Leaving
our women at Cameron, to the care and inspection of Lady H-- C--,
we set out on horseback for Inverary, the county town of Argyle,
and dined on the road with the Laird of Macfarlane, the greatest
genealogist I ever knew in any country, and perfectly acquainted
with all the antiquities of Scotland.
The Duke of Argyle has an old castle in Inverary, where he
resides when he is in Scotland; and hard by is the shell of a
noble Gothic palace, built by the last duke, which, when
finished, will be a great ornament to this part of the Highlands.
As for Inverary, it is a place of very little importance.
This country is amazingly wild, especially towards the mountains,
which are heaped upon the backs of one another, making a most
stupendous appearance of savage nature, with hardly any signs of
cultivation, or even of population. All is sublimity, silence,
and solitude. The people live together in glens or bottoms, where
they are sheltered from the cold and storms of winter: but there
is a margin of plain ground spread along the sea side, which is
well inhabited and improved by the arts of husbandry; and this I
take to be one of the most agreeable tracts of the whole island;
the sea not only keeps it warm, and supplies it with fish, but
affords one of the most ravishing prospects in the whole world; I
mean the appearance of the Hebrides, or Western Islands to the
number of three hundred, scattered as far as the eye can reach,
in the most agreeable confusion.
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