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[Illustration: CROFTERS' COTTAGES NEAR UIG, SKYE.]
OUR JOURNEY TO THE HEBRIDES.
by
JOSEPH PENNELL and ELIZABETH ROBINS PENNELL.
[Illustration]
London
T. Fisher Unwin
Paternoster Square
MDCCCXC
PREFACE.
The greater part of "Our Journey to the Hebrides" was published
originally in HARPER'S MAGAZINE. When it appeared it was severely
criticised, and we were taken to task for not discovering in Scotland
and the Scotch what has been made the fashion to find there--for not
giving second-hand descriptions, which are the stock in trade of Scotch
guide-books, whether romantic or real; in a word, for not staying at
home and manufacturing our journey in the British Museum.
It is gradually dawning upon us that this is what is wanted by the
majority of critics. To go to a country and tell what really happened to
you--to dare to say, for the information of future cyclers or
travellers, that one small piece of road is bad, that on one day out of
ten or fifteen it rained, that at one small hotel you were uncomfortable
or turned away, is enough to make the critic declare that you have found
everything in that country to be awry. This was our fate when we
attempted to describe the most enjoyable trip we ever made--our ride
across France. We have no hesitation in saying that our trip to
Scotland was the most miserable. We undertook to walk, owing to the
misrepresentations of people who we do not believe ever in their lives
walked half as far as we did a year ago. As we have shown, when tramping
became unendurable we went by coach or train, by steamer or sail-boat;
but we walked far enough to see the country as, we venture to think, it
has seldom been seen by other travellers. For, with all its drawbacks,
walking has this one advantage: not only do you stop at the correct
show-places on your route, but you go slowly over the unknown country
which lies between them. That the weather in the Western Highlands and
Islands is vile is a fact which cannot be denied, though to mention it
is held to be a crime. But, for the benefit of those who, because we
speak of the rain and of the fatigue of walking, think we shut our eyes
to everything else on our journey, let us say here, once and for all,
that we found the whole country BEAUTIFUL and full of the most WONDERFUL
EFFECTS; but we must also add that it is the most abominable to travel
through, and its people are the most down-trodden on God's earth.
This is the best and most concise description of the Western Highlands
and Islands that could be given.
Because we saw and described the actual condition of the population, and
ignored the pleasures--in which we might have joined--of a handful of
landlords and sportsmen whose fathers brought about this condition, and
who themselves are fighting to maintain it, we have been asked what is
the use of digging up ancient history? Thank Heaven, it is now two years
since the Crofters' Act was passed by Parliament; but when we were in
the Islands the first test case of a tenant pleading against the
landlord who wished to evict him was tried, and gained by the tenant.
While we were in Barra, the disenfranchisement of the entire island was
accomplished by a trick which the most unscrupulous American politician
would not have dared to play. The Crofters' Commission had then just
begun to reduce rents--fifty-seven per cent. is the average
reduction--and to cancel arrears. It has raised rents on certain
estates, is an argument used by landlords, who forget to tell you that
where rents have been raised they have been compelled to give back
pasture-land to the crofters. It was but a few weeks after our return to
London that a rebellion broke out in the Island of Lewis, and was
quelled only by the decision of the Edinburgh Court, which declared deer
not to be protected by law; so that for the rest of the winter crofters
and cotters ate venison with their oatmeal. It was this decision, and
not the war-ships, which prevented open insurrection in all the Islands.
Some of our critics have been good enough to inform us that crofters
were never turned off their crofts to make room for deer. With those
who refuse to accept the testimony officially published in the
Blue-books there is no use to enter into a discussion. For those who
know little of the subject, and for whom Blue-books would necessitate
long study, here are the facts--facts which no one can question--in a
nutshell. We quote from an article on "The Crofters of the Highlands,"
published in the _Westminster Review_ for February, 1888:
"In addition to these many injustices" (injustices, that is,
suffered by the crofters), "there is one which in certain
districts almost overshadows them all; namely, the absorption
of vast areas, embracing much fertile land in deer forests. It
matters little whether crofters were actually evicted to make
room for deer, or whether sheep farms have been converted to
this purpose; both have happened very largely, with the result
that, according to the Royal Commissioners, about two million
acres are now devoted to deer forests. Large as this figure is,
it is considerably below the mark, as has been shown by even
better authorities on the subject. Nor must it be supposed that
deer forests consist merely of barren and worthless land.
