THE INN OF INVERSNAID.

Otago Witness, Issue 2565, 13 May 1903, Page 66

THE INN OF INVERSNAID.

A few days ago, in the kirkyard of Aberfoyle, a notable Highlander was laid to his rest — Robert Blair, the hist of a family of Trossachs men who have bee.ii intimately connected with the stream of tourist traffic that yearly flows through the famous glen. His father, Andrew Blair, a "lacksinan ' under the Duke of Montrose at Rowardennan, was granted the tenancy of the inn at Inversn.ud, then a small thatched cottage, for which he paid £5 a year. Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy described the tiny inn on the shore of the romantic lake that so charmed their poetic souls ; and an oak tree just below the house is still pointed out as the place they chose in which to sit, and write, and dream". People cared little for scenery in those days. Burt," an English traveller, writing of the Highlands, describes ihe mountains as "monstrous excrescences of stupendous bulk, frightful irregularities of horrid gloom," and contrasts their rugged prospect with the smooth beauties of Richmond Hill. It was not until Sir Walter Scott took the world by storm with his "Lady of the Lake" that people began to wish to behold for themselves his "Caledonia stern and wild," and a few venturesome folk forthwith explored Loch Katrine and the Trossachs. Andrew Blair kept ponies to convey the travellers over the hill from Loch Lomond side — one or two at first then ; as business increased and tourists multiplied, 25 or 30 strong shaggy beasts formed his usual number. In 1839 Mr Gladstone and his bride, accompanied by Mrs Gladstone's sister and her husband, also a newly-married pair, stayed some days in the little inn, crossing the hill by means of Blair's shelties, the ladies riding, their bridegrooms walking by their side. Soon after that the road was widened and made fit for vehicles. And now that royal route is thronged twice a day the season through. Well-horsed coaches and char-a-bancs pelt through the pass; steamers, daintily painted and fitted, ply to and fro jii the lochs, and palatial hotels stand every few miles, where the traveller can be as well served as in London or Paris itself.