Not the least of our pleasant memories of Oban are associated with those wonderful products of the loom. Whether coming from the splendid machinery of the great mills, built with the aid of capital and thus reaching the highest perfection of craftsmanship joined to the last refinement of invention and experiment, or simply the handwork of the crofters in the distant isles, these tartans show a wonderful evolution of national art. From many women and girls on the islands far out at sea, without much of human society and whose dumb friends are but dogs, cattle, and sheep, come reminders of their industry and taste that are touching to both one’s imagination and sympathies. Let us hope that not too much of the profits of this cottage industry goes into the hands of those who control the trade. Let the worker be the first partaker of the fruits of his toil. In going up by water through Scotland’s great glen and canal, at our leisure, we shall stop at the places worth seeing. Moreover, the twenty-eight locks forming “Neptune’s Staircase” will enable us to alternate pedestrianism with life on deck. First, after a ride of an hour and a half, we come to the town called Ballaculish. It has an imposing situation at the entrance of Loch Leven, and is not far away from the wild glen, which has left, in its name and associations, such a black spot on the page of Scotland’s annals during the reign of William III. With our Boston and Buffalo friends, we chatted over British politics in the past, reopening leaves of history, as we steamed to Ballaculish, or progressed on our way on wheels to Glencoe. Except shops and hotels, and the old slate quarries, by which the roofs of the world are covered,--since the quarries send many million roofing slates abroad every year,--there is little to see in this town on the loch. Next day we mounted the top of the stage-coach, which was equipped with plenty of seats and was geared to fine horses, and started for our ride into the upper and lower valleys of Glencoe, which form a ravine about eight miles long. Accompanying us was the mountain stream called the Cona, that is, “the dark Cona” of Ossian’s poems, while the scarred sides of the hills show the beds of numerous mountain torrents. These, in springtime, must display an impressive activity. Halfway up the glen, the stream forms a little loch. Toward Invercoe, the landscape acquires a softer beauty. Lord Strathcona of Canada had not yet, in 1900, purchased the heritage of the Macdonalds of Glencoe, or built his stately mansion. Yet the wild glen is well worth seeing, either by starting from the northeastern base or by coming up from Ballaculish. We spent a half-hour in “Ossian’s Cave.”