Topographical, statistical, and historical gazetteer of Scotland > Volume 2

TRO
770
TUL
mailroad. Population, in 1801, 2,774; in 1831,
4,665. Houses 580. Assessed property, in 1815,
* 1,334 Troqueer is in the presbytery and synod
of Dumfries. Patron, the Crown." Stipend £350
7s. 2d. ; glebe, 10 acres, but not valued. Unappro-
priated teinds £91 16s. 5d. The larger section of
the population belongs to the quoad sacra parish of
Maxwelltown : which see. There are three par-
ochial and two private schools, and the former have
attached to them only £32 of salary The ancient
church belonged, till the reign of James V., to the
monastery of Tongland ; in 1588, when the property
of that establishment was alienated, it was granted
for life to William Melville, the commendator of
Tongland ; and in 1605 it was given to the bishops
of Galloway. The ancient parish of Kirkconal,
which was suppressed in the reign of Charles I., was
divided between Troqueer on the north-east, and
Newabbey on the south-west. The parish-church
stood in the Troqueer section, 1J mile north-east
of the village of Newabbey; and is commemorated
in the names of a mansion, a farm, and an estate.
The devout and excellent Scottish Worthy, the
Rev. John Blackadder, was minister of Troqueer,
and suffered ejection from it, amid affecting incidents,
at the forced introduction of prelacy.
TROSACHS, a surpassingly romantic mountain-
vale, between Lochs Achray and Katrine, in the
parishes of Callander and Aberfoil, Monteith, Perth-
shire. The word Trosachs signifies a bristled region,
and is not a little descriptive of the scenery. The
road, from end to end of the Trosachs, is rather more
than a mile in length, and introduces the tourist to
the landscape at the inn of Ardcheanochrochan,
about 10 miles west of the village of Callander. The
opening which affords ingress is flanked on the
left by Benvenue, towering 2,800 feet above sea-
level, and on the right by Benawn. The defile of
Beal-an-Duine, where Fitz-James lost his " gallant
grey," is in the heart of the great gorge ; a little west
of it is a narrow inlet ; and, at a few paces farther,
Loch- Katrine bursts upon the view, the Alps of Ar-
roquhar mingling with the clouds in the distance.
The Trosachs, in a general view, are a contracted
vale, whose sides are soaring eminences wildly and
irregularly feathered all over with hazels, oaks,
birches, hawthorns, and mountain-ashes, and whose
central space is "a tumultuous confusion of little
rocky eminences, all of the most fantastic and extra-
ordinary forms, everywhere shagged with trees and
shrubs," and presenting " an aspect of roughness
and wildness, of tangled and inextricable boskiness,
totally unexampled, it is supposed, in the world."
A particular description, after Sir Walter Scott's ex-
quisite one, in the Lady of the Lake, could not be
very safely attempted by even an adept in literary
painting: —
*'TIip western waves of ebbing day
Roll'd o'er the glen their level way ;
E iich purple peak, each flinty spire,
Was bathed in floods of living tire.
But not a setting beam could glow
"Within the dark ravine below,
Where twined the path, in shadow hid,
Round many a rocky pyramid,
Shooting abruptly from the dell
Its thunder-splinter'd pinnacle ;
Round many an insulated mass,
The native bulwarks of the pass,
Huge as the tower which builders vain
Presumptuous piled on Shinar's plain.
The rocky summits, split and rent,
Form'd turret, dome, or battlement,
Or seem'd fantastically set
With cupola or minaret,
Wild crestB as pagod ever derk'd,
Or mosque of Eastern architect.
Nor were these earth-born castles bare,
Nor lack'd they many a banner fair ;
For, from their shiver'd brows display'd,
Far o'er the unfathomable glade,
All twinkling with the dew-drops sheen,
The briar-rose fell in streamers green,
And creeping shrubs, of thousand dyes.
Waved in the west-wind's summer 6*ighs.
"Boon Nature scatter'd, free and wild,
Each plant or flower, the mountain's child.
Here eglantine embalm'd the air.
Hawthorn and hazel mingled there;
The primrose pale, and violet flower,
Found in each eliff a narrow bower ;
Foxglove and nightshade, side by side.
Emblems of punishment and pride,
Group'd their dark hues with every stnio
The weather-beaten crags retain.
With boughs that quaked at every breath,
Grey birch aud aspen wept beneath ;
Aloft, the ash and warrior oak
Cast anchor in the rifted rock ;
And, higher yet, the pine-tree hung
His shatter'd trunk, and frequent flung,
Where eeem'd the cliff's to meet on high,
His boughs athwart the narrow'd sky.
Highest of all, where white peaks glanced.
Where glist'ning streamers waved and danced.
The wanderer's eye could barely view
The summer heaveo's delicious blue ;
So wondrous wild, the whole might seem
The scenery of a fairy dream."
TROTTERNISH, the eastern and north-eastern
division of Skye, comprehending all Kilmuir, Sni-
zort, and Portree, and small parts of Bracadale and
Strath. It is not only the largest district of the
island, but, irrespective of its extent, the richest,
and contains much good arable ground; See .^kye.
Trotternish has some celebrity as the scene of vari-
ous perils and adventures of Prince Charles Edward.
The headland, called Trotternish-point, forms the
most northerly land in the island ; and runs out 2
of a mile north-westward in a narrow promontory.
TROUP. See Gamrie.
TRUIM, a small river of Badenoch, Inverness-
shire. It rises among the alpine recesses of the cen-
tral Grampians, within 3 furlongs of the boundary
with Perthshire, and runs 12.^ miles north-north-
eastward to the Spey, near Invernahavon. The
glen of the river brings up the great road from In-
verness to Perth ; and has, on the left bank, the
solitary stage-inn of Dalwhinnie. Its lower part
has some grandeur of scenery, and slight amenities
of wood ; but its upper part, which contains Dal-
whinnie, and is comprehended in the dismal nominal
forest of Drumouchter, utterly chills the feelings of
any but the most weather-beaten mountaineer. The
mountains are dull in aspect and uninteresting in
form, and appear, not arranged into chains, but cut
into stupendous detached masses; and the glen be-
tween them is everywhere, from Dalwhinnie to its
head, " houseless, treeless, and lifeless,. — wanting in
everything but barrenness and deformity, — while
there is not even an object so much worse than an-
other as to attract a moment's attention."
TRUMISGARRY, a quoad sacra parish, com-
prehended in the quoad civilia parish of North Uist,
in the Outer Hebrides. Its greatest length is about
17 miles; its greatest breadth is about 12 miles; and
its area is about 140 square miles. Population, in
1836,1,722. Patron, the Crown. Stipend £120;
glebe £4. The church, a parliamentary one, was
built in 1829, at a cost of £750. Sittings 326.
There are three itinerating schools of the Gaelic
school society, and a General Assembly's school.
TUDHOPE. See Castletown.
TULLA. See Inchmahome.
TULLIALLAN, a parish in the detached district
of Perthshire ; bounded on the west and the north
by Clackmannan ; on the east by Culross ; and on
the south and south-west by the frith of Forth. Its
greatest length from north to south is 3i miles ; its
greatest breadth is 3 miles; and its superficial extent
is about 2,760 acres. The surface has a gentle slope
from the northern boundary to the Forth, and is