Unless there is a large amount of good grass-land in a forest
the deer would starve, and all this good land in times past
supported a large population, whose descendants are now
suffering destitution in the bare and unfruitful regions near
the coast."
To their shame be it said, the American millionaires who are beginning
to rent these deer forests are the men who are now doing the most to
encourage the continuance in their present position of the sons of the
land-grabbers, or, we should say, the heroes of the ancient history and
romance of the country.
There is another evil of these great deer forests which should not be
forgotten. A crofter, after working all day, often has to sit up all
night to keep these beasts, which were supposed to be private property,
out of his little croft. For if the deer eat all his crops, he had no
redress; if the crofter shot one of them, or hurt it in any way in
driving it out, you may be sure the factor made him suffer for it--at
one time he would most likely have been evicted. We want it to be
understood that in these vast tracts of deer forest none but sportsmen
and game-keepers are allowed to go. If your house were to lie on one
side and the village on the other, you would have to go miles around to
reach it. Nor can you go near streams which run in the open country, for
fear you may disturb the fish, which are preserved for English or
American sportsmen.
Just as we are writing this Preface we have begun to receive, for the
first time in our lives, anonymous letters. Hitherto we did not believe
there were people stupid and imbecile enough to write such things. One
of these creatures, who is ashamed of his own identity, encloses, with
an amusing letter written on Kansas City Club paper--which, however,
does not reveal whether he is the president or the hall porter of the
club--an article of a column and a half from the _Scotsman_, which calls
our "Journey to the Hebrides" "sentimental nonsense," "culpable
misrepresentation," "amazing impertinence." And then, without
attempting to show in what the misrepresentation or nonsense or
impertinence consists, the writer of this article goes on to give his
own ideas on the subject of the crofters, quoting statements made from
other sources, and attributing them to us, misrepresenting us, and yet
not attempting to contradict any one fact brought forward in any one of
the articles, but taking up space in the paper to contradict the reports
of the _Scotsman's_ own reporter, printed but a few months before. We
are accused of exaggerating the misery of the people. We have lying by
our side as we write, column after column, amounting to page after page,
from the _Scotsman_, which is by no means the crofters' friend, giving
detailed pictures of this misery, which we, in our generalizing, could
not approach. Here is a specimen taken at hazard from the pile of
clippings. "A Tale of Poverty" it is headed, and it was published
January 17, 1888:
"Quite a typical case of poverty was that of Donald Mackenzie,
a middle-aged man, who occupied a half croft at a rental of L2.
He was married, with five young children, and they had been
living exclusively on potatoes, occasionally with fish, for
three months, until they got a half boll of meal from a
destitution fund. That was now done, and he had that day
borrowed a bowlful from a neighbour. He had fished at Stornoway
in the summer, and had kept the family alive; but his wife
assured the stranger that he had not brought home a single
shilling. She added that she herself had not had shoes for four
years, and the children were no better off. A very similar case
was that of Norman Macmillan. He was a cottar and fisherman,
having a half lot from another tenant. He had also not taken
home a shilling from the fishing last year; and, except
working on his lot, he could find nothing to do until the
fishing season came on again. He had seven children, the eldest
twelve years. They had eaten up their potatoes by the beginning
of winter, and now they had but a little barley-meal left. He
did not know what to do now, he said, unless Providence opened
the way for them. They had often been without food, he said,
although they had kept it. There was none to relieve them. He
stated that formerly they used to get credit from the merchants
while they were engaged at the fishing, but that they did not
get now. One of the houses visited in this township was that of
the wife of Donald Macmillan, one of the men now standing trial
in Edinburgh on a charge of having taken part in the Park deer
raid. Macmillan lived in a very small cot at the back of his
father's house, which his father had used as a barn. It was
very poorly furnished even for that locality. There was a
family of five small children, and there was only one bed in
the house, with one blanket. Three of the children slept out
with a neighbour. Macmillan cultivated the half of his father's
croft, and had one cow. He was also a fisherman, having a share
in a boat of forty-one feet keel; but, though he had attended
the Barra fishing last summer, he had made nothing. His wife
had got a boll of meal from the destitution fund, but besides
that, she had only two barrels of potatoes. Previous to getting
that meal, they had lived exclusively on potatoes. She stated
that when her husband went out to the deer raid, there was but
one barrel of potatoes; but since then, she explained, she had
fallen back upon the seed."
