Having resolved to explore the Island of Rasay, which could be done only
on foot, I last night obtained my fellow-traveller's permission to leave
him for a day, he being unable to take so hardy a walk. Old Mr. Malcolm
M'Cleod, who had obligingly promised to accompany me, was at my bed-side
between five and six. I sprang up immediately, and he and I, attended by
two other gentlemen, traversed the country during the whole of this day.
Though we had passed over not less than four-and-twenty miles of very
rugged ground, and had a Highland dance on the top of _Dun Can_, the
highest mountain in the island, we returned in the evening not at all
fatigued, and piqued ourselves at not being outdone at the nightly ball
by our less active friends, who had remained at home.
My survey of Rasay did not furnish much which can interest my readers; I
shall therefore put into as short a compass as I can, the observations
upon it, which I find registered in my journal. It is about fifteen
English miles long, and four broad. On the south side is the laird's
family seat, situated on a pleasing low spot. The old tower of three
stories, mentioned by Martin, was taken down soon after 1746, and a
modern house supplies its place. There are very good grass-fields and
corn-lands about it, well-dressed. I observed, however, hardly any
inclosures, except a good garden plentifully stocked with vegetables,
and strawberries, raspberries, currants, &c.
On one of the rocks just where we landed, which are not high, there is
rudely carved a square, with a crucifix in the middle. Here, it is said,
the Lairds of Rasay, in old times, used to offer up their devotions. I
could not approach the spot, without a grateful recollection of the
event commemorated by this symbol.
A little from the shore, westward, is a kind of subterraneous house.
There has been a natural fissure, or separation of the rock, running
towards the sea, which has been roofed over with long stones, and above
them turf has been laid. In that place the inhabitants used to keep
their oars. There are a number of trees near the house, which grow well;
some of them of a pretty good size. They are mostly plane and ash. A
little to the west of the house is an old ruinous chapel, unroofed,
which never has been very curious. We here saw some human bones of an
uncommon size. There was a heel-bone, in particular, which Dr. Macleod
said was such, that if the foot was in proportion, it must have been
twenty-seven inches long. Dr. Johnson would not look at the bones. He
started back from them with a striking appearance of horrour[502]. Mr.
M'Queen told us it was formerly much the custom, in these isles, to have
human bones lying above ground, especially in the windows of churches.
On the south of the chapel is the family burying-place. Above the door,
on the east end of it, is a small bust or image of the Virgin Mary,
carved upon a stone which makes part of the wall. There is no church
upon the island. It is annexed to one of the parishes of Sky; and the
minister comes and preaches either in Rasay's house, or some other
house, on certain Sundays. I could not but value the family seat more,
for having even the ruins of a chapel close to it. There was something
comfortable in the thought of being so near a piece of consecrated
ground.[503] Dr. Johnson said, 'I look with reverence upon every place
that has been set apart for religion;' and he kept off his hat while he
was within the walls of the chapel[504].
The eight crosses, which Martin mentions as pyramids for deceased
ladies, stood in a semicircular line, which contained within it the
chapel. They marked out the boundaries of the sacred territory within
which an asylum was to be had. One of them, which we observed upon our
landing, made the first point of the semicircle. There are few of them
now remaining. A good way farther north, there is a row of buildings
about four feet high; they run from the shore on the east along the top
of a pretty high eminence, and so down to the shore on the west, in much
the same direction with the crosses. Rasay took them to be the marks for
the asylum; but Malcolm thought them to be false sentinels, a common
deception, of which instances occur in Martin, to make invaders imagine
an island better guarded. Mr. Donald M'Queen, justly in my opinion,
supposed the crosses which form the inner circle to be the church's
land-marks.
The south end of the island is much covered with large stones or rocky
strata. The laird has enclosed and planted part of it with firs, and he
shewed me a considerable space marked out for additional plantations.
