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To reach those rain-bitten and wave-carved coasts where the true Highlander mainly holds his own, we have various ways now made smooth by arts which go on sapping his seclusion. It does not much matter which way the stranger takes, for he can hardly go wrong, to understand how right Gray was when he told his mole-eyed generation, “the Lowlands were worth seeing once, but the mountains are ecstatic, and ought to be visited in pilgrimage once a year.” All roads to the Inner Highlands lead through the Outer Highlands, more fully described in Bonnie Scotland.

For leisurely tourists the choice road is still by water, down the Clyde from Glasgow. If the name of this river be derived, as is said, from a Celtic word meaning clean, that title has become a mockery, since its banks from Glasgow to Greenock sucked together the most industrious life of Scotland. “Come, bright Improvement, on the Car of Time!” sang Glasgow’s youthful poet, but lived to exclaim against the questionable shape in which came a spirit he had invoked so hopefully: