368 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



through the Trossacks — a wild, beautiful glen connected with 

 the scenes in the Lady of the Lake, crossed the brig o' Turk, 

 and arrived at Stirling Castle in the afternoon of a fine summer's 

 day. Tlic field of Bannockburn is not far from the castle, 

 whicli was itself the scene of more than one hard-fouglit battle. 



At Perth we are in the neighborhood of Birnam Wood and 

 Dunsinane, and iii going to Aberdeen and Inverness, we pass 

 many old ruined castles, the battle-field of Culloden, the heath 

 where the witches met Macbeth and Banquo, and many other 

 historical places, to whose history I should be glad to allude, 

 did space permit. Inverness lies at the foot of the northern 

 Highlands, at the extremity of the great Caledonian glen, 

 through which there is an almost endless chain of lochs. It is 

 about seven hundred miles north of London. The country is 

 rough and mountainous, some of the peaks rising three or four 

 thousand feet, bleak and comparatively barren, but picturesque 

 in the extreme. The castle of Macbeth, built by the thanes of 

 Cawdor, stood on an eminence overlooking the town. It has 

 now given place to a court-house. Cromwell went to Inverness 

 in 1651, and built a fort there. Many remains of the Druids 

 are to be seen in the neighborhood. The wild heaths, extend- 

 ing over thousands of acres, are devoted mostly to sheep- 

 walks, while vast tracks are still reserved for deer and other 

 game. We went down through Loch Ness, Lochar, the Caledo- 

 nian Canal, past the foot of Ben Nevis into Locheil, and came, 

 after a most interesting trip through the Highlands, to the 

 pretty little town of Oban, and so out around the Island 

 of Mull, stopping at Staffa to visit the Cave of Fingal, 

 and lona, the sacred island where the kings of Scotland lie 

 buried, and among them Duncan and Macbeth. All the region 

 is familiar to the readers of Ossian, and Sir Walter Scott, 

 Campbell, and Wordsworth, and a})art IVum the classic interest 

 which the j)oets have thrown around it, it is not surpassed in 

 grand and picturesque scenery by any other part of the High- 

 lands. The woolly West Highland cattle are seen in their purity 

 here. A large herd was feeding on the island of Staffa. 



It is a full day's sail by steamer from Oban to Glasgow, the 

 route lying through the Highlands and up the Clyde. A 

 farmer from Argyle, which is ahovc Oban and in the Highlands, 

 whom I had met at the exhibition in London, had invited me, 



