On a later occasion I made a little tour in Craven with a friend who had a tandem, and we stopped at Hellifield, where I sketched the Peel. Whilst I sat at work the then representative of the family, my father's first cousin, came out upon the lawn; but I did not speak to him, nor did he take any notice of me. He was a fine, hale man of about eighty.
The _nearness_ of Hellifield to Hollins was brought home to me very strongly on that occasion. It was late afternoon when I finished my sketch, and yet, as we had very good horses, we reached home easily the same evening. So near and yet so far! As I have said already in the third chapter, my grandfather's wife and children never even saw his brother's house, and during my own youth the place had seemed as distant and unreal as one of the old towers that I had read about in northern poetry and romance.
Expedition to the Highlands in 1857.--Kindness of the Marquis of Breadalbane and others.--Camp life, its strong and peculiar attraction.--My servant.--Young Helliwell.--Scant supplies in the camp.--Nature of the camp.--Necessity for wooden floors in a bad climate.--Double-hulled boats.--Practice of landscape-painting.--Changes of effect.--Influences that governed my way of study in those days.--Attractive character of the Scottish Highlands.--Their scenery not well adapted for beginners.--My intense love of it.
In the year 1857 I made the expedition to the Highlands which afterwards became well known in consequence of my book about it.
The Marquis of Breadalbane (the first Marquis) granted me in the kindest way permission to pitch my camp wherever I liked on his extensive estate, and at the same time gave me an invitation to Taymouth Castle. The Duke of Argyll gave me leave to encamp on an island in Loch Awe that belonged to him, and Mr. Campbell of Monzie granted leave to encamp on his property on the Cladich side of the lake. I ought to have gone to Taymouth to thank Lord Breadalbane and accept the hospitality he had offered, but it happened that he had not fixed a date, so I avoided Taymouth. This was wrong, but young men are generally either forward or backward. The Marquis afterwards expressed himself, to a third person, as rather hurt that I had not been to see him.