Here is another, from January 20th of the same year, when four columns
were devoted to crofter affairs:
"From here a drive of about four miles brought the visitors to
Arebruich--a township fixed in a spot which was surely never
intended for human beings. As one passes onwards from Balallan,
the soil gradually sinks lower and lower on the north side of
the loch until, when Arebruich is reached, it is almost level
to the water's edge. The result is that the land is literally
a floating bog, and it is a miracle how the poor people, who
labour away at the barren scraps of earth which show some signs
of cultivation, manage to get any food raised out of them. A
rude, clayish pathway extends for some little distance from the
main road, but it soon stops, as if the builders had thrown up
the work in disgust. There are sixteen crofts, such as they
are, in the township, and these are occupied by twenty-six
families. The first house visited was that of John Mackinnon, a
stout, good-looking man in spite of his surroundings. He lives
on his mother's lot, which is rented at L2.15s., exclusive of
taxes. His mother, who is eighty years old, lives, along with
an unmarried daughter, in an adjoining house. He paid 35s.
two years ago to the factor, but since then he has been able to
pay nothing. He fished as a hired man last year at Lybster; but
his earnings were so small that when his season's board was
paid he had only 9d. left. A friend had to lend him his
passage-money. At present he has three barrels of potatoes
left, but neither meal nor money. He has two of a family,
besides himself and wife. They have to live on potatoes. His
mother never got any parochial relief, and she and her daughter
have to struggle along as best they can. He has one cow and
eight sheep. When the destitution meal was being distributed he
got three stones, and his mother an equal quantity. He does not
know what to do, and has no prospects whatever. The next house
presented a worse case. It was that of Widow Murdo Macleod, a
sister of Mackinnon. She said her husband was drowned at Loch
Seaforth seven years ago, when they were only ten months
married. She had one daughter, who was born shortly after her
husband was drowned. She has made her living all these years by
knitting and sewing and odd jobs, but never got any help from
the Parochial Board, though she applied several times. She has
neither land nor stock, and never had any. She generally gets a
few potatoes from her brother at harvest time. She has half a
barrel on hand at present, and about a stone of meal, the
remains of what was got from the destitution fund. She always
tried to be industrious, and therefore was never actually in
absolute want. She always enjoyed good health, and felt very
thankful for it. The hut in which this woman and her daughter
live is wretchedly poor, and the single bed is barely covered
with a thin blanket."[A]
[A] See note at the end of Preface.
On January 20th, in a leader, the same paper declared that the facts
which we have given are "distressing," and ought to excite "interest"
and sympathy. There is no talk here of sentimental nonsense! Distressing
we should think they were. One cannot help saying that it is nothing
less than infamous that a mere handful of landlords should have
controlled the destiny of, and extracted every penny from, the
population of these Islands--the people whom they have kept for
generations in poverty, not that they might improve the land, but that
they might pass their own time in useless idleness and cruel sport. It
is not a question of over-population. The real evil is that the
Islanders have been ground down and tyrannized over simply to gratify
the amusements of their masters. We have heard again and again that the
position of a landlord does not pay; if it did not, the landlords would
sell their estates to-morrow.
For weeks, early in this year (1888), every Scotch and English paper,
even to the _Times_, had columns about the misery of the crofters--that
is, columns of extracts similar to these we have quoted. Whatever
reasons were given for it, no one questioned their destitution. And yet
within a year all these reports are forgotten; and for generalizing and
not going into details--heart-breaking details--we are called sickly
sentimentalists. So glaring is this complete forgetfulness and
contradiction that we cannot help taking some notice of it, and calling
the attention of these papers to their own reports.
