Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1890-10-26

| followed prayer by the minister OF Fasnakyle
1t was none OF your halting, limning, rheumatic
| spiritual crutches. 1t was hearty, healthy
| highland prayer, full of fervor, vigor, spirit
| and brightness, even as these mountain tor
rents roar and tiash and echo through their
MIGHTY GoRGEs AND GLENs;
| and if pilgrim writer ever got notice where
prayer is heard and welcomed, one certainly
had impressive attention directed to his need
| this hospitable night. Then with handgrasps
| all around. The host and hostess not forgetting
their silent hand maids in the good night cere-
mony, the inmates of the manse separated
And in my great chamber that night, even with
| the larches beating grewsomelv at the ndows
and the Highland winds whislling wildly
| down the passes that the house shook and the
| chimn ays creaked above and sough drearDy in
| their freplaces beneath, l passed from con-
seriousness to sleep and dreams with the one
thought above ALL That the far away world
and its grinding activities hold nought in all
their n ghty possibilities like the blessed con-
| tent, peace and faith beneath the roof of this
one lonely Highland manse.
There il something positively bewitching in
digging out the meaning OF the old Gaelic names
day topography OF Scotland. The beauty and
expressiveness of their application are rema ka-
BILE. Take the single word strath as example.
Strath is English for the Gaelic srath. 1t means
valley. But it means still more. 1t is a val
ley confined by hills or mountains on Their
side, through which river runs. Then to any
one who has lived, or wandered lovingly, in
Scotland how perfect In description, covering
whole necessary sentences in our own language
are the compact suffixes. Stran-raer, in Wig
good grass or pasture. Strathgroy, in Perth
shire, from Sraih- dhruidh, is the va ley where
the Druids dwell. Strachur, in Argyle, was
once Srath- a choire, or valley Of the ravine.
Strathcrombel, in Rossshire, is from
Srath- crom-beul. the valley OF the
curved cur .d opening, an exsct T description in
Strathearn, or Sratn-ear AN, in Perthshire, the
valley at the east-running river. strathbrock
the valley of the badgers. strathbran, found
both in the shires of Perth and Ross. was in
Gse ic, srath- Craoin. or valley of the dropping
or drilling showers. Again, in Perthshfre, is
beautiful valley, and Strathtummel, corrupted
from Srath-teth-thuil. is the valley of the fierce
ragged northern edge of the shire OF Inverness,
IL this wonderful strathglass, to the Gaels
srsthglass. their ''gray valley;'' gray in the
skies abve it. gray in It's valley bed where the
uble-felds, banks OF clay and dreamful river
blend; gray. despite the splatches of crimson
laid by the pencils Of the frost; gray in the
masses of birch in the my raids of ichened
crags; and gray in the very mists of its
COUNTLESS WATERFALLS.
Not 1000 people in all Scotland know of the
existence of this grand Gray valley" Not
end No Murray or BLACK has ever pene-
trated its depths to describe it. The old High
landers look at me curiously from the doors OF
their crofts, and doubt that am from SO far a
land as America. To their ken, ! am the first
American to know Strathglass. And what 8
thrill comes to one at the consciousness of pos
sibly being the first American to be seem nearly
at the threshold OF the Twentieth century any
where on the face OF this great earthi The noble
strath opens TO the German ocean at Beauty.
and with a gradual ascent cleaves straight and
true through the mist-wreathed mountains for
nearly thirty miles to the southwest, and then
breaks into two western chasms, Glen Cannich
and Glen Aftric, which nearly equal Strathrlsss
in beauty and grandeur. It is all one region
And across the seventy or eighty miles from sea
to ses there are just two estates that of the
Chisolms of Chisolm, and Kintail of Ross
shire. These cover the strains aud glens reach
ing far over upon the mountains to the north
and south; and from SO to $50 square miles of
land are possessed by these two families. More
and is controlled through renal as such by one
man. TIA. means that down to the past century
thousands OF people, who. through the inherent
rights of clanship, had precisely the same
original right to lands they occupied as had the
heads of clans themselves, have been driven
from their homes, that one man, able to pay
4l0, UO per year in rentals, 9lU, 000 year in the
expenses of bunting lodges, gamekeepers and
giliies, and as much more in litigation, could
come here once a year and butcher red deer:
and those red deer SIS tame, from the absence of
in crofters' byres.
There is little OF human interest in this maei-
cal Gray Valley. The interminable scenes of
splendor are what would bring you again and
again to IL when you had once known it In
deed 1t may be called close q preserve that
one commits trespass in entering it, unless
your feet are kept within the track OF the two
roads, which thread the valley. These wind
along the mountain bases above and at either