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From John O'Groats to Land's End by Robert Naylor and John Naylor

R >> Robert Naylor and John Naylor >> From John O\'Groats to Land\'s End




The great object of interest as we entered this miniature county town
was a lofty monument fifty or sixty feet high,[Footnote: This monument
has since been swept away.] which stood in a separate enclosure near a
graveyard attached to a church. It was evidently very old, and leaning
several points from the perpendicular, and was bound together almost to
the top with bands of iron crossed in all directions to keep it from
failing. A very curious legend was attached to it. It was erected to
some steward named Roderick Mackenzie, who had been connected with the
Cromarty estate many years ago, and who appeared to have resided at
Kintail, being known as the Tutor of Kintail. He acted as administrator
of the Mackenzie estates during the minority of his nephew, the
grandfather of the first Earl of Cromarty, and was said to have been a
man of much ability and considerable culture for the times in which he
lived. At the same time he was a man of strong personality though of
evil repute in the Gaelic-speaking districts, as the following couplet
still current among the common people showed:

The three worst things in Scotland--
Mists in the dog-days, frost in May, and the Tutor of Kintail.

The story went that the tutor had a quarrel with a woman who appeared to
have been quite as strong-minded as himself. She was a dairymaid in
Strathconon with whom he had an agreement to supply him with a stone of
cheese for every horn of milk given by each cow per day. For some reason
the weight of cheese on one occasion happened to be light, and this so
enraged the tutor that he drove her from the Strath. Unfortunately for
him the dairymaid was a poetess, and she gave vent to her sorrow in
verse, in which it may be assumed the tutor came in for much abuse. When
she obtained another situation at the foot of Ben Wyvis, the
far-reaching and powerful hand of the tutor drove her from there also;
so at length she settled in the Clan Ranald Country in Barrisdale, on
the shores of Loch Hourn on the west coast of Inverness-shire, a place
at that time famous for shell-fish, where she might have dwelt in peace
had she mastered the weakness of her sex for demanding the last word;
but she burst forth once more in song, and the tutor came in for another
scathing:

Though from Strathconon with its cream you've driven me,
And from Wyvis with its curds and cheese;
While billow beats on shore you cannot drive me
From the shell-fish of fair Barrisdale.

These stanzas came to the ear of the tutor, who wrote to Macdonald of
Barrisdale demanding that he should plough up the beach, and when this
had been done there were no longer any shell-fish to be found there.

The dairymaid vowed to be even with the tutor, and threatened to
desecrate his grave. When he heard of the threat, in order to prevent
its execution he built this strange monument, and instead of being
buried beneath it he was said to have been buried near the summit; but
the woman was not to be out-done, for after the tutor's funeral she
climbed to the top of the pinnacle and kept her vow to micturate there!

As our time was limited, we were obliged to hurry away from this
pleasantly situated town, and in about four miles, after crossing the
River Conon, we entered Conon village, where we called for refreshments,
of which we hastily disposed. Conon was quite an agricultural village,
where the smithy seemed to rival the inn in importance, as the smiths
were busy at work. We saw quite a dozen ploughs waiting to be repaired
in order to fit them to stir up the soil during the ploughing season,
which would commence as soon as the corn was cleared off the land. Here
we observed the first fingerpost we had seen since leaving John o'
Groat's, now more than a hundred miles distant, although it was only an
apology for one, and very different from those we were accustomed to see
farther south in more important but not more beautiful places. It was
simply an upright post with rough pieces of wood nailed across the top,
but we looked upon it as a sign that we were approaching more civilised
regions. The gentry had shown their appreciation of this delightful part
of the country by erecting fine residences in the neighbourhood, some of
which we passed in close proximity. Just before crossing over the
railway bridge we came to a frightful figure of a human head carved on a
stone and built in the battlement in a position where it could be seen
by all. It was coloured white, and we heard it was the work of some
local sculptor. It was an awful-looking thing, and no doubt did duty for
the "boggard" of the neighbourhood. The view of the hills to the right
of our road as we passed along was very fine, lit up as they were by the
rays of the evening sun, and the snow on Ben Wyvis in the distance
contrasted strangely with the luxuriant foliage of the trees near us, as
they scarcely yet showed the first shade of the autumn tints.

