The observer is in the midst of the Lin, at least fifty yards in breadth, surrounded by its flat, and very irregular bed of rocks, partially covered with weeping trees, and branching underwood, with loud white reeking cascades and torrents, dashing in every direction; altogether forming a picture, not to be imagined, unseen. To the east, in front, is the abovementioned island; to which is a communication from the rocks forming the piles on which the bridges rest, and this communication is a narrow slip of rock, covered with grass: the entrance to the island is closed by a gate, kept fastened by the owner of it. Round the rocky base of this island the Tay dashes furiously, both on the north and south side of it, until it is again united at the end of the island. There are, besides the row abovementioned, clusters of houses on the south and north shore, with a road before each, leading to Taymouth. The opening from the bridges to the lake, is concealed from the eye by the church, the inn, the winding towering mountains on the sides, and the thick wood at the bases, filling the whole space, and hiding the courses of the rivers towards the soft bosom of the lake.
I had a strong desire to go upon the forbidden island, but bars and locks denied me entrance. It is entirely covered with fir trees, whose dark hue casts a solemn shade over a burying place erected in the middle of the island, and railed round with iron. It belongs to a Highland chief hard by, who once, on laying his pretensions and possessions at the feet of a fair lady, whom he courted for his bride, told her, as an irresistible charm, that he had the most beautiful burying-ground in the world. Whether the lady preferred beauties she could enjoy in life, to those offered her after death, I cannot say, but the chief was not accepted; nor has he ever worn the chains of matrimony, though he has added to his family thirty-two children.
After quitting Killing, the road is for a mile or two close by the Tay, flowing quietly on, and then turns up a very steep hill to join the road from Loch Earn Head towards Fort William. All roads, in such mountainous regions, are continually torn away by violent torrents, and require constant repair. The road between Killin and Tyndrum was, in 1796, getting a very thorough repair; and at the unsound parts of the moors, they were turning it; forming arches in some places, and levelling others, so that by this time, that drive of eighteen miles may be as fine a road as any in the Highlands.
Glen Dochart is a region of mountains, moor, and water, till near, and at the head of it, though all the way the banks of the Tay, at the bases of the mountains, are mostly ornamented with wood, and now and then gentlemen's houses; but the forms of the smaller hills, hanging over Loch Dochart, the verdure, in short, the whole is enchanting. On the south bank of the lake, the huge sides of Benmore give great majesty and solemnity to the scene. The islands in the lake are extremely picturesque, particularly the one that is formed by a large rock, covered with wood, through which a ruin is seen. All the surrounding objects conspire to make the small Loch Dochart, a view of the sublime and beautiful united. Towards Tyndrum, as Glen Fillan opens, the general scene changes to an appearance of higher mountains (except Benmore), and to a bare wilderness, in comparison of the head of Loch Dochart. The district to the west of Loch Dochart, takes the name of Strath Fillan; the river also, which flows through the Strath there, bears the name of Fillan. The mountains are by no means so verdant as those I left behind me in Glen Dochart. The flat country, however, between them produces oats, barley, and coarse meadow grass; mixed with a pretty large portion of rushes; but as I drove near to Tyndrum, nothing was to be seen there but brown bare mountains, their sides broken by torrents and numberless springs, which render every yard upon them a bog, except the road, which is secured from their ravages. At Tyndrum inn the road branches in a triangle. To the east, is the road I came, towards Taymouth and Loch Earn Head; to the west, towards Dalmally, Oban, and Inveraray; to the north, up an excessive narrow opening, overhung by prodigious crags, is the road to Fort William. The inn at Tyndrum is reckoned to be on one of the highest spots on which any house stands in Scotland; and yet at it, it seems in a hollow. All things go by comparison; so when I looked at the mountains around me, the spot whereon the inn is built, appeared low. Innumerable torrents and springs rise in every direction at Tyndrum; and within half a mile of