The Pleasures of June 75 



Sir Walter and the Clan Macgregor bodily, and with 

 them every poet, cattle-thief, cateran, and writer of 

 romance that has cast what the excited Cockney calls 

 ' a glamour ' over haunts once innocent and wild, his 

 maledictions are light in comparison to those he vents 

 on hostelries where balmy sleep at night and decent 

 food by day are both exorbitantly charged for, and 

 are both out of the question. If he be wise he will 

 next year steal a march upon his plagues and to the 

 Highlands in June. 



The result is like to be a curious blend of pleasure 

 and disappointment. In the moon wherein I experi- 

 mented there was a minimum of the unpleasing. The 

 winter had been so genial and was followed by a gush 

 of such ' ethereal mildness,' that you have to go back 

 many seasons for a June more prodigal of blossom. 

 The hawthorn, which in the neighbourhood of London 

 had flowered and gone, was still blanching copse and 

 thicket, still gleaming from between green firs on the 

 outlying Highland knolls, and that in such profusion 

 as would be a prophecy of avalanche if there were 

 truth at all in ' mony haws mony snaws.' If Linnaeus, 

 who fell down on his knees and thanked God for the 

 golden gorse, had viewed the river valleys and the 

 low hills, magnificent almost beyond example in their 

 wealth of whin and broom, he would have been kneel- 

 ing all day long. But it was only on the way into 

 the heart of the Highlands that these heartening and 

 enchanting visions were possible, for they belong to 



