View our terms and conditions for use of our web site and our privacy policy. Visit Electric Scotland's Aois Community, our social networking site. Find our contact information and learn more about us. The Home Page of Electric Scotland ES Common Header Bar
This is where you'll find a comprehensive resource on Scottish accommodations. Electric Scotland's Article Service where you can both read articles and post your own. Beth's Newfangled Family Tree is a monthly publication giving genealogy advice as well as what's hapening on the Scottish Scene around the world. This is where you'll find around 300 books on Scottish history that we've published on the site. Our pages where you'll find books and articles about Robert Burns and his work. Gives you some information on the business scene in Scotland. This is where you can view Scottish events around the world and add your own. Learn about the history of Clans and Families of Scotland and the Scots-Irish. The personal site of Alastair McIntyre where he's posted his own mini biography as well as his travel journals. 5 volumes worth of biographies relating to Significant Scots. A weekly newsletter about the political scene in Scotland from the Scots Independent Newspaper. Lots of Scottish recipes along with contributions from our visitors. Play our collection of online games. 6 volume Gazetter on the place names of Scotland. This is our page for trying to give you advice on Genealogy. A FAQ where you go to get answers to frequently asked questions. Information and pictures about Historic places in Scotland such as castles and other properties. Main index page for our very large history section. Children resources including over 800 children's stories and lots of online and offline games. A bit of a catch-all page where you find loads of pages about music, haggis, scots language, culture, religion, humor and lots more. Our nature page where you can explore information on Scottish Wildlife, Plants, Flowers and lots more. Our weekly newsletters archive. Thousands of pictures of Scotland for you to enjoy. Loads of poetry and stories for you to enjoy with many contributions from visitors to our site. Our very own Webcard program which you can use to send online postcard to friends and relatives. Huge resources about the Scots Diaspora around the world and here is where you can find this information. A continually building information resource on the Scots-Irish who emigrated to Ulster and then onto many parts of the world, especially the USA. Create your own family tree with our special software. You can also import and export gedcom files. Our web-based scottish search engine which is a free resource for Scottish companies as well as Scottish organisations around the world. Current Scottish News headlines and links to Scottish news resources. A range of services, both big and small, that we currently offer. Our Tartan pages, giving you access to information on Tartans as well as tartan search engines. Sponsored by House of Tartan. Our travel section where we have loads of suggested tours of Scotland as well as old historic travel books. A wee collection of videos some of which we've produced ourselves. Learn about the last 100 pages we've added to our site which is updated daily.

Click here to get a Printer Friendly Page
 

Send Flowers

Plant Life in the Scottish Highlands
 Epilogue

And so I must say Farewell to the Scottish Highlands.  Since  last visited that lovely land war has cast its cruel shadow upon us; but no matter how long I may have to wait I know that day I shall return.

 Shall walk again in the perfumed air of Rothermurchus and watch the June sun setting over the Monadhliaths and casting its rose-pink hues over the Cairngorms.   I shall tramp again over the high plateaux of Ben Macdhui and Braeriach and flush the ptarmigan among the boulders.  Once more I shall delightful days searching for the rare alpines that inhabit their summits and exploring the magnificent corries of the Garrycore.

I shall follow exciting tracks across the purple waste of Rannoch, until I come down to the sea amid the beautiful mountains and valleys of Lochaber, where I shall again live awhile amongst their hospitable peoples.

I shall wander across moor and bog, by sparkling torrents and mirror-like lakes into the enchanted West, towards the hills of Morar, until  I see again the Coolins black against the setting sun and feel the soft breeze sweeping in from Rum and Eigg and the sparkling Atlantic.

 I shall climb again the shapely cone of Schiehallon or the beetling precipices of Bidean, and look down from Cairn Toul into the depths of the Larig Ghru.

I shall linger again to contemplate the beauty of Loch-an-Eilean and Loch Morlich or stand in silent awe beside the stark shores of Loch Avon or Loch Coruisk.

I shall return again to the land I love and to its flowers amid which I have passed so many happy days, and I shall live again those lovely days I have tried to recall to you in this short book.

To you to know not the Scottish Highlands, I say, ‘Visit the Highlands at your first opportunity, and like me you will return to your homes knowing that you must go back, that you have fallen beneath the spell of their beauty and charm.’

To you that know the Highlands, to say more is superfluous, but my book at least have achieved its object if you return in regard, not only the beauty of mountain and lake, stream and moor, but also the flowers that adorn them and add so much to the charm of the landscape, treating them not as the streaks of colour upon a painting, but as living objects pulsating with life, with beauty and with mystery, faced with the same hopes, the same despairs and the same struggles for existence as ourselves.

This thought is beautifully expressed by John Fiske in ‘Through Nature to God.’

‘I often thin, when working over my plants, of what Linnaeus once said of the unfolding of a blossom; I saw God in His glory passing near me, and bowed my head in worship.’ The scientific aspect of the same thought has been put into words by Tennyson;

Flower in the crannied wall
I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand
Little flower--but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.

No deeper thought was ever uttered by poet.  For in this world of plants, which, with its magician, chlorophyll, conjuring with sunbeams, is ceaselessly at working bringing life out of death, in this quiet vegetable world we may find the elementary principles of all life in almost visible operation.

Return to Book Index Page