第3章 LETTER III(1)

LOCH GOIL--THE SAGA OF CLAN CAMPBELL

Oban,June 5,1856

I have seldom enjoyed anything so much as our journey yesterday.Getting clear at last of the smells,smoke,noise,and squalor of Greenock,to plunge into the very heart of the Highland hills,robed as they were in the sunshine of a beautiful summer day,was enough to make one beside oneself with delight,and the Icelander enjoyed it as much as I did.Having crossed the Clyde,alive with innumerable vessels,its waves dancing and sparkling in the sunlight,we suddenly shot into the still and solemn Loch Goil,whose waters,dark with mountain shadows,seemed almost to belong to a different element from that of the yellow,rushing,ship-laden river we had left.In fact,in the space of ten minutes we had got into another world,centuries remote from the steaming,weaving,delving Britain,south of Clyde.

After a sail of about three hours,we reached the head of the loch,and then took coach along the worst mountain road in Europe,towards the country of the world-invading Campbells.A steady pull of three hours more,up a wild bare glen,brought us to the top of the mica-slate ridge which pens up Loch Fyne,on its western side,and disclosed what I have always thought the loveliest scene in Scotland.

Far below at our feet,and stretching away on either hand among the mountains,lay the blue waters of the lake.

On its other side,encompassed by a level belt of pasture-land and corn-fields,the white little town of Inverary glittered like a gem on the sea-shore,while to the right,amid lawns and gardens,and gleaming banks of wood,that hung down into the water,rose the dark towers of the Castle,the whole environed by an amphitheatre of tumbled porphyry hills,beyond whose fir-crowned crags rose the bare blue mountain-tops of Lorn.

It was a perfect picture of peace and seclusion,and Iconfess I had great pride in being able to show my companion so fair a specimen of one of our lordly island homes--the birthplace of a race of nobles whose names sparkle down the page of their country's history as conspicuously as the golden letters in an illuminated missal.

While descending towards the strand,I tried to amuse Sigurdr with a sketch of the fortunes of the great house of Argyll.