the house, the two branches forming the river Tay, have their source. The one rises in the mountains facing the inn, the other in those to the north, at the back of the inn, and rolls round two sides of it, almost close to the door, and is called the Fillan water; over which is a pretty simple bridge leading to the west and north roads. Within sight of the house, in the side of a very lofty mountain, is a very fine lead mine, and the ore extremely pure. The mountains in which the Fillan rises must have a great quantity of sulphur in them, as that water turns the stones over which it falls, of a green colour. There is little to be seen or to admire at Tyndrum: the landlord, however, wished me to see a holy well near Strath Fillan kirk, whose water, he told me, cured every disease but that of the purse. My head was more full of the virtues of the well, than the wit of the inn-keeper; and concluding, as he pronounced the words, that the disease of the purse was a Galic name for some malady, I simply asked what it meant in English? "Money, madam; it will not cure the want of that." The water of Fillan holy well must needs be a radical cure for madness, in the way it is there administered for that disease. The poor creature thus afflicted is dipped in the well, and afterwards tied (I believe naked) in the kirk hard by, and there left alone all night. If the saint comes and unties the poor object, and in the morning he or she be found loose, they are pronounced cured. I should imagine death, and no saint, in most instances, must break the cords of life, and thus release those unhappy sufferers. The inn at Tyndrum is a tolerable one for so desolate a place: when I was there, I was very fortunate in having arrived early in the afternoon, before a most violent stormy rainy night came on, and such a crowd entered, that at last every corner in the house, and out-houses too, was crammed. There is one large room, with two beds in it, shut up in cupboards; but as they roll out, I took possession of one of them, and had it drawn to the middle of the room, reserving the other for my maid. It happened that Falkirk fair was just over; many of the sellers of black cattle and sheep were on their return to the Western Highlands, and islands, and began to fill the inn. The rain and wind were excessive, and the night so dark, that it was impossible to see. In this dreadful weather, nothing but rap, rap, at the door. "Who comes?" was the frequent question: "Drovers, madam." This continued till the house was in a perfect uproar: my servants could not get a place to put their heads in. My man took his sleep in the carriage; and the poor horses were almost crushed to death in the stables. About eleven o'clock at night, in this dreadful storm, two chaises had found their way to the door; the horses were knocked up, starved with hunger, and half drowned. The ladies and gentlemen in the carriages had been misinformed; they had come from Loch Earn Head, and concluded they should find entertainment and rest for themselves and horses at one of the huts or inns, as they are called, on the Moor, at the base of Benmore; but when they came there, to their sorrow, they could get nothing for themselves or horses, and were obliged to creep on to Tyndrum, which made them so late. At first, they were told at Tyndrum, that neither they nor their horses could have the least room; but as the beasts could not stir a step further, and the night was so dark, the drovers crowded together, and gave up a very small bed room. When I learnt the situation of these travellers, I sent the landlady to inform the ladies they should be welcome to one of the beds in my room; but they had settled the gentlemen amongst the drovers, and had kept the small room for themselves. I mention this circumstance, to caution travellers never to depend upon the two dreadful huts on the Moor in Glen Dochart.
I much wished to see the Glen, which was the seat of the sad massacre in King William's time, and for which that monarch has been severely censured; but in all probability he knew nothing of the matter, as throughout, it has the resemblance of private pique, cloaked in public punishment. One would think the name of the district was prophetic, for Coe signifies lamentation.
The Earl of Breadalbane having been grievously thwarted in a favorite scheme, by Macdonald of Glen Coe; he was determined to wreak his vengeance on him the first opportunity that offered. To be sure, Macdonald's motive for frustrating the earl's intentions arose from a private circumstance, which ought not to have been confounded with matters wherein the public weal was concerned.