As to the rest of our critics, they did not even know enough to
contradict themselves, except in one case, which we have pointed out
elsewhere, and their other criticism is not directed against our facts.
In dwelling upon the misery of the people, we do not pretend, as has
been suggested, to give an off-hand settlement of the economic problems
of the Islands. We merely state what we saw, what it was impossible to
avoid seeing, wherever we went. It must be remembered that it is not
merely a minority, or even a majority, but the entire population who
exist in this condition of absolute wretchedness and semi-starvation.
With the exception of a few small towns on the coast for the convenience
of tourists and landlords, you find throughout the Islands but the
occasional beautiful castle or shooting-lodge, or great farm-house, and
the many crowded stone piles politely called cottages. And it was
because we were more struck with this misery than with the romance of
the past that, our journey over, we interested ourselves in learning
something of the immediate reasons for the present condition of the
Western Highlanders and Islanders, rather than in reading about the
murders and massacres of the MacGregor and the Macleod, the Mac this
and the Mac that. We were not blind to the beauty, the sternness, the
wildness of the country; but the sadness and sorrows of its people
impressed us even more than the wonder and beauty of their land.
JOSEPH PENNELL.
ELIZABETH ROBINS PENNELL.
WESTMINSTER, _November 20, 1888_.[B]
[B] Even while we revise this Preface more news comes from the
Island of Lewis. On Lady Matheson's estates rents have been reduced 42
and 53 per cent., and arrears cancelled 84 and 91 per cent. This is
from the _Times_ of December 20th:
"CROFTERS' RENTS.--The Crofter Commission yesterday issued
their first decisions in relation to Lady Matheson's property
in the Island of Lewis, the centre of the land agitation last
winter. They have granted an average reduction of 42 per cent.
on the rental of 150 crofter tenants in the parish of Barvas,
on the west side of Lewis. The arrears of rent due, which was a
striking feature in Lewis, have been cancelled to the extent of
84 per cent. Of a total of L2422, the Commissioners have
cancelled L2043."
If there had not been injustice before, is it probable that there would
now be such wholesale reductions and cancellings? We suppose it is
_sentimentalism_ to record these facts.
CHRISTMAS-DAY, 1888.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
IN THE HIGHLANDS 3
ON THE ISLANDS 83
TO THE EAST COAST, AND BACK AGAIN 167
ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
Crofters' Cottages near Uig, Skye _Frontispiece_
Vignette for First Paper 1
Tarbet, Loch Lomond 11
Glencroe 15
Loch Restil 21
Inverary 23
Cross at Inverary 29
Scotland and the Hebrides 31
Kilchrennan 37
Loch Leven, from Ballachulish 41
Oban 43
Coast of Mull 53
Ross of Mull, looking towards Iona 59
Headland of Gribun, from Ulva 65
"One of his Strange Things Happened" 77
Vignette for Second Paper 81
In the Transept of the Cathedral, Iona 85
Iona 87
Tomb of Macleod 90
Castle Bay, from Barra 103
Town of Barra 109
Mountains of Harris, from Tarbet 113
Gathering Peat 125
The "Dunara Castle" 131
Interior of a Weaver's Cottage 135
Doing Skye 141
A real Highland Lassie 147
Dunvegan Castle 153
Graveyard of the Macleod 156
Tail-piece 163
Vignette for Third Paper 165
Fisher-boats hauled up near Buckie 183
The only Castle I drew 186
Near Cullen 187
Bit of Macduff 190
Near Banff 193
Banff, from Macduff 195
Fraserburgh 199
In the Harbor, Fraserburgh 203
Gutters at Work, Fraserburgh 207
Coming Home from the Fisheries, Fraserburgh 211
Entrance to the Harbor at Montrose 215
Ruins at Arbroath 221
[Illustration]
IN THE HIGHLANDS.
We never looked forward to a pleasure trip with so much misery as we did
to our journey to the Hebrides. We wanted a holiday.
"Go to Scotland," suggested the editor of HARPER'S.
"Let us rather wander through unexplored France," we proposed, in a long
letter, though we had already explored it for ourselves more than once.
"Scotland would be better," was the answer in a short note.
