268 TKAVEL, AD VENTURE, AND SPORT. 



Fair Maid? And in the year 185- Sind borders on 

 countries where the state of society is as wild, irregular, 

 clannish, freebooting, hospitable, and murderous, as it 

 ever was of old in the Scottish Highlands. Gone is 

 the romance of the Highland clans. Still the stag 

 may drink at " Monan's Kill," and make its lair deep 

 in " hazel shade," but no hunter's horn or chieftain's 

 whistle shrill can people the lone hillside with five 

 hundred warriors keen. No more the hardy Cateran 

 drives the Sassenach's fat cattle before him, on scanty 

 paths, to his inaccessible retreat ; he only drives down 

 nowt to Falkirk Tryst, from " ta ponny land o' ta 

 whisky still." "Donald of the Smithy, the Son of 

 the Hammer," puts large stones at the Inverness 

 Games, instead of filling "the Banks of Lochawe 

 with mourning and clamour." Only an Edinburgh 

 professor roams disconsolate among the hills of Brae- 

 mar, crying, 



" Woes me, woe ! what dole and sorrow, 

 From this lovely land I borrow ! " 



"While an unfeeling public asks, " Why borrow ? " and 

 advises him to pay back his loan as soon as possible. 

 But the primitive virtues still remain among the moun- 

 tains of Central Asia, and Kurrachee is sufficiently 

 close to these hills to allow an opportunity (even to re- 

 spectable persons like professors) of making tolerably 

 safe acquaintance with living " lords of the glen." 



On the one side of the Hala (not indeed, at their 

 base, where the Beluch still rules, but nearer the 



