picturesque enough with its
comb of sturdy fir-trees, survivors from the destructive gale of
November, 1893. To the right of it, and running due west, is the pass
into the misty hill country by Comrie and St Fillans--the glen of Bonnie
Kilmeny and Dunira. Midway between us and the mouth of the pass is a
miniature Turleum--Tomachastel to wit, the site of the old Castle of the
Earn, famous in the days when the Celtic Earls of Strathearn were a power
in the land. Lovers of the old ways were these proud and wily
Earls--fiercely impatient of the incoming Saxon customs which found
favour at the Court of Malcolm Canmore and his sons--genuinely pious men,
too, in some instances--(did not Earl Gilbert found or endow Inchaffray,
so that masses might be said for his soul?)--of a keen courage as with
Earl Malise, who at the Battle of the Standard dared his mail-clad
fellows--the barons of King David--to show themselves a single foot in
advance of his naked breast. Right worthy and most noble men they were
in their noblest--they were not all so--cherishers of the national spirit
in the dreary times that followed upon the death of Alexander III. at
Kinghorn, like the one who gave a fair daughter of the house and land in
tocher to the son of Sir Andrew Moray, patriot and friend of Wallace, in
whom the Morays of Abercairny find their origin. Such were the men; and
over there on Tomachastel was their home--a place famous then, and very
noticeable still, with its gleaming memorial obelisk to "oor Davie" of
Ferntower, the hardy soldier who overcame the fierce Tippoo Sahib at
Seringapatam. Beyond lie the Aberuchill Hills, with the flat pyramidal
face of Ben Voirlich filling up a gap, and sending its roots, on one
side, down into "lone Glenartney's hazel shade," and, on the other, into
Loch Earn--sixteen miles away. Further off, and only to be seen on rare
days, when the sun's rays are dancing to be dry after rain, are sturdy,
broad-shouldered Benmore, and slender, graceful Binnein, the twin
guardians of the enchanted region beyond, where Beauty lies in the lap of
Terror, and the Atlantic surf sings lullaby. There are the Monzievaird
hills to the right, rising in Benchonzie to the height of 3048 feet, and
to something under this figure in the Cairngorm or Blue Craig, upon which
you see the stone-heap of Cainnechin--memorial, as it is said, of a
battle fought within what are now the policies of Ochtertyre, and as the
result of which Ma