sistance to a battering train, but were quite strong enough to keep
the herdsmen of the Grampians in awe. About five miles south of this
stronghold, the valley of the Garry contracts itself into the celebrated
glen of Killiecrankie. At present a highway as smooth as any road in
Middlesex ascends gently from the low country to the summit of the
defile. White villas peep from the birch forest; and, on a fine summer
day, there is scarcely a turn of the pass at which may not be seen some
angler casting his fly on the foam of the river, some artist sketching
a pinnacle of rock, or some party of pleasure banqueting on the turf
in the fretwork of shade and sunshine. But, in the days of William
the Third, Killiecrankie was mentioned with horror by the peaceful and
industrious inhabitants of the Perthshire lowlands. It was deemed the
most perilous of all those dark ravines through which the marauders
of the hills were wont to sally forth. The sound, so musical to modern
ears, of the river brawling round the mossy rocks and among the smooth
pebbles, the dark masses of crag and verdure worthy of the pencil of
Wilson, the fantastic peaks bathed, at sunrise and sunset, with light
rich as that which glows on the canvass of Claude, suggested to our
ancestors thoughts of murderous ambuscades and of bodies stripped,
gashed, and abandoned to the birds of prey. The only path was narrow and
rugged: a horse could with difficulty be led up: two men could hardly
walk abreast; and, in some places, the way ran so close by the precipice
that the traveller had great need of a steady eye and foot. Many years
later, the first Duke of Athol constructed a road up which it was just
possible to drag his coach. But even that road was so steep and so
strait that a handful of resolute men might have defended it against
an army; [355] nor did any Saxon consider a visit to Killiecrankie as a
pleasure, till experience had taught the English Government that the
weapons by which the Highlanders could be most effectually subdued were
the pickaxe and the spade.

The country which lay just above this pass was now the theatre of a
war such as the Highlands had not often witnessed. Men wearing the same
tartan, and attached to the same lord, were arrayed against each other.
The name of the absent chief was used, with some show of reason, on both
sides. Ballenach, at the head of a body of vassals who considered him as
the representative of the Marquess, occupied Blair