About four miles farther on we arrived at a place called the Muir of
Ord, a rather strange name of which we did not know the meaning,
reaching the railway station there just after the arrival of a train
which we were told had come from the "sooth." The passengers consisted
of a gentleman and his family, who were placing themselves in a large
four-wheeled travelling-coach to which were attached four rather
impatient horses. A man-servant in livery was on the top of the coach
arranging a large number of parcels and boxes, those intolerable
appendages of travel. We waited, and watched their departure, as we had
no desire to try conclusions with the restless feet of the horses, our
adventures with the Shetland pony in the north having acted as a warning
to us. Shortly afterwards we crossed a large open space of land studded
with wooden buildings and many cattle-pens which a man told us was now
the great cattlemarket for the North, where sales for cattle were held
each month--the next would be due in about a week's time, when from
30,000 to 35,000 sheep would be sold. It seemed strange to us that a
place of such importance should have been erected where there were
scarcely any houses, but perhaps there were more in the neighbourhood
than we had seen, and in any case it lay conveniently as a meeting-place
for the various passes in the mountain country.

We soon arrived at Beauly, which, as its name implied, was rather a
pretty place, with its houses almost confined to the one street, the
Grammar School giving it an air of distinction. Our attention was
attracted by some venerable ruins at the left of our road, which we
determined to visit, but the gate was locked. Seeing a small girl
standing near, we asked her about the key, and she volunteered to go and
tell the man who kept it to come at once. We were pressed for time, and
the minutes seemed very long as we stood awaiting the arrival of the
key, until at last we decided to move on; but just as we were walking
away we saw an old man coming up a side street with the aid of a crutch
and a stick.

[Illustration: ON THE BEAULY RIVER.]

He pointed with his stick towards the cathedral, so we retraced our
steps and awaited his arrival with the key. A key it certainly was, and
a large one too, for it weighed 2 lbs. 4 ozs. and the bore that fitted
the lock was three-quarters of an inch in diameter. It was the biggest
key we saw in all our long journey. We listened to all the old man had
to tell us about the cathedral, the building of which begun in the year
1230. It measured 152 feet in length and about 24 feet in breadth, but
was ruined in the time of Cromwell. He showed us what he described as
the Holy Water Pot, which was quite near the door and had some water in
it, but why the water happened to be there the old man could not
explain. The front gable of the nave was nearly all standing, but that
at the back, which at one time had contained a large window, was nearly
all down. The old font was in the wall about half-way down the
cathedral; the vestry and chapter house were roofless. The grave-stones
dated from the year 1602, but that which covered the remains of the
founder was of course very much older. Beauly was formerly a
burial-place of the ancient Scottish chieftains, and was still used as
the burial-ground of the Mackenzies, the name reminding us of our
friends at the "Huna Inn." Rewarding our guide and the bairn who had
returned with him for their services, we walked quickly away, as we had
still twelve miles to walk before reaching Inverness.

[Illustration: BEAULY PRIORY.]

After crossing the bridge over the River Beauly we had the company for
about a mile of a huge servant-girl, a fine-looking Scotch lassie, with
whom we ventured to enter into conversation although we felt like dwarfs
in her presence. She told us she had never been in England, but her
sister had been there in service, and had formed a bad opinion of the
way the English spent their Sundays. Some of them never went to church
at all, while one young man her sister knew there actually whistled as
he was going to church! It was very different in Scotland, where, she
said, all went to church and kept holy the Sabbath day. She evidently
thought it a dreadful offence to whistle on Sundays, and we were careful
not to offend the susceptibilities of the Scots, and, we may safely say,
our own, by whistling on the Lord's day. Whistling was, however, an
accomplishment of which we were rather proud, as we considered ourselves
experts, and beguiled many a weary mile's march with
quicksteps--English, Scotch, Welsh, and Irish--which we flattered
ourselves sounded better amongst the hills of the Highlands of Scotland
even than the sacred bagpipes of the most famous Scotch regiments.

We thanked our formidable-looking friend for her company and, presenting
her with a John o' Groat's buckie, bade her farewell. When she must have
been a distance away we accelerated our pace by whistling "Cheer, Boys,
Cheer!" one of Charles Russell's songs. We could not keep it up for
long, as we were not only footsore, but sore in every joint, through
friction, and we were both beginning to limp a little when we came to a
junction in the roads. Here it was necessary to inquire about our way,
and seeing a farm quite near we went to it and asked a gentleman who was
standing in the yard which way we should turn for Inverness and how far
it was. He kindly directed us, and told us that town was nine miles
distant, but added, "I am just going there in my 'machine,' which will
be ready directly, and will be glad to give you a lift." This kind offer
formed one of the greatest temptations we had during our long journey,
as we had already walked thirty miles that day, and were in a pitiable
condition, and it was hard to say "No." We thanked the gentleman
heartily, and explained why we could not accept it, as we had determined
to walk all the way to Land's End, and with an effort both painful and
slow we mournfully took our way. We had only travelled a short distance
when he overtook us with a spirited horse and a well-appointed
conveyance, bidding us "Good night" as he passed.

We had a painful walk for the next three miles, and it was just at the
edge of dark when we called for tea at the "Bogroy Inn." We were shown
into the parlour by the mistress herself, a pleasant elderly lady, very
straight, but very stout, and when my brother complimented her on her
personal appearance, she told him that when she first came into that
neighbourhood thirty-five years ago she only weighed eleven stone, but
six years since she weighed twenty-two stone; now, she rather
sorrowfully added, "I only weigh seventeen stone!" She evidently thought
she had come down in the world, but she was an ideal landlady of the
good old sort, for she sent us some venison in for our tea, the first we
had ever tasted, and with eggs and other good things we had a grand
feast. Moreover, she sent her daughter, a prepossessing young lady, to
wait upon us, so we felt ourselves highly honoured.

As we were devouring the good things provided we heard some mysterious
tappings, which we were unable to locate. My brother suggested the house
might be haunted, but when the young lady entered the room again we
discovered that the tappings were outside the house, on the shutters
which covered the windows, for every one in the Highlands in those days
protected their lower windows with wooden shutters. The tappings were
accompanied by a low whistle, by which we could see the young lady was
visibly affected, until finally she left the room rather hurriedly,
never to appear again; nor did we hear the tappings any more, and the
requiem we sung was:

If she be not fair for me,
What care I how fair she be?

We were sorry to leave the "Bogroy Inn," as the mistress said she would
have been glad of our further patronage, but we had determined to reach
Inverness as a better place to stay over the week end. With great
difficulty we walked the remaining six miles under the trees, through
which the moon was shining, and we could see the stars twinkling above
our heads as we marched, or rather crawled, along the Great North Road.
On arriving at Inverness we crossed the bridge, to reach a house that
had been recommended to us, but as it was not up to our requirements we
turned back and found one more suitable across the water. Our week's
walk totalled 160 miles, of which thirty-nine had been covered that day.

(_Distance walked thirty-nine miles._)


_Sunday, September 24th._

After a good night's rest and the application of common soap to the
soles of our feet, and fuller's earth to other parts of our
anatomy--remedies we continued to employ, whenever necessary, on our
long journey--we were served with a good breakfast, and then went out to
see what Inverness looked like in the daylight. We were agreeably
surprised to find it much nicer than it appeared as we entered it, tired
out, the night before, and we had a pleasant walk before going to the
eleven-o'clock service at the kirk.

Inverness, the "Capital of the Highlands," has a long and eventful
history. St. Columba is said to have visited it as early as the year
565, and on a site fortified certainly in the eighth century stands the
castle, which was, in 1039, according to Shakespeare, the scene of the
murder of King Duncan by Macbeth. The town was made a Royal Burgh by
David I, King of Scotland. The Lords of the Isles also appear to have
been crowned here, for their coronation stone is still in existence, and
has been given a name which in Gaelic signifies the "Stone of the Tubs."
In former times the water supply of the town had to be obtained from the
loch or the river, and the young men and maidens carrying it in tubs
passed this stone on their way--or rather did not pass, for they
lingered a while to rest, the stone no doubt being a convenient
trysting-place. We wandered as far as the castle, from which the view of
the River Ness and the Moray Firth was particularly fine.

We attended service in one of the Free Churches, and were much
interested in the proceedings, which were so different from those we had
been accustomed to in England, the people standing while they prayed and
sitting down while they sang. The service began with the one hundredth
Psalm to the good old tune known as the "Old Hundredth" and associated
in our minds with that Psalm from our earliest days:

All people that on earth do dwell,
Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice.
Him serve with fear, His praise forth tell,
Come ye before Him, and rejoice.

[Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL, INVERNESS.]

During the singing of this, all the people remained seated except the
precentor, who stood near the pulpit. Then followed a prayer, the people
all standing; and then the minister read a portion of Scripture from the
thirty-fourth chapter of the prophet Ezekiel beginning at the eleventh
verse: "For thus saith the Lord God; Behold I, even I, will both search
My sheep, and seek them out."

Another hymn was followed by the Lord's Prayer; after which came the
sermon, preached by the Rev. Donald Fraser, M.A., of Marylebone, London,
a former minister of the church. He read the last three verses of the
ninth chapter of St. John's gospel, continued reading down to the
sixteenth verse of the tenth chapter, and then selected for his text the
fourth, ninth, and tenth verses of that chapter, the first verse of
these reading: "And when he putteth forth his own sheep, he goeth before
them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice."

The sermon had evidently been well thought out and was ably delivered,
the subject being very appropriate to a district where sheep abound and
where their habits are so well known. Everybody listened with the
greatest attention. At the close there was a public baptism of a child,
whose father and mother stood up before the pulpit with their backs to
the congregation. The minister recited the Apostles' Creed, which was
slightly different in phraseology from that used in the Church of
England, and then, descending from the pulpit, proceeded to baptize the
child in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. The closing hymn
followed, and the people stood while the minister pronounced the
benediction, after which the congregation slowly separated.

[Illustration: INVERNESS CASTLE.]

During the afternoon we visited an isolated hill about a mile from the
town named Tomnahurich, or the "Hill of the Fairies." Nicely wooded, it
rose to an elevation of about 200 feet above the sea, and, the summit
being comparatively level and clear from trees, we had a good view of
Inverness and its surroundings. This hill was used as the Cemetery, and
many people had been buried, both on the top and along the sides of the
serpentine walk leading up to it, their remains resting there peacefully
until the resurrection, "when the trumpet shall sound and the dead shall
be raised incorruptible." We considered it an ideal place for the burial
of the dead, and quite a number of people were walking up and down the
paths leading under the trees, many of them stopping on their way to
view the graves where their friends had been buried.

In the evening we attended service in the cathedral, a large modern
structure, with two towers, each of which required a spire forty feet
high to complete the original design. Massive columns of Aberdeen
granite had been erected in the interior to support the roof of polished
oak, adorned with carved devices, some of which had not yet been
completed. The Communion-table, or altar, made in Italy and presented to
the cathedral by a wealthy layman, stood beneath a suspended crucifix,
and was further adorned with a cross, two candlesticks, and two vases
containing flowers. The service, of a High-Church character, was fully
choral, assisted by a robed choir and a good organ. The sermon was
preached by the Rev. Provost Powell, who took for his text Romans xiv.
7: "For none liveth to himself and no man dieth to himself." He gave us
a clever oration, but whether extempore or otherwise we could not tell,
as from where we sat we could not see the preacher. There was not a
large congregation, probably owing to the fact that the people in the
North are opposed to innovations, and look upon crosses and candlesticks
on the Communion-table as imitations of the Roman Catholic ritual, to
which the Presbyterians could never be reconciled. The people generally
seemed much prejudiced against this form of service, for in the town
early in the morning, before we knew this building was the cathedral, we
asked a man what kind of a place of worship it was, and he replied, in a
tone that implied it was a place to be avoided, that he did not know,
but it was "next to th' Catholics." Our landlady spoke of it in exactly
the same way.




SECOND WEEK'S JOURNEY


_Monday, September 25th._

[Illustration: CAIRN ON THE BATTLEFIELD OF CULLODEN MUIR.]

We rose early, but were not in very good trim for walking, for a mild
attack of diarrhoea yesterday had become intensified during the night,
and still continued. After breakfast we went to the post office for our
"poste restante" letters, and after replying to them resumed our march.
Culloden Muir, the site of the great battle in 1746, in which the
Scottish Clans under Prince Charlie suffered so severely at the hands of
the Duke of Cumberland, is only six miles away from Inverness, and we
had originally planned to visit it, but as that journey would have taken
us farther from the Caledonian Canal, the line of which we were now
anxious to follow, we gave up the idea of going to Culloden. We were,
moreover, in no humour for digressions since we had not yet recovered
from the effects of our long walk on Saturday, and our bodily ailments
were still heavy upon us. As we crossed the suspension-bridge, in close
proximity to the castle, we purchased a few prints of the town and the
neighbourhood through which we were about to pass.

