2 4 o NETHER LOCHABER. 



her dark and bigoted and wholly unhappy life. If such things 

 were possible and the ancients, at least, believed they were we 

 should be apt to say the same in our own case of the mountain 

 ranges and sea views around us, with which we have held such 

 intimate fellowship for upwards of twenty years. 



If one asked us where he could get coals, we should without 

 hesitation be disposed, were it but to keep the well-known proverb 

 in countenance, to direct him to Newcastle-on-Tyne. If he con- 

 sulted us as to where he could best procure a serviceable and trust- 

 worthy sword-blade of finest workmanship and highest value, we 

 should probably direct him to Damascus or Toledo. If slings and 

 slingers, we should send him to the Balearic Isles ; if bows and 

 arrows, and how to use them with perfectest dexterity, to the 

 Parthians ; and in so advising the anxious inquirer for coals, or 

 the warlike weapons in question, we should probably be dis- 

 posed to feel that we had advised him wisely and well. And 

 suppose one wanted a " Lochaber axe," where would he most 

 naturally look for it but in Lochaber? And yet, in all Lochaber 

 there is probably at this moment not a single specimen of a weapon 

 at one time so common and so peculiar to the district as to have 

 been called after it. The Secretary of the Eoyal Institution of a 

 seaport city of England wrote us lately, begging us to procure for 

 them a Lochaher axe, to be placed in a collection of shafted weapons 

 in their museum. He wrote as if he thought there need be no 

 difficulty about the matter ; living as we do in Lochaber, he seemed 

 to think that we could lay our hands upon such a weapon as easily 

 as upon a tuft of heather or a twig of birch. We were, of course, 

 obliged to write him in reply that neither in Lochaber proper, nor, 

 so far as we knew, in any of the neighbouring districts, was there 

 to be found a single specimen of the formidable weapon in question. 

 There should be a good many Lochaber axes in the country how- 

 ever, though not in Lochaber. We wonder if such a thing as a 