_Dun Can_ is a mountain three computed miles from the laird's house. The
ascent to it is by consecutive risings, if that expression may be used
when vallies intervene, so that there is but a short rise at once; but
it is certainly very high above the sea. The palm of altitude is
disputed for by the people of Rasay and those of Sky; the former
contending for Dun Can, the latter for the mountains in Sky, over
against it. We went up the east side of Dun Can pretty easily. It is
mostly rocks all around, the points of which hem the summit of it.
Sailors, to whom it was a good object as they pass along, call it
Rasay's cap. Before we reached this mountain, we passed by two lakes. Of
the first, Malcolm told me a strange fabulous tradition. He said, there
was a wild beast in it, a sea horse, which came and devoured a man's
daughter; upon which the man lighted a great fire, and had a sow roasted
at it, the smell of which attracted the monster. In the fire was put a
spit. The man lay concealed behind a low wall of loose stones, and he
had an avenue formed for the monster, with two rows of large flat
stones, which extended from the fire over the summit of the hill, till
it reached the side of the loch. The monster came, and the man with the
red-hot spit destroyed it. Malcolm shewed me the little hiding-place,
and the rows of stones. He did not laugh when he told this story. I
recollect having seen in the _Scots Magazine_, several years ago, a poem
upon a similar tale, perhaps the same, translated from the Erse, or
Irish, called _Albin and the Daughter of Mey_.
There is a large tract of land, possessed as a common, in Rasay. They
have no regulations as to the number of cattle. Every man puts upon it
as many as he chooses. From Dun Can northward, till you reach the other
end of the island, there is much good natural pasture unincumbered by
stones. We passed over a spot, which is appropriated for the exercising
ground. In 1745, a hundred fighting men were reviewed here, as Malcolm
told me, who was one of the officers that led them to the field[505].
They returned home all but about fourteen. What a princely thing is it
to be able to furnish such a band! Rasay has the true spirit of a chief.
He is, without exaggeration, a father to his people.
There is plenty of lime-stone in the island, a great quarry of
free-stone, and some natural woods, but none of any age, as they cut the
trees for common country uses. The lakes, of which there are many, are
well stocked with trout. Malcolm catched one of four-and-twenty pounds
weight in the loch next to Dun Can, which, by the way, is certainly a
Danish name, as most names of places in these islands are.
The old castle, in which the family of Rasay formerly resided, is
situated upon a rock very near the sea. The rock is not one mass of
stone, but a concretion of pebbles and earth, so firm that it does not
appear to have mouldered. In this remnant of antiquity I found nothing
worthy of being noticed, except a certain accommodation rarely to be
found at the modern houses of Scotland, and which Dr. Johnson and I
sought for in vain at the Laird of Rasay's new built mansion, where
nothing else was wanting. I took the liberty to tell the Laird it was a
shame there should be such a deficiency in civilized times. He
acknowledged the justice of the remark. But perhaps some generations may
pass before the want is supplied. Dr. Johnson observed to me, how
quietly people will endure an evil, which they might at any time very
easily remedy; and mentioned as an instance, that the present family of
Rasay had possessed the island for more than four hundred years, and
never made a commodious landing place, though a few men with pickaxes
might have cut an ascent of stairs out of any part of the rock in a
week's time[506].
The north end of Rasay is as rocky as the south end. From it I saw the
little isle of Fladda, belonging to Rasay, all fine green ground;--and
Rona, which is of so rocky a soil that it appears to be a pavement. I
was told however that it has a great deal of grass in the interstices.
The Laird has it all in his own hands. At this end of the island of
Rasay is a cave in a striking situation. It is in a recess of a great
cleft, a good way up from the sea. Before it the ocean roars, being
dashed against monstrous broken rocks; grand and aweful _propugnacula_.
On the right hand of it is a longitudinal cave, very low at the
entrance, but higher as you advance. The sea having scooped it out, it
seems strange and unaccountable that the interior part, where the water
must have operated with less force, should be loftier than that which is
more immediately exposed to its violence. The roof of it is all covered
with a kind of petrifications formed by drops, which perpetually distil
from it. The first cave has been a place of much safety. I find a great
difficulty in describing visible objects[507]. I must own too that the
old castle and cave, like many other things of which one hears much, did
not answer my expectations. People are every where apt to magnify the
curiosities of their country.