Inverness is built in a delightful situation, skirting the Ness, which
here takes the form of a beautiful, shallow river moving peacefully
forward to its great receptacle, Loch Ness, a few miles away; but,
although the country near the town is comparatively level, it is
surrounded by mountain scenery of the most charming description. Our
route lay along the north-western side of the Caledonian Canal in the
direction of Fort Augustus, and we again passed the Tomnahurich Hill.
Near this we saw a large building which we were surprised to learn was a
lunatic asylum--an institution we did not expect to find here, for we
had only heard of one madman in the three counties of Scotland through
which we had passed. We concluded it must have been built for persons
from farther south.

[Illustration: CULLODEN MUIR.]

The diarrhoea still continued to trouble us, so we asked the advice of a
gentleman we met on the road, and he recommended us to call at the next
farmhouse, which, fortunately, happened to be only a short distance
away, and to "take a quart of milk each, as hot as you can drink it." So
away we walked to the farm, which we found standing a short distance
from our road, and, after explaining our troubles and wishes to the
farmer, were invited into the house, where the mistress quickly provided
us with the hot milk, which luckily proved to be a safe and simple
remedy. The farmer and his wife were as pleased with our company as we
were with theirs, and were just the sort of people that tourists like to
meet. We had a long talk with them about the crops, the markets, our
long walk, and, last but not least, the weather. Speaking of diarrhoea,
the farmer informed us that the water of Inverness often affected
strangers in that way, and that it had even been known to produce
dysentery.

After regaining our road, we had a lovely walk that day; the scenery
and the weather were both very fine, and, about a mile farther on, we
had a glorious view over Loch Ness, beside which our walk led us,
through a delightful country studded with mansions amidst some of
nature's most beautiful scenery. Presently we met a party of men,
consisting of two soldiers and three civilians, engaged in cutting
branches from the trees that were likely to interfere with the working
of the telegraph, which passed along the side of the road. It consisted
of a single wire, and had only just been erected, for we noticed each
post bore the Government mark and the date 1871. We asked the men if
they knew of a good remedy for our complaint, and one of the soldiers,
who had seen service abroad, recommended "a spoonful of sweet oil and
cinnamon mixed with it." Our former remedy had proved to be efficacious,
so we had no need to try this, but we give the information here for the
benefit of all whom it may concern.

[Illustration: THE BURYING-PLACE OF THE CLANS.]

We were certainly in for the best day's march we had yet experienced, if
not for distance, certainly for beauty of route; and if we had had the
gift of poetry--which only affected us occasionally--we should have had
here food for poems sufficient to fill the side of a newspaper. Mountain
rills, gushing rivulets, and murmuring waters! Here they were in
abundance, rolling down the rocky mountains from unknown heights, and
lending an additional charm to the landscape! Is it necessary to dilate
on such beauties?--for if words were conjured in the most delicate and
exquisite language imaginable, the glories of Loch Ness and its
surroundings are, after all, things to be seen before they can be fully
appreciated. The loch is over twenty miles long, and averages about a
mile broad; while a strange fact is that its water never freezes.
Scientific men, we were told, attributed this to the action of
earthquakes in distant parts of the world, their vibrations affecting
the surface of the water here; while others, apparently of the more
commonsense type, attribute it to the extreme depth of the water in the
loch itself, for in the centre it is said to exceed 260 yards.

As we loitered along--for we were very lazy--we decided to have a picnic
amongst the large stones on the shore of the loch, so we selected a
suitable position, and broke into the provisions we carried in our bags
as a reserve for emergencies. We were filling our water-boiling
apparatus from the loch, when we saw a steamboat approaching from the
direction of Glasgow. It presented quite a picture as it passed us, in
the sunshine, with its flags flying and its passengers crowded on the
deck, enjoying the fine scenery, and looking for Inverness, where their
trip on the boat, like the Caledonian Canal itself, would doubtless end.
There was music on board, of which we got the full benefit, as the sound
was wafted towards us across the water, to echo and re-echo amongst the
hills and adjoining woods; and we could hear the strains of the music
long after the boat was cut off from our vision by the branches of the
trees which partially surrounded us.

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