THE ANT. No. XIX.-SATURDAY, 21st JULY, 1827. Original. ROB ROY'S GRAVE. "The hills-the hills!-high as the summit's rise, The Chamois Hunter. "Adventure greaseth the wheels of Travel." Gaffer Gash's Saws. I HAD been for ten days absent from home on a pedestrian excursion through the Highlands of Perthshire, and the counties which skirt that district to the east and south, when, on the afternoon of a cloudless day in September, I unbuckled the straps of my leathern knapsack as I entered the porch of the neat and pleasantly situated Inn of Lochernhead. But, though I loosened the fastenings of my burden, I did not cast it off my shoulders, where its presence had called forth many a remark, expressed in a language I knew little of; and had elicited a still greater number of those indications of wonder or curiosity, which a silent look can so well convey, as I passed the door of the lonely cottage on the hill, or by the gable ends of the cluster of hovels, which is termed a clachan in the low country, but a town among the mountains, where even the presence of two families domiciled in one solitary spot, presents the idea of that complicated state of society to the isolated mountaineer, which much larger assemblages of human beings barely serve to suggest to the Lowlander. I had previously consulted my map, and, although it was now far in the day, hardly permitted myself to doubt that I should be easily able, by proceeding down Glenfinlas, to take up my quarters in Ardkenochrochean-the barbarous name given to the pretty and fashionable inn at the Trosachs. I did no more therefore, having dined at Comrie, than order a measure of the only liquor which I care to drink, when in that country, where alone it can be had in perfection, and where no other of even tolerable quality can be procured; and, having quaffed my whisky, and received some directions as to my road, which was speedily to become but a bridle-path, re-adjusted my necessary incumbrancegave a farewell glance to Lochearn-threw a look—it was a wistful one-towards the great road which conducts still farther into the heart of the Highlands by Killin, that stretched out to my left; and, facing about to the right, saw the glories of an autumnal evening gathering themselves around the western march of the sun, which was soon to set, and a hilly yet delightful road straight before me. I pursued it with alacrity, though not without fatigue, for my walk had been far that day, during which I was even more annoyed than wearied, by twice losing my way among the heathery moors. But there was enough of beauty in the scenes through which I passed, and enough of enthusiasm yet unsatiated in myself, to have borne me buoyantly over a longer road than I expected to need to traverse, even had not the wild and pealing notes and rapidly flowing words of the song of "The Braes of Balquidder" not given a spring to my step, as at irregular intervals they escaped from my lips. I was within sight of these-I was advancing to them! The first time I had heard their praises sung, was on the cold and sleety night of a winter's holiday, by a thin and haggard-looking blind man; yet, child as I was, and hastening on to the warmth of a blazing hearth, and the joy of a merry-meeting, I became arrested by the strain, and carried with me, at one hearing, both words and air; nor could the cakes and comfits of New-year's-day prevent me from that night often longing for the "blae berries that grow 'mang the bonny blooming heather." These, and their bramble brethren, were now inviting my participation in their rustic sweets on every side; but, now and then, a hasty snatch at them, while I hardly paused, was all that I durst gratify myself with; for, by the time I had got to the King's house, where I was to leave the high road, it was almost evening; and the yellow radiance of day's decline was beginning to tinge the peaks of those eminences which would be called mountains in some parts of England, and hills even in any other district of Scotland than the Highlands, where, though many hundred feet in height, they are fitly named, as contrasted with the hoary giants round them, "The Braes of Balquidder," a diminutive term of endearment, which speaks to the heart of every Caledonian, be he Celt or Sassenach. Having received further directions at this lonely and dirty hostelry, named after Royalty, (like many other inns in the Highlands,) from its having been originally a station for the lodgment of his Majesty's forces during those periods of turbulence, when, though their presence was necessary amid such fastnesses, their safety was by no means secure, if quartered upon the inhabitants, and depending for shelter on finding it in the house of a subject, I proceeded briskly on, and gradually fell into a train of reflections, which prepared me, in some measure, for receiving a pleasurable surprise upon unexpectedly seeing before me a small but regularly built Gothic Chapel, placed upon an isolated eminence, little more extensive than the circuit of its own walls, beneath which, a stream, as silent as an Eremite monk could wish for near his cell, glided in serpentine folds. It was apparently too small for a parish church, even in the Highlands, besides being infinitely more regular and respectable in its exterior appearance than such commonly are, and having no town" with its whisky shop near it-nay, not even a human habitation visible from its site. It was grey and weather-stained enough to be venerable, yet showed neither ruin nor decay in its little lancet-shaped windows, tiny belfry, and diminutive porch; nor had it, that I could then perceive, the usual broken and moss-covered stones, or rank grassdraperied mounds, which tell that not only the house of piety, but even the hiding-place of death's doings, has been forsaken. In the twilight which was closing round me as I paused to gaze upon it, it required but a little stretch of my fancy to suppose that it was a small chapelbuilt, perhaps, by some wealthy professor