From the Hebrides to the Himalayas, vol. 1 [of 2] : $b a sketch of eighteen months' wanderings in Western Isles and Eastern Highlands

"From the Hebrides to the Himalayas, vol. 1 [of 2]" by C. F. Gordon Cumming is a travelogue written in the late 19th century. It offers a vivid, wide-ranging account of eighteen months’ wandering from Scotland’s Western Isles and Eastern Highlands toward India, blending landscape sketches with antiquarian lore, folklore, archaeology, natural history, and reflections on religion and custom.

The opening of the volume challenges bleak British clichés about India, as the narrator recounts a temperate, itinerant year that avoided heat and hardship, then drifts back to a richly detailed sojourn in the Mull of Cantyre and the Inner Hebrides. She evokes Campbeltown and surrounding kirkyards, saints’ caves and crosses, Norse and Dalriadic histories, and the grim siege of Dunaverty, setting these against lyrical seascapes and the working life of kelp-burners. A rain-soaked transit via Tarbert and the Crinan Canal leads to Oban, with legends of the Corrievreckan whirlpool, visits to Dunolly and Dunstaffnage, seals and Fingalian lore, and surveys of cairns, lake-dwellings, and white-quartz grave customs. This opening culminates in the striking discovery and description of a serpent-shaped ritual mound near Loch Nell—its solar stone circle yielding cremated remains and charred hazelnuts—prompting reflections on triadic symbols and shared religious motifs across distant cultures. (This is an automatically generated summary.)