374 A Walk Jrom 



making the hills and glens echo with their fusilades. 

 Blair Castle, the duke's mansion, is a very ordinary 

 building in appearance, looking from the public road 

 like a large four-story factory painted white, with 

 small, old-fashioned windows. He himself was lying 

 in a very painful and precarious condition, with a cancer 

 in the throat, from which it was the general impression 

 that he never would recover. The day preceding, the 

 Queen had visited him, while en route for Balmoral, 

 having gone sixty miles out of her way to comfort him 

 with such an expression of her sympathy. 



The next day I reached the northern boundary of the 

 Duke of Atholl's estate, having walked for full forty 

 miles almost continuously through it. Passed over a very 

 bleak, treeless, barren waste of mountain and moorland, 

 most of it too rocky or soilless for even heather. The 

 dashing, flashing little Garry, which I had followed for 

 a day or two, thinned and narrowed down to a noisy 

 brook as I ascended towards its source. For a long 

 distance the country was exceedingly wild and desolate. 

 Terrible must be the condition of a man benighted there- 

 in, especially in winter. There were standing beacons 

 all along the road for miles to indicate the track when 

 it was buried in drifting snows. These were painted 

 posts, about six or eight feet high, planted on the rocky, 

 river side of the road, at a few rods interval, to guide 



