Billeder på siden
PDF
ePub
[graphic]

Inverness

that the Scotch are not yet so mercenary as to send to England sack fulls of cats and birds heads for the sake of the reward.

INVERNESS.

At Inverness I found a strange medley of the Scotch and English language spoken in the streets. In Nairn, as at well as this place, there are, as it were, two towns, and two different people, as the prople that come from the country, and intend to speak Gaelic, live in one end of the town, and those that cannot, or do not intend to speak it, live in the other.

It has been often and justly remarked, that the people of Inverness speak English with remarkable purity; partly because they are at great pains to learn it, not merely from vulgar conversation, but by book, as we do Greek and Latin; and partly because English garrisons from the times of Cromwell have, in a great measure, given the tone, in respect of both diction and pronunciation, to the whole county, from Fort William to Fort George.

Inverness, the northermost town of any note in Britain, is beautifully situated on the south banks. of the Ness, over which there is a stone bridge of seven arches. The salmon fishery here, which is let to London fishmongers, is very considerable. There are several thriving manufactures at Inverness, a good deal of shipping, and a great deal of inland trade. It has a very commodious harbour for vessels of two hundred tons, and ships of four

or five hundred can ride within a mile of the town. It is certainly admirably situated for both distant and domestic or inland commerce. Its population is estimated at about six thousand.

On the north, near the town, are the remains of Oliver Cromwell's fort. Of the castles of Macbeth, Malcolm Canmore, and the Cummins, nothing remains but rubbish.

Some of our Londoners, when they hear of Inverness, and that it is more than a hundred miles beyond Aberdeen, will perhaps think it the very skirts of the creation, and that to be condemned to live there would be worse than being sent to Botany Bay but let me tell such cockneys, that there is scarcely an article, good, bad, or indifferent, to be found in London, but is to be found here also, excepting watchmen and patroles, of which, fortunately, there is no need.

The assembly rooms here, though not so large, are yet as well proportioned, and nearly as elegant as the assembly rooms at Edinburgh, London, and Bath. The academy is also a neat building, and the plan of education seems not only to be well laid, but, in general, properly executed. I was sorry, however, to find, that one of the rectors of the academy here had given up his place, and gone to London, imagining, with others of a warm imagination, and some knowledge in the laws of astronomy, that he had discovered the method of finding the longitude in the same way as they do the latitude, by the quadrant of altitude.

FROM INVERNESS TO FORT AUGUSTUS.

FROM Inverness I went to the Fall of Foirs, along the banks of Lochness and the line of the

CALEDONIAN CANAL;

and whether it was owing to the state of my mind, the idea of the national advantages arising from the canal, the appearance of the lake, or the beautifully varied objects that presented themselves to my mind, I confess this was, upon the whole, the most pleasant forenoon's excursion I ever made. I found it from eight to ten miles from Inverness to Lochness, and all this way the earth must be cut and scooped out, in order that ships may pass from the Murray Forth to Lochness; which is one of the largest lakes in Scotland, being twenty-four miles long, and from two to three broad in some places. Its waters, owing to some sulphureous matter at the sides and bottom, never freeze; and so deep is it, that though in some places it has been sounded with a line of near a thousand fathoms, no bottom has been found.

The Caledonian Canal, which will reach from Inverness on the Murray Firth to Fort William, bordering on the Irish Sea, will divide the northern parts of Scotland into two, and be of much use in a variety of ways, not only to this part of the

« ForrigeFortsæt »