The Cruise of the Land-Yacht "Wanderer" Part 33

So we drove away laughing.

Though frosty dews fell last night, the morning is delightful. So also is the scenery on all sides. Hills there are in abundance to climb and descend, but we surmount every difficulty, and reach the romantic village of Carrbridge long before dusk.

Here we are to spend the Sunday, and the caravan is trotted on to a high bit of tableland, which is in reality a stackyard, but overlooks the whole village.

Narrow Escape of "Wanderer."

This happened to-day, and our adventure very nearly led to a dark ending of our expedition. On our road to Carrbridge, and just at the top of a hill, with a ravine close to our near wheel, the horse in a dogcart, which we met, refused to pa.s.s, shied, and backed right against our pole end.

For a moment or two we seemed all locked together. The danger was extreme; our horses plunged, and tried to haul us over, and for a few brief seconds it seemed that the Wanderer, the dogcart, plunging horses, and all, would be hurled off the road and over the brae. Had this happened, our destruction would have been swift and certain; so steep and deep was it that the Wanderer must have turned over several times before reaching the bottom.

_Monday, August 24th_.--I am this morning _en route_ for Inverness, five-and-twenty miles, which we may, or may not, accomplish. We have now to cross the very loftiest spurs of the Grampian range.

We are now 800 feet above the level of the sea. We have to rise to 1,300, and then descend to Inverness. Were it all one rise, and all one descent, it would simplify matters considerably, but it is hill and dale, and just at the moment when you are congratulating yourself on being as high as you have to go, behold, the road takes a dip into a glen, and all the climbing has to be repeated on the other side.

My last Sunday among the mountains! Yes! And a quiet and peaceful one it was; and right pleasant are the memories I bear away with me from Carrbridge; of the sweet little village itself, and the pleasant _natural_ people whom I met; of the old romantic bridge; of the hills, clad in dark waving pine-trees; of the great deer forests; of moorlands clad in purple heather; of the far-off range of lofty mountains--among them, Cairngorm--their sides covered with snow, a veritable Sierra Nevada; of the still night and the glorious moonlight, and of the murmuring river that sang me to sleep, with a lullaby sweeter even than the sound of waves breaking on a pebbly beach.

We are off at 8:15 am, and the climb begins. After a mile of hard toil, we find ourselves in the centre of a heather-clad moor. Before and around us hills o'er hills successive rise, and mountain over mountain.

Their heads are buried in the clouds. This gives to the scene a kind of gloomy grandeur.

A deep ravine, a stream in the midst, roaring over its pebbly bed.

A dark forest beyond.

Six miles more to climb ere we reach our highest alt.i.tude.

Three miles of scenery bleaker and wilder than any we have yet come to.

A dark and gloomy peat moss, with the roots of ancient forest trees appearing here and there.

It gets colder and colder, and I am fain to wrap myself in my Highland plaid.

We meet some horses and carts; the horses start or shy, and remembering our adventure of yesterday we feel nervous till they pa.s.s.

On and on, and up and up. We are among the clouds, and the air is cold and damp.

We now near the gloomy mountains and deep ravines of Slochmuichk.

We stop and have a peep ahead. Must the Wanderer, indeed, climb that terrible hill? Down beneath that narrow mountain path the ravine is 500 feet deep at the least. There is a sharp corner to turn, too, up yonder, and what is beyond?

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CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR.

WILD FLOWERS--A HEDGEROW IN JULY--HEDGEROWS IN GENERAL--IN WOODLAND AND COPSE--IN FIELDS AND IN MOORLANDS.

"Ye wildlings of Nature, I doat upon you, For ye waft me to summers of old, When the earth teemed around me with fairy delight.

And when daisies and b.u.t.tercups gladdened my sight, Like treasures of silver and gold."

Campbell.

"Fair, my own darling, are the flowers in spring...

Rathe primrose, violet, and eglantine, Anemone and golden celandine.

Not less delicious all the birds that sing Carols of joy upon the amorous wing, Earine, in these sweet hours of thine."

Mortimer Collinz (to his wife).

From the day we started from the tree-clad plains of bird-haunted Berks till that on which, after crossing the wild Grampian range, we rolled into the capital of the Scottish Highlands, the Wanderer was gay interiorly with wild and garden flowers.

Did we purchase these flowers? Never once, for, strange as it may seem, I do not think that I ever left a town or village or humblest hamlet without having a bouquet or two presented to me.

Nor were the persons who brought those flowers always such as one would feel inclined to a.s.sociate with the poetry that floated around their floral gifts.

A rosebud or a lily, in the fair fingers of a beautiful girl, is idyllic; it is in keeping with nature. But what say you to a bunch of sweet-scented carnations, pinks, and lilac pea-blooms trailing over the toil-tinted fingers of some rustic dame of forty?

Would you not accept the latter almost as readily as the former? Yes, you would, especially if she said,--

"Have a few flowers, sir? I know you are fond of them."

Especially if you knew that a great kindly lump of a heart was beating under a probably not over-fashionable corset, and a real living soul peeping out through a pair of merry laughing eyes.

But rough-looking men, ay, even miners, also brought me flowers.

And children never failed me. Their wee bits of bouquets were oft-times sadly untidy, but their wee bits of hearts were warm, so I never refused them.

Some bairnies were too shy to come right round to the back door of the Wanderer with their floral offerings; they would watch a chance when they imagined I was not looking, lay them on the _coupe_, and run.

Which of the wild flowers, I now wonder, did I love the best? I can hardly say. Perhaps the wild roses that trailed for ever over the hedgerows. But have they not their rivals in the climbing honeysuckle and in the bright-eyed creeping convolvulus? Yes, and in a hundred other sweet gems.

Not a flower can I think of, indeed, that does not recall to my mind some pleasant scene.

"Even now what affections the violet awakes; What loved little islands, twice seen in their lakes, Can the wild water-lily restore; What landscapes I read in the primrose's looks, And what pictures of pebbles and minnowy brooks, In the vetches that tangle the sh.o.r.e."

If any proof were needed that I had derived the most intense pleasure from the constant companionship of the wild flowers in my caravan rambles, it is surely to be found in the fact that I am writing this chapter, on a bitter winter's morning in the month of March, sitting in my garden wigwam. When I essayed to commence work to-day I found my writing fluid was frozen, and I could not coax even a dip from the bottle until I had set it over the stove.

And yet it is a morning in March.

Last year at this time the sun was warm, the air was balmy, the crocuses, primroses, snowdrops, and even the tulips were in bloom, and the brown earth was soft and dry. Now it is as hard as adamant. But there is beauty even in this wintry scene. If I take a walk into the garden I find that the h.o.a.rfrost brightens everything, and that the tiniest object, even a blade of gra.s.s or a withered leaf, is worthy of being admired.

That tall row of spectre-like poplar trees--whether it be winter or summer--is a study in itself. But last night those trees were pointing at the stars with dark skeleton fingers. Those fingers are pointing now at the blue, blue sky, but they seem changed to whitest coral. Those elm trees along the side of yonder field are clothed with a winter foliage of h.o.a.rfrost. Seems as though in a single night they had come again into full leaf, and those leaves had been changed by enchantment into snow. As the sunlight streams athwart them they are beautiful beyond compare.

My wild-birds are here in the garden and on the lawns in dozens, huddled in under the dwarf spruces, firs, and laurels, and even c.o.c.k-robin looks all of a heap.

Hey presto! I have but to shut my eyes and think back, and the scene is changed. I see before me--

A Hedgerow in July.