WHEN Sir Walter Scott, opening for us the "faery casements" of romance, illumined in the storied page the glory of Scotland and the mystic glamour of its green forests, its heather hills and lonely glens, his graphic description of the wonderful country was so charged with truth, with beauty, with native passion for the land of his birth, and so marvellously interwoven with the fabric of history, that in the heart of all his readers a thrill was awakened. Scotland through his expressive art became an open book, every chapter in it a charm, and if - following the dictates of fancy you should seek to turn the pages of that book you will find that he wrote these words: "Amid all the provinces in Scotland if an intelligent stranger were asked to describe the most varied and the most beautiful it is probable he would name the County of Perth," and he ended a p;ean of praise by adding: "Perthshire forms the fairest portion of the Northern Kingdom." A golden opinion, albeit a true one.

It has been said that the most interesting district of every country and that which exhibits the varied beauties of natural scenery in greatest perfection is that where the mountains sink down upon the champaign, or more level land. It is in the full glory of such a landscape that we find Strathearn, encompassed by the uplifting magnificence of the rugged Grampian Mountains and the verdant Ochil Hills, one of the most picturesque and romantic of the Scottish straths, the beauty of which led the artist of Abbotsford to give Perthshire pride of place among the counties of Scotland. And it is in Strathearn this realm of romance, a fertile countryside which vies with the richness of "Merrie England" - that Gleneagles Golf Course is situated; making fresh history and quickening once and again the fine spirit of sportsmanship which in its essence is hut the old-world chivalry in a new form.

In the long ago Strathearn won distinction by giving the title of Duke, in the peerage of Scotland, to His Royls Highness the Duke of Kent, father of Her Majesty Queen Victoria. The title is home to-day by His Royal Highness the Duke of Connaught whose full ducal style is Duke of Connaught and Strathearn. Choice in these matters is not casual. There are many Scottish straths that might have been chosen for the special honour and the memories of Royal association thus perpetuated. Among them, however, Strathearn stood out and was accorded the signal mark of Royal favour.

Strathearn displays almost every variety of scenery. From the Braes o' Balquhidder in the west - the country of that giant-hearted freebooter Rob Roy - it is grandly Highland and expands eastward into wealth of lowland beauty. Embraced in it is the wonder picture of lovely Loch Earn which, skirted on its north side by the Caledonian Railway, has a setting of mountains that come down to the water, and ends at fair St. Fillans. In its Grampian background it also comprises the sylvan district of Comrie and Crieff, the beginning of a naturally favoured lowland valley which, widening north and south and extending eastwards, is ultimately arrested by the Ochil range and terminates at the confluence of the Earn with the Tay, where the strath of the latter river becomes the Carse of Gowrie. Such is the environment of Gleneagles Golf Course. It is as it were in the middle of the picture of a lowland valley on the threshold of the Highlands framed by the everlasting hills. Viewed from a height, its little hills and dales and moors and lochs and woods suggest a miniature Scotland.

There are really two golf courses at Gleneagles, happily known as the King's Course and the Queen's Course. The latter is the complement of the former and greater, but both have the outstanding qualities demanded of the best courses; each has its own individuality in marked degree. The King's Course, extending to the full 1/8-hole limit, is conceived on the grand scale. It ranks as a Championship course, and is recognised as such by most of the leading golfers of the world. The Queen's Course, meantime limited to 9 holes, is also excellent, and those who know about golf say that of its kind it is perhaps unique in Europe.