This island has abundance of black cattle, sheep, and goats;--a good
many horses, which are used for ploughing, carrying out dung, and other
works of husbandry. I believe the people never ride. There are indeed no
roads through the island, unless a few detached beaten tracks deserve
that name. Most of the houses are upon the shore; so that all the people
have little boats, and catch fish. There is great plenty of potatoes
here. There are black-cock in extraordinary abundance, moorfowl, plover
and wild pigeons, which seemed to me to be the same as we have in
pigeon-houses, in their state of nature. Rasay has no pigeon-house.
There are no hares nor rabbits in the island, nor was there ever known
to be a fox[508], till last year, when one was landed on it by some
malicious person, without whose aid he could not have got thither, as
that animal is known to be a very bad swimmer. He has done much
mischief. There is a great deal of fish caught in the sea round Rasay;
it is a place where one may live in plenty, and even in luxury. There
are no deer; but Rasay told us he would get some.
They reckon it rains nine months in the year in this island, owing to
its being directly opposite to the western[509] coast of Sky, where the
watery clouds are broken by high mountains. The hills here, and indeed
all the heathy grounds in general, abound with the sweet-smelling plant
which the Highlanders call _gaul_, and (I think) with dwarf juniper in
many places. There is enough of turf, which is their fuel, and it is
thought there is a mine of coal.--Such are the observations which I made
upon the island of Rasay, upon comparing it with the description given
by Martin, whose book we had with us.
There has been an ancient league between the families of Macdonald and
Rasay. Whenever the head of either family dies, his sword is given to
the head of the other. The present Rasay has the late Sir James
Macdonald's sword. Old Rasay joined the Highland army in 1745, but
prudently guarded against a forfeiture, by previously conveying his
estate to the present gentleman, his eldest son[510]. On that occasion,
Sir Alexander, father of the late Sir James Macdonald, was very friendly
to his neighbour. 'Don't be afraid, Rasay,' said he; 'I'll use all my
interest to keep you safe; and if your estate should be taken, I'll buy
it for the family.'--And he would have done it.
Let me now gather some gold dust,--some more fragments of Dr. Johnson's
conversation, without regard to order of time. He said, 'he thought very
highly of Bentley; that no man now went so far in the kinds of learning
that he cultivated[511]; that the many attacks on him were owing to
envy, and to a desire of being known, by being in competition with such
a man; that it was safe to attack him, because he never answered his
opponents, but let them die away[512]. It was attacking a man who would
not beat them, because his beating them would make them live the longer.
And he was right not to answer; for, in his hazardous method of writing,
he could not but be often enough wrong; so it was better to leave things
to their general appearance, than own himself to have erred in
particulars.' He said, 'Mallet was the prettiest drest puppet about
town, and always kept good company[513]. That, from his way of talking
he saw, and always said, that he had not written any part of the _Life
of the Duke of Marlborough_, though perhaps he intended to do it at some
time, in which case he was not culpable in taking the pension[514]. That
he imagined the Duchess furnished the materials for her _Apology_, which
Hooke wrote, and Hooke furnished the words and the order, and all that
in which the art of writing consists. That the duchess had not superior
parts, but was a bold frontless woman, who knew how to make the most of
her opportunities in life. That Hooke got a _large_ sum of money for
writing her _Apology_[515]. That he wondered Hooke should have been weak
enough to insert so profligate a maxim, as that to tell another's secret
to one's friend is no breach of confidence[516]; though perhaps Hooke,
who was a virtuous man[517], as his _History_ shews, and did not wish
her well, though he wrote her _Apology_, might see its ill tendency, and
yet insert it at her desire. He was acting only ministerially.' I
apprehended, however, that Hooke was bound to give his best advice. I
speak as a lawyer. Though I have had clients whose causes I could not,
as a private man, approve; yet, if I undertook them, I would not do any
thing that might be prejudicial to them, even at their desire, without
warning them of their danger.