Here a wall of unfamed Bens shuts off another basin of lakes that is the northward course of the West Highland railway. Across this rise the high tops of the Blackmount deer forest, still within the bounds of Lord Breadalbane’s domain, a wilderness of heather, only here and there broken by patches of forest in our use of the word, but homes of living men appear rarer than cairns of the forgotten dead. Westwards opens the way to ill-famed Glencoe. Southwards runs the Orchy to Loch Awe and Ben Cruachan, by a knot of green glens that seem to have been the original seat of the Macgregors, whose inveterate feuds with Macnabs and other neighbours paved a way for the conquering Campbells. But before speaking of the Macgregor country, let us turn back to the Lowlands to approach it up another Perthshire strath. V STRATHEARN One of the most beautiful of Scottish rivers is the Earn, half Highland and half Lowland, winding through all the varieties of Perthshire scenery, past hoary monuments of Scotland’s struggles for birth as a nation, and among misty traditions of her saints and heroes. Yet guide-books, one observes, pass over the greater part of this strath as hurriedly as the express trains dashing across its lower end; and strangers seldom visit any but the upper reach, which enters into a regular tourist round. How such neglect is undeserved, I would fain show on an arm-chair saunter from the river’s unalluring mouth to its source in mountains of romantic fame, a distance of some forty miles as the crow flies; but a salmon has to make a much longer trip of it. Well is the Earn apostrophised by an admiring stranger, _Blackwood’s_ first editor, Thomas Pringle, best known by his South African pictures, or by the figure he cuts in the wicked waggery of the _Chaldee Manuscript_. Thou, mountain stream, whose early torrent course Hath many a drear and distant region seen, [Illustration: A HIGHLAND RIVER] Windest thy downward way with slackened force, As with the journey thou hadst wearied been; And, all enamoured of these margins green, Delight’st to wander with a sportive tide, Seeming with refluent current still to glide Around the hazel banks that o’er thee lean. Like thee, wild stream, my wearied soul would roam (Forgetful of life’s dark and troublous hour) Through scenes where fancy frames her fairy bower, And, Love enchanted, builds his cottage home: But time and tide wait not, and I, like thee Must go where tempests rage and wrecks bestrew the sea.