As Mountains Are Long Before They Are Conquered, They Are Likewise
Long Before They Are Civilized.
Men are softened by intercourse
mutually profitable, and instructed by comparing their own notions
with those of others.
Thus Caesar found the maritime parts of
Britain made less barbarous by their commerce with the Gauls. Into
a barren and rough tract no stranger is brought either by the hope
of gain or of pleasure. The inhabitants having neither commodities
for sale, nor money for purchase, seldom visit more polished
places, or if they do visit them, seldom return.
It sometimes happens that by conquest, intermixture, or gradual
refinement, the cultivated parts of a country change their
language. The mountaineers then become a distinct nation, cut off
by dissimilitude of speech from conversation with their neighbours.
Thus in Biscay, the original Cantabrian, and in Dalecarlia, the old
Swedish still subsists. Thus Wales and the Highlands speak the
tongue of the first inhabitants of Britain, while the other parts
have received first the Saxon, and in some degree afterwards the
French, and then formed a third language between them.
That the primitive manners are continued where the primitive
language is spoken, no nation will desire me to suppose, for the
manners of mountaineers are commonly savage, but they are rather
produced by their situation than derived from their ancestors.
Such seems to be the disposition of man, that whatever makes a
distinction produces rivalry. England, before other causes of
enmity were found, was disturbed for some centuries by the contests
of the northern and southern counties; so that at Oxford, the peace
of study could for a long time be preserved only by chusing
annually one of the Proctors from each side of the Trent. A tract
intersected by many ridges of mountains, naturally divides its
inhabitants into petty nations, which are made by a thousand causes
enemies to each other. Each will exalt its own chiefs, each will
boast the valour of its men, or the beauty of its women, and every
claim of superiority irritates competition; injuries will sometimes
be done, and be more injuriously defended; retaliation will
sometimes be attempted, and the debt exacted with too much
interest.
In the Highlands it was a law, that if a robber was sheltered from
justice, any man of the same clan might be taken in his place.
This was a kind of irregular justice, which, though necessary in
savage times, could hardly fail to end in a feud, and a feud once
kindled among an idle people with no variety of pursuits to divert
their thoughts, burnt on for ages either sullenly glowing in secret
mischief, or openly blazing into public violence. Of the effects
of this violent judicature, there are not wanting memorials. The
cave is now to be seen to which one of the Campbells, who had
injured the Macdonalds, retired with a body of his own clan. The
Macdonalds required the offender, and being refused, made a fire at
the mouth of the cave, by which he and his adherents were
suffocated together.
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