HEATHER BELLS IN SCOTTISH 

 SCENERY 



I can heedless look on the siller sea, 

 I may tentless muse on the flow'ry lea; 

 But my heart wi' a nameless rapture thrills, 

 When I gaze on the cliffs o' my heather hills. 



John Ballantine. 



"The grass on the rock, the flower of the heath, the thistle 

 with its beard are the chief adornments of his landscape." 

 Ossio*. 



THE romantic scenery of the Scottish mountains, 

 their rugged wildness, their indescribable love- 

 liness and charm when clothed with all the 

 autumnal embellishment of their blossoming purple 

 Heather, although existing throughout the ages, have 

 only been known to travelers a little over a century 

 and a half. It is generally believed that the beauties 

 of the Highland scenery were first brought prominently 

 before the world by the publication in the year 1760 

 of what the author, MacPherson, entitled "Fragments 

 of Ancient Poetry Collected in the Highlands." Geikie 

 tells us that previous to the Jacobite rising the moun- 

 tainous region was regarded as the bed of a half sav- 

 age race into whose wilds few lowlanders would ven- 

 ture without the most urgent reasons. 



The poet Gray, during his visit to Scotland in the 



year 1765, made a brief excursion into the Perthshire 



Highlands, and except for the discomforts of travel 



at that time, came away with a vivid impression of 



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