14. A Highland River 104 15. A Highland Lake 113 16. Glenfinlas 120 17. Loch Lubnaig 129 18. In the Macgregor Country 136 19. Loch Achray 145 20. The Head of Loch Lomond 152 21. Silver Strand, Loch Katrine 161 22. The River Teith 168 23. The Crags of Ben Venue 177 24. Stirling Castle 192 THE HEART OF SCOTLAND I PERTHSHIRE My text is taken from a writer to whom every discourse on our country goes for authority and illustrations. Among all the provinces in Scotland, if an intelligent stranger were asked to describe the most varied and the most beautiful, it is probable he would name the county of Perth. A native, also, of any other district of Caledonia, though his partialities might lead him to prefer his native county in the first instance, would certainly class that of Perth in the second, and thus give its inhabitants a fair right to plead, that--prejudice apart--Perthshire forms the fairest portion of the northern kingdom. Scott was an alien in Perthshire, his judgment of which, then, should be “neither partial nor impartial,” as the Provost of Portobello desired; while it is so much my native heath that I give it no place but that of first in all the counties of Britain. There can be small doubt of the verdict pronounced by visitors, who take the Scottish Highlands as the cream of our island’s scenery, and in most cases know little of the Highlands beyond this central maze of mountains and valleys, falling to the rich plain of Strathmore, spread out between the rugged Grampians and the green hills of Ochil and Sidlaw. Here arose the ancient Alban, or realm of Alpin, the core of historic Scotland, a name that has been fondly identified with that of the Alps; but I am not going to entangle myself in the snares of philology. If the Perthshire Bens seem insignificant beside the Alps, for the former, at least, no boastful pretensions are made by their sons, who familiarly speak of them as the “hills” rather than the mountains. _Hill_, indeed, is used in the Highlands in a rougher sense, to denote the wild heathy land as distinct from the cultivated glen. I have heard an old-fashioned sportsman speak of going out on “the hill,” when he was actually descending to a lower level; and so R. L. Stevenson has it-- Home is the sailor, home from the sea, And the hunter home from the hill.