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We were soon sailing over the Highlands of the Hudson. Off in the east we could see the river, a winding ribbon of silver. We were running low, barely more than 200 feet high. Below us the great drag rope was hissing through meadows, roaring over fences, crashing through tree-tops.
The former is not only a carpenter, but a joiner, a cabinet-maker, and even a carver in wood, as well as a wheel-wright, a plough-wright, a cart and waggon-maker. The employments of the latter are still more various. It is impossible there should be such a trade as even that of a nailer in the remote and inland parts of the highlands of Scotland.
'To Scotland? said the Colonel; 'with what purpose? not to engage again with the rebels, I hope? 'No; I considered my campaign ended when, after all my efforts, I could not rejoin them; and now, by all accounts, they are gone to make a winter campaign in the Highlands, where such adherents as I am would rather be burdensome than useful.
And most of it is raw to the last degree a medley of diverse and hostile races, ranging from the puny and dying remnant of the Negritos, who live like wild beasts in the highlands, subsisting upon the roots which they claw out of the ground, to the fierce and unsubdued Mohammedan tribes that still keep up the bloody war of creeds which raged in Spain itself for so many centuries.
The experience of the war having already proved that the high towers of stone such as had been built in the highlands up to the time of the death of Khasi-Mollah, were worse than useless as a means of defence against the Russian artillery, inasmuch as their defenders were exposed to be buried under their ruins, Schamyl instructed, it is said, by Polish deserters, now changed entirely the system of his fortifications.
The news of his coming ran before him through all the highlands; the warriors half drew their shaskas at hearing it; the chieftains of the Tchetchenians who had received the cross of St. George from the Russians, tore it from their breasts; and the bards striking with a frenzy of inspiration their lyres, chanted the miraculous deliverance and great deeds of this successor of Mahomet.
The country is under the suzerainty of China, which has a representative called an amaban and several thousand troops at Lasa to maintain its claim. Though an extremely trying climate prevails on these highlands, the hermit-like, priest-ridden people know no better home and are contented with their lot.
The most picturesque points can be seized in no other way, and the hues of the affair fade as quickly as those of a dying dolphin; or as, according to Audubon, the plumage of a dead bird. One thing that struck me as much as anything else in the Highlands I had forgotten to put down.
The stag, reeling, covered with foam, and blackened with sweat, his nostrils extended as he gasped for breath, made a shift to come up as far as where Nigel stood, and, without turning to bay, was there pulled down by two tall greyhounds of the breed still used by the hardy deer-stalkers of the Scottish Highlands, but which has been long unknown in England.
While the Queen was in the Highlands during the autumn, her journal, in its published portions, records a few days spent with the widowed Duchess of Athole at her cottage at Dunkeld. This visit was something very different from the old royal progresses. It was a private token of friendship from the Queen to an old friend bereaved like herself. There was neither show, nor gaiety, nor publicity.
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