King William had, by proclamation, offered an indemnity to all those who had been in arms against him, provided they submitted and took the oaths by a certain day; with a denunciation of military execution against those who should hold out after the end of December. Macdonald went to Fort William the last day of that month, and desired that the oaths might be tendered to him; but the governor of that fortress, being no civil magistrate, refused to administer them, and Macdonald immediately set out for Inveraray, though the ground was covered with snow, and the weather intensely cold. He travelled with such diligence, that the term prescribed by the proclamation was but one day elapsed when he reached the place. Sir Colin Campbell, sheriff of the county, in consideration of Macdonald's disappointment at Fort William, administered the oaths to him and his adherents: then they returned to Glen Coe, in full confidence of being protected by the government to which they had submitted. Breadalbane had grievously misrepresented Macdonald as an incorrigible rebel and ruffian, and declared he had paid no attention to the proclamation. In consequence of such representations, an order was signed to extirpate Macdonald, with his family and dependants; and particular directions were sent to put all the inhabitants of Glen Coe to the sword; and to take no prisoners, that the scene might be the more terrible. In February, Campbell of Glen Lyon, marched into the valley of Glen Coe, with a company of soldiers, on pretence of levying the arrears of the land tax and hearth money. Macdonald asked if they were come as friends or enemies? as friends, was the answer; and the commander promised, upon his honor, that neither he nor his people should in the least be injured. In consequence of this declaration, Campbell and his men were received with the utmost kindness and hospitality; and lived fifteen days with the people in the valley, seemingly in perfect friendship. At length the fatal hour arrived: Campbell and Macdonald having passed the day together, parted about seven in the evening, with mutual professions of affection. The younger Macdonalds perceiving the guards doubled, suspected treachery; but the old man would not entertain a doubt of Campbell's sincerity. The young men went forth to make further observations: they overheard the common soldiers say, they liked not the work; that though they would willingly fight the Macdonalds of the Glen fairly in the field, they held it base to murder them in cool blood, but that their officers were answerable for the treachery. At the return of the young Macdonalds to their father's house, it was in flames; and the old man was shot dead in his wife's arms: and a guest in the house, of another district, who had a protection in his pocket, was also murdered without question. It is said a boy, of eight years old, fell down at Campbell's feet imploring mercy, and offering to serve him for life. Some say a subaltern officer stabbed the boy; others, that Campbell himself took him by the feet and dashed out his brains. The design was to murder all the men under seventy in the valley, amounting to about 200; but as the passes were not sufficiently secured, 160 escaped. After Campbell had finished this murderous deed, he ordered all the houses to be burnt, made a prey of the cattle and all the effects that were found in the vale; and left the women and children without food or shelter, in the midst of the snow that covered the whole face of the country, at a distance of six Scotch miles from any inhabited place. Most of them from grief, cold, fright, and apprehension of immediate death, perished in the waste before they could receive comfort or assistance.
In order to satisfy my curiosity with respect to Glen Coe, I turned out of my way to go thither from Tyndrum; particularly as by going that road, I must pass over the Black Mount (a district so called), and near the Devil's Staircase, to get at it. Accordingly I set forwards early in the morning towards King's House. For three or four miles there is nothing between prodigious high bare mountains, but the width of the road, and the Fillan water, which roars down its steep rocky bed, forming in its way several very beautiful falls; not a tree to be seen, but some birch and other branching wood hanging over the precipices to the torrent. The road is very rough and bad, till after the crossing of a bridge over the river Orchy. At the top of the hill from Tyndrum, I arrived at the source of another torrent, taking a different direction from the Fillan; and then I came within sight of Auch, belonging to a Mr. Campbell, one of the Glenfallach family. I was struck with its situation: from the top of the hill I looked down upon the house, built upon a very small plain of grass land, with tremendous hills on every side. The road I was pursuing towards Auch, is on a shelf of vast height above a stream, and that shelf only the width of the carriage, and torn to pieces by the torrents and shivering high, mountains on the right: also continual deep channels, full of huge loose stones brought down in hard rains; and no fence or prop, whatever, to support the loose ground of the precipice (to the water), which quaked at every jolt the carriage made. This is a dangerous as well as an unpleasant pass for a chaise; but a glorious scene soon diverted my attention from every thing that was disagreeable: the morning was misty, and the vapours were floating up the mountain's sides, and incessantly covering and uncovering the summits; but just as I came opposite the house of Auch, the sun was shining, and a conical crag glittered above the clouds, like a cap of diamonds set in a huge socket of the softest grey. Not a breath of mist eclipsed its radiant front, under which the white clouds rolled with rapidity. I had not seen any thing like it, and I was quite in raptures with it. As I crossed the torrent under it by a simple bridge, I peeped amongst the high towering and closely jumbled mountains, amongst which the Lyon and the Lochy rivers take their source. Soon after I crossed the torrent at Auch, forming the Kinglash river, rolling to the Orchy, I came in sight of the mill, and the bridge over the Orchy river; and a dreadful looking zig-zag road over a high brown mountain. This track is the old military road; but the new one, which is easy, winds round the base of it to Loch Tollie, and the inn at Inverounon, close on a river's bank. From Loch Tollie the river Orchy winds its way to the lower part of the Glen of that name, and empties itself into Loch Awe. From Inverounon, the mountains of the Black Mount rise wonderfully high, black, pointed, and craggy. The new road winds up their sides, far easier than General Wade's over the tops of them, and will be a very fine piece of alpine road, when it is completed as far as King's House. The inn of King's House, as I approached it, looked like a dot in the midst of a barren wilderness; surrounded, except to the east, by the most craggy, bare, stupendous mountains that the mind can form an idea of; and the opening at their bases stretching to the east, and Rannoch, is nothing but a dreary, black, boggy moor, the loose soil of which is quite black, broken by pools and small lakes, and very thinly covered, where the water does not remain, with the coarsest brown heath, rushes, and bogs: but there is a crag to the west of the house of a wonderful height, in some degree conical, of grey rock over rock, like scales on an oyster shell, which as the sun shone upon it, assumed a most beautiful tint, contrasted with the dark russet of every thing beneath it. Few beings, but drovers, take up their quarters at this house; not wholly because of its desolate situation, but because it is very dirty. It is one of the houses government provides; therefore, as the folks who keep it have it rent free, it ought to be made more comfortable for travellers. My mind was bent upon a fascinating pursuit, consequently trifles neither deterred me nor disgusted me. Although I had travelled but eighteen miles, the horses were tired: it was nine or ten miles more to the place I had set my mind upon visiting, and the road bad, so I determined on an eighteen mile's drive in a peat cart, across which was fastened a board by way of seat. As soon as I had taken my short meal, and secured my pig-hole to sleep in, I left my maid to take care of every thing, and mounted the cart: my servant did the same, and away we went. I crossed the small bridge by King's House door, over a stream, which joining other torrents, helps to form the Etive water, which afterwards falls into the lake of that name, and in that country is called Etie. I then turned my face to the west, towards the stupendous mountains which close up the head of Glen Coe: I never saw such mountains! even the inhabitants of Fort Augustus think nothing of their own mountains, in comparison of the height and wildness of those in Glen Coe, and they have reason for so doing. As I advanced, every succeeding hill seemed more tremendous than those I had passed, and I very soon got into a labyrinth of them. At the foot of the Devil's Staircase begins a dreadfully steep zig-zag, up the front of a mountain, ten times more terrific than the zig-zag on Corryarraick; but as this wicked-named pass, made by General Wade, is superseded by a somewhat easier one, through Glen Coe, I only took a peep at it. Indeed I cannot conceive how any sort of wheel-carriage could ever go up and down it, or even the shelties keep upon their legs. A breed of mules, such as pass the heights about the Andes, should have been procured at the time the Devil's Staircase was in use. Those mules, I have read, sit down on their hind parts, and curl themselves up in a manner so as to slip all the way down the dangerous heights, with safety to themselves and to those upon them. The Highlandman assured me, the descent on the other side of the mountain, called the Devil's Staircase, is beyond comparison more steep, rough, and dangerous, than what I was looking at. About six miles from King's House I came to the torrent, forming the head of the small water of Coe, where it falls from the mountains in a very fine cataract, into a dark, deep, narrow passage, dashing over and amongst steep rough rocks for at least a mile, till it gets to the small plain in the middle of Glen Coe, where it gently empties itself into a little lake. Just at the cataract at the south-side of the glen, under which the water dashes after its fall, are huge towers upon towers of solid rock, forming a multitude of stages to the greatest height, and all in a drizzling state; which in some degree looked like thousands of icicles, dropping from innumerable points of rocks upon every stage; and forming, from the top to the bottom, one of the most curious sights I ever beheld. In violent rains a cascade must there be formed, so grand and majestic, that I cannot conceive any thing equal to it; except a sudden frost should congeal this grand cascade when tolerably full, and in that state having the sun-shine upon it. These tower-like crags may, perhaps, have lakes in their hollows; springs without number must be every where about them, or they could not weep without ceasing. The constant dripping has rendered them of a very black and dark green hue, consequently very gloomy. Adjoining this extraordinary weeping mass, is a continued range, of a mile in descent, of other crags equally perpendicular and high; in most of which appear caves and arched passages, with pillars, like the communication from one ile to another, high up in the sides of Gothic cathedrals; also small Gothic-like windows and doors. The whole mass, to an eye below, appears like an immense and inaccessible ruin of the finest architecture, mouldered, defaced, and become uneven by a vast lapse of time, and inclemency of weather, which has variegated its native grey, by ten thousand soft tints, that nothing but time and weather can produce. In a few of the very high hollows I perceived considerable protuberances of something white, like crystal, (and the Highlandman told me they were such) which, when the sun shone upon them, glistened like diamonds. It is under this range of wonderful crags, that the Coe dashes loud, though unseen; at the edge of which birch, alder, mountain ash, nut, and many other small branching trees growing out of the crevices of the rocks, give a degree of softness to this solemn, sublime, gloomy, steep pass. Probably the weeping of the rocks, and the groans of the water under them, was the original cause of its name, Coe; the signification of which, as I have before mentioned, is lamentation.
