Near Dunkeld, Birnam Hill lifts its round, dark, bushy head to the height of over 1,500 feet, grand and grim, as if it wore the bonnet of Macbeth and hid his dagger beneath its tartan cloak of firs.

"Birnam Wood," which Shakespeare's genius has made one of the immortals among earthly localities, was the setting of that hill in his day, and perhaps centuries before it.

Crossing the Tay by a magnificent bridge, you are in the famous old city and capital of ancient Caledonia, Dunkeld.

Here centre some of the richest rivulets of Scotch history, ecclesiastical and military, of church and state, cowl and crown.

Walled in here, on the upper waters of the Tay, by dark and heavily-wooded mountains, it was just the place for the earliest monks to select as the site of one of their cloistered communities.
The two best saints ever produced by these islands, St.Columba and St.Cuthbert, are said to have been connected with the religious foundations of this little sequestered city.