of the expatriated creed of Rome, for the occasional resort of the widely scattered remnant which yet exists, though not in this part of the Highlands, but at far remote intervals of country-of the simple children of the mist who cling to a church, whose rites they can participate in but at times, that are as "few and far between" in the year's round, as are the connecting links which bind them, and their humble altars, with the sovereign Pontiff and the marble glories of St. Peter's, in the great edifice of Catholicism. was picturing to myself their pilgrimage to this lonely fane, which, like the monastic institutions of their Church, seemed to exist, as if the rites of religion could be best performed apart from the habitations of those whom they were to enlighten; and almost began to fancy that I heard the solemn chant of vesper service swell along the glen, when as I turned the base of a projecting rock, which had hitherto hid it from my view, the narrow and wildly calm and silent expanse of Loch Voil, met my gaze, and, at the end of it nearest to where I was, and on the banks of the before-mentioned stream that issued from it, to bear a tribute to its chief, Loch Earn-the kirk and clachan of Balquidder. As it was now perfectly obvious that it would be impossible for me to accomplish my design of reaching the brig of Turk and Stewart's Inn, before nightfall, I decided, in one moment, that I should remain at Balquidder, at least until the moon rose, which would not be till far in the evening; and that if the clachan inn be tolerably comfortable, said I to myself, as sure it must now be so, seeing that even a hundred years ago it was a place of rendezvous for Rob Roy and other Highland lairds-that chief having indeed appointed it as the place for deciding a quarrel by duel, as moderns select Chalk Farm-I will prefer the romance of a Highland supper amid the "braes" to a half Highland, half Lowland one-i. e. the former in qualitythe latter in price-at the Loch side, where a writer's clerk from Stirling, or a manufacturer's from Glasgow, insist on my telling them whether I don't think the Trosachs would be a devilish fine place if a stage coach came regularly to it? From this point, then, I walked so very leisurely as to give myself ample opportunity to observe the general outline and aspect of the little isolated district which I traversed. What of it lay before my eyes, consisted of a long level stripe of ground, that, in any other than a very dry summer, would have been soft and watery, but was too bright in its green, and equal in its surface, to be called a morass, although it seemed to produce nothing else than a luxuriant crop of bog hay, whose perfume now" scented the evening gale," the scanty patches of dwarfish and still verdant oat and barley stacks hardly forming an exception. Through this strath, a silent and melancholy water," for streamlet is too brisk a name to give it, twined itself round the slight inequalities of ground, and slowly but surely made its way onward to the basin that waited it at the foot of the lofty Ben Vorlich. My path lay on the right side of this burn, going westwards, and almost at the very edge of the level ground, for the hills began to swell upwards with considerable abruptness, within a stone's throw of where I walked, and drew closer and closer to the rivulet as I advanced, till the skirts of some of them had to be crossed before I reached the few huts and simple though not mean parish church and manse, which sheltered themselves from the northern blasts beneath their base. Down the sides of these, every now and then, some brawling and angry little cataract, or series of waterfalls, was dashing, with a consequential noise that contrasted curiously with the utter peace into which, at the distance of a few yards, it was compelled to subside, when merged into the quiet and deep bosom of the tributary from Loch Voil, whose source at the eastern end, or mouth, of that reservoir of many streams, became distinctly visible beyond one of those little bridges, which, in the Highlands, seem to cross every stream the moment it escapes from a parent lake. The outline of the landscape was but indistinctly defined, for, at the western end of the Loch, though the red tints of the already sunken sun lingered on the peaks of the hills, which seemed to circumscribe it in the direction of Glenfalloch-the mists of evening, and the smoke from a considerable mansion, that of Portnellan, but dimly visible-obscured, yet beautified the horizontal line. The margin of this picture was clearly enough defined on both sides, however, by a range of bleak hills, rising almost perpendicularly from the water's edge to the south-the face of which had a cold distinctness, that was but little softened by a stripe of meadowa starved tuft of fir trees, and a seemingly tenantless mansion of some poor and proud laird, which stood white and thin, like a shivering spectre, at their feet; and a prettily broken and picturesque range seeming to lose itself in an endless series of little hills, whose summits still caught a stray gleam of crimson light to the northward. These were worthy of the name-these really were the Braes of Balquidder. Having taken this general survey of the landscape, while yet the lingering twilight permitted me, I soon found myself close by the wall which encloses the little rugged garden of the parish minister, and calling aloud to some half dozen of tall but thin fellows, and one short and fat one, a little way before me, who were superintending the jog-trot of a horse that was dragging home a curragh, or car without wheels, full of hay, as its closing occupation for the day, I learned that the only place of public entertainment, for miles round, was at the house of the miller, a little further on, close to the bridge I have mentioned, and on the brink of one of these tiny turbulent stripes of water, which, a short way above the dwelling, served to turn his mill. All this information, however, was not |