The mountains on the north of the Coe are amazingly high; but shivering, and rounder than the opposite range of rocks, and have some verdure about them. There is no space between the south rocks, and the north mountains, but the road down to the flat of the glen twisting and turning round, and between vast projections of the mountains on the right, and the river Coe, under the rocks, on the left.
As I was advancing through this steep narrow pass, I perceived a cavalcade and a small chaise meeting me: such a sight, in such a place, is an event; and to those I was meeting, I and my rustic equipage, must have been a matter of mirth and curiosity, especially to the chief, for it was the lord of the beautiful burying ground at Killin, accompanied by some of his family and fine sons: they were making the best of their way towards King's House. I thought it lucky my maid had taken possession of one of the best sties: at the instant, that was the subject of my cogitations. What the chief and his party thought of me, and my expedition, I cannot say. He reported, however, from the distance he met me from King's House, that he was sure I could not return thither that night; but he was mistaken.
When I was in Glen Coe, I heartily wished I had been provided to go on to Bellaheulish, where I was told is a striking view of mountain and lake; but it was then out of my power to do so, and I continued my route in Glen Coe, as far as the time before dark would permit. The plain of the glen may be about four miles, with a lake in the middle of it: it now consists of two sheep farms, and there are not more than three or four mean habitations in the glen; and its population is much under thirty persons. As I passed by the spot where old Macdonald and the greatest part of his clan were massacred, I could not help paying the tribute of a sigh for their melancholy fate. To be in friendship one hour, and butchered indiscriminately the next, by those whom they had feasted and caressed, is a tale to shudder at. The spot on which the bloody deed was perpretrated is about the midway of the plain.
When I had walked and carted for about nine miles from King's House, I was with regret obliged, out of compassion for the Highlandman and shelty, to turn about and retrace my steps; but I did not enter King's House till after dark, and in the rain, which came on soon after I came out of Glen Coe. King's House was full of people, and I made my way to my sty through columns of smoke. This sty was a square room, of about eight feet, with one window and a chimney in it, and a small bedstead nailed in the angle behind the door. Throughout Scotland you will not see a casement, such as are in cottages in England; but the houses have universally sash windows:—be upon your guard when you approach a window in that country, or you may get your hand mashed, or a finger taken off, by the sudden fall of the sash, to which there are no pullies or lines. I speak feelingly on this matter, for at King's House the window was to me very troublesome. The usual prop in Scotland for the sashes is a poker, or hearth broom.
My maid, for her bed, had a shake-down upon chairs: as for me, my eighteen miles carting had made me quite ready for repose. I soon eat my bit of supper, half choked with smoke, and in danger of getting cold by an open window, the damp from the rain pouring in, and my petticoats tucked to my knees for fear of the dirt, which was half an inch thick on the floor; but notwithstanding all these obstacles to peace and rest, I had no sooner laid my head upon my pillow, than I fell fast asleep, and did not awake till morning. Thanks, however, were due to my little maid for such a comfort, for she was all attention. I was also indebted to my independance in point of linen, blanket, quilt and pillows; perhaps the cart ought not to be forgotten; its exercise certainly had no small share in making me sleep soundly. The next day I retraced my steps to Tyndrum, to pick up my trunk; and as Allen was of opinion we could reach Dalmally that day, I stayed at Tyndrum as short a time as possible, and entered Glen Lochy. Tyndrum is in Perthshire, but on the very border of Argyleshire.