THE OUTPOST ISLES
It was fitting that our first sight of the Old World should be also
that of the homeland of those who settled the Scottish Peninsula. It is
commonplace knowledge that, until well into the Middle Ages, Europe’s
most western isle was called “The Land of the Scots.” Not until after
the Norsemen had frequently visited this “Isle of the Saints” was
Ireland called by its modern name. From the ocean outpost, the natives
left their ancestral seats and crossed to a strange land--the larger
island of Britain, of which the northern half became in time the
country now, and for nearly a millennium past, known to the world as
Scotland.
One wonders what his first sensations will be when he approaches the
mother continent. Some, with keen olfactories, in a seaward breeze,
smell the burning turf, which tells of homes and firesides and human
companionship. We looked for the land birds. Blown out over the waves,
these feathered messengers find shelter in the ship’s rigging and
welcome from sea-weary passengers.
To us, they were our first visitors. A terrific storm had for a day and
night lashed the ocean into fury, split one of our booms and stove in
a lifeboat, only to be succeeded by a morning of sunny splendor. Then
both ocean and sky seemed like twin sapphires. The tossing spray, which
in the sunbeams showered dust of rainbows, gradually gave way to calm.
Toward noon we welcomed two little feathered messengers. They were made
happy by finding rest aloft in the shrouds. A third, too exhausted
to guide its course, fell upon deck. We kept our eyes aloft, waiting
for news from the crow’s nest. Yet while we, with the old sea dogs,
captain and crew, were looking alternately forward and upward, as yet
discerning nothing, a sailor, born in Michigan, who was the lookout for
the day, called out “Land ho!”
For the next few minutes we were contestants in a game of rivalry,
as to which eyes should see first and best. Not many minutes sped,
however, before most of us had discerned a long, low, cloudlike line,
which, instead of shifting its form, like its sister apparitions of the
air, loomed on the horizon in fixed defiance of change.
As if to tantalize us, fresh breezes soon condensed new vapors and the
land disappeared from view. Again, for hours, we were in mist and fog,
but at high noon, the veil was lifted suddenly. There before us, rising
sheer out of the ocean and apparently but a mile or two away, was the
great green glory of Ireland. Like a mountain of emerald rising out of
a sapphire sea, stood the land whose name and color, in sentiment and
in reality, is Nature’s favorite, earth’s best counterpart to the sky.
After seeing the Giant’s Causeway, meeting the paddle-wheel steamer
from Londonderry, and passing Rathlin Island,--refuge once of Robert
the Bruce,--we sight the real land of our quest when we discern the
larger isle of Arran, which rises like a minaret out of the sea. In law
and geography, as well as the outpost of history, it is recognized as
an integral part of Scotland. Still alertly peering eastward, we behold
in the thickening dusk the mainland, whereupon our hats rise in salute
to Bonnie Scotland. The sun here does not set till nine o’clock in the
evening and sinks to-night amid clouds which break into spires and
turrets. These, in the crimson glow, look like some sea-girt castle in
flames.
We are on the lookout for anything and everything that may remind us of
Robert the Bruce, for in the history of Arran the chief name is that
of Scotland’s heroic king. On its western coast he found shelter in
what are still called the “King’s Caves.” Of a trio of these he made a
regular apartment house; for one bears the name of his kitchen, another
of his cellar, a third of his stable. On the land higher up is the
“King’s Hill,” and from a point called the “King’s Cross,” he crossed
over to Carrick, when the long-awaited signal told him that the moment
for the liberation of his country had come. In Glen Cloy, near by, his
trusty followers lay concealed, and the picturesque ruins still bear
the name of “Bruce’s Castle.” Other masses of ruins on Loch Ranza are
pointed out as representing what was his hunting-seat. Are the Scots of
Arran as greedy to boast of as many places made famous by Bruce as are
Americans of Washington’s headquarters?
The name of Bruce is not the only one in the long and glorious annals
of Scotland that clings to Arran. The earls of this insular domain
were nearly all members of the famous Hamilton family which gave so
many eminent men and women to Scotland and England. How many more of
their shining names are as stars in the firmament of our national
history! The champion of free speech, who owned the land which is
now Independence Square in Philadelphia, and whose eloquence in New
York city acquitted the German editor Zenger in the great trial which
inaugurated and perpetuated free speech in America, was a Hamilton. As
the greatest constructive political genius known to our country, the
virtual father of the United States Government, the name of Alexander
Hamilton is an inspiration to the Unionists of Great Britain to-day.
Back of the pear-shaped island of Pladda--which we passed and whose
telegraph station notified Greenock and Glasgow of our arrival in the
Clyde--are ancient standing stones, or cairns, and many a memorial of
remote antiquity which witness to very early habitation by man on this
outpost island.
In the eyes of those to whom the past furnishes a perspective more
fascinating even than the promise of the future, the little isle
adjacent, which is itself a finely marked basaltic cone, rising over a
thousand feet high and well called “Holy Island,” is even more worthy
of the visits of the reflecting scholar. It holds an attraction even
greater, in human interest, at least, than the wonders of geology, or
the numerous witnesses to antiquity in the form of upreared stones.
Here St. Molios, a disciple of St. Columba, founded a church. In the
Saint’s Cave, on the shore, may still be seen the rocky shelf on which
he made his bed. Like the outraying sparkles of light from a gem, the
lines of influence from this saint’s memory have flashed down the ages.
To-day from sections of the Christian Church, “high” or “low,” and from
Christian “bodies” with sectarian names, as many as the letters of the
alphabet, come visiting pilgrims or happy tourists to pay their debt of
admiration, or to refresh for a moment their traditional faith. In that
wonderful sixth Christian century--as remarkable in Asian and Buddhist,
as in European and Christian history--Ireland (not then known by that
name, but the old “Land of the Scots”) was a shining centre of gospel
light and truth. Moreover, it was a hive of missionary activities,
sending off swarms of “apostles.” Happily, this word means missionaries
and nothing else, connoting spiritual activities and not questions of
authority, over which paid ecclesiastics will ever and in all lands
wrangle lustily.
In modern days, the whole island is peaceful. So far has the old Gaelic
speech passed into “innocuous desuetude,” that at the opening of this
century only nine persons were left who could use but this one speech,
though over a thousand natives could speak both English and Gaelic.
Instead of the tranquil calm of to-day, however, few islands have been
oftener stained with the blood of warriors and quarrelling clansmen.
We who imagine that only the dark-skinned nations were savages must
remember how recently both Englishmen and Scotsmen emerged from
barbarism. It was but in the yesterday of historic time that Christians
burned one another alive, in the same spirit that worshippers of Moloch
cast their children into the red-hot stomach of their brazen idol, or
Hindu mothers fed their babies to the crocodiles. How numerous were
the Scottish assassins and victors who carried the heads of their
enemies as trophies on the top of pikes, like the Indians and Pilgrims
of colonial days! Yet no literature excels that of the Scots, in the
perfect frankness with which the sons of the soil confess their recent
emergence from barbarism into the admired civilization of to-day.
Thus the initial spell of the Scottish landscape lay first of all upon
us who had known Scotland only through books or by word of mouth. Yet
to such the human appeal is immense. Who can look upon this egg-shaped
island of Arran, with its jagged peaks and its singularly grand
scenery, without emotion? The conformation, as seen only in part from
the ship’s deck, appears shaggy, because so mountainous and heathy,
with many a romantic glen and promontory; and there are picturesque
masses of columnar basalt forming a link between the Giant’s Causeway
and Staffa’s wonder. In fact, we are told by the scientific men that
the geology of Arran is almost unique, displaying as it does a greater
succession of strata than any other single portion of land of equal
extent, in the whole area of the British Isles.
In the gathering twilight, even though this was prolonged, so that a
lady could see to thread a needle at 9.30 P.M., we catch glimpses of
this appendix to the land of Burns; for Arran belongs in the poet’s
native shire. In later years nearer views enabled us to see again the
trap rock, the granite, and the slate, and to catch a glimpse of some
of the streams, one of which falls over a precipice more than three
hundred feet high. In truth, the first impression of Arran furnished
even less delight than those in later years, when we were saturated
with Scottish lore; then the island spoke with new tongues and even
more eloquently than at first sight, of nature and human history.
We had left Ireland the day before, steaming out from the Giant’s
Causeway. Our steamer ploughed her way, and perhaps may have cast
anchor during the night. In any event, after breakfast, we were well
into the Firth of Clyde. In sunlight and in joy we moved swiftly
up the river of the same name. At Greenock, during a pause, we saw
granite docks. These, in contrast to the wooden wharves of New York,
mightily impressed us with the solidity and permanence of things in
the Old World, though there were enough smoky foundries to make the
air black. At Greenock, Burns’s “Highland Mary” is buried, but is
elsewhere glorified in a statue. Rob Roy once raided the town, which
has history as well as romance. To us, on that day of first sight,
the chief interest of Greenock lay in the fact that our honored
Captain Macdonald, of the Europa, had his home here. Brave man! He was
afterwards lost at sea and at the post of duty, when a colossal wave,
sweeping the ship, carried away the bridge and the officers on it!
We steam up the river as rapidly as is safe in a crowded, narrow
channel. Our ship is now in fine trim. Her masts have been scraped, her
decks scrubbed, and her sails enclosed in white canvas covers, while
from every mast floats a flag--the Stars and Stripes over all. Swift
river steamers shoot past us and ten thousand hammers ring in the
chorus of labor on the splendid iron and steel vessels, which are the
pride of Scotland and of world renown. We pass Cardross Castle in which
Robert the Bruce died--the last two years of his life being written, as
in the biography of Naaman--“a mighty man, but a leper.”
On a high rock, nearly three hundred feet high, looms Dumbarton Castle,
which has played so notable a part in Caledonian history. Even when
Scotland joined the Union and became one with Great Britain, this was
one of the four fortresses secured to the Land of St. Andrew, whose
cross was laid on that of St. George to form the British flag. Here
Wallace was betrayed and kept a prisoner. Here they have his alleged
two-handed sword, now known to be a spurious relic. Not many miles away
is Elderslie, his birthplace.
Touching one’s imagination even more profoundly are the ruins of
the old Roman wall built across the lower end of Scotland, which we
pass as we sail by. The bright ivy covers it luxuriantly, and as the
summer breeze kisses its surface, the lines of living green ripple,
and dimple, and disappear in the distance along verdant miles. How it
recalls the far past,--
“When Rome, the mistress of the world,
Of old, her eagle wings unfurled.”
Aloft is a monument, to which we take off our hats, in honor of Henry
Bell, who introduced steam navigation into Europe.
Many times afterwards did we see the Clyde and its great monuments of
industry and history. Yet one’s first impressions are almost always the
most vivid, and from this initial experience, which holds longest the
negatives of memory, are printed the brightest pictures. It was two
o’clock when we moored off the dock. Passing the slight examination
of the polite custom-house officers, we stepped once more upon solid
earth,--the land of Burns and Scott.