"But why not let us discover unknown Holland?" we asked, as if it had
not been discovered a hundred times already.
"Scotland would be better," was still the answer, and so to Scotland we
went.
It was a country about which we cared little, and knew less. We had
heard of Highlands and Lowlands, of Melrose and Stirling, but for our
lives we could not have pointed them out on the map. The rest of our
knowledge was made up of confused impressions of Hearts of Mid-Lothian
and Painters' Camps in the Highlands, Macbeths and Kidnappers, Skye
terriers and Shetland shawls, blasted heaths and hills of mist, Rob Roys
and Covenanters; and, added to these, positive convictions of an
unbroken Scotch silence and of endless breakfasts of oatmeal, dinners of
haggis, and suppers of whiskey. Hot whiskey punch is a good thing in its
way, and at times, but not as a steady diet. Oatmeal we think an
abomination. And as for haggis--well, we only knew it as it was once
described to us by a poet: the stomach of some animal filled with all
sorts of unpleasant things and then sewed up. We recalled the real
dinners and friendly peasants of France and Italy, and hated the very
name of Scotland.
It will easily be understood that we could not plan a route out of our
ignorance and prejudice. It remained to choose a guide, and our choice,
I hardly know why, fell upon Dr. Johnson. Every one must remember--I say
this though we did not even know it until we looked into the
matter--that Dr. Johnson met Boswell in Edinburgh, and in his company
journeyed up the east coast as far as Inverness, then across the
Highlands to the west, and so to the Hebrides, coming back by way of
Inverary, Loch Lomond, and Glasgow. It looked a long journey on the map,
and seemed a weary one in the pages of Boswell and Johnson; but as if
this were not bad enough, we made up our minds, for the sake of novelty,
to walk.
Of our preparations for the journey I will say nothing. We carried less
than Stanley and more than the average tramp. We took many things which
we ought not to have taken, and we left behind many things which we
ought to have taken. But this matters little, since our advice to all
about to start on a walking tour is, _Don't_.
On the 28th of July we arrived in
EDINBURGH,
"a city too well known to admit description." If Dr. Johnson thought so
a hundred years ago, it is not for us, who propose to be his followers,
to differ from him. Indeed, during our stay in that city, so eager were
we to be faithful to him in all things that we should have allowed
ourselves to be dined, teaed and suppered, even as he was, but for an
obstacle. The only person whom we knew in Edinburgh was away, and the
fame of our coming had not, as with Dr. Johnson, gone before us.
We were careful to find St. James's Court, where Boswell lived, and
where clothes, drying in what sun there is, now hang from his windows.
And we went to the old White Horse Inn, where the Doctor, on his
arrival, stayed until Boswell came to carry him off in triumph; and
where probably the tourist of another year will not go, for already in
the court-yard are signs of the coming of the destroyer.
We had resolved to reverse the order of their journey by going to the
Western Islands first, and coming home along the east coast. In this way
we should avoid the September storms which kept them in the Hebrides.
Now we also decided to go straight to Glasgow, and not to stop at
Hamilton, where they spent a night.
On Saturday, July 30th, we began our walk in a cab, and continued it for
many miles in a railway-carriage. We represented to ourselves that the
country between Edinburgh and Glasgow, of which we knew nothing, was
stupid, and that we must get to Glasgow for Sunday. There was no earthly
reason for this, but it was an excuse, and we made the most of it.
Dr. Johnson says that "to describe a city so much frequented as
GLASGOW
is unnecessary," and again we are willing to take his word for it. But
its Cathedral was the first of the many surprises Scotland had in store
for us. We had heard of it, but that was all. One young lady of Glasgow,
fresh from a tour on the Continent, told us that she had never seen it.
We were therefore prepared to find it no great thing. The exterior did
not disappoint our expectations, but we have seldom been more impressed
with an interior, and this though we had just come from the loveliest
churches of England.
The crypt, or rather the under church, is its pride, as indeed it well
may be. A verger stood smoking a pipe at the south door, and we told him
what we thought. J----, after three years' work in the English
cathedrals, felt himself no mean authority.
"It's the finest in the world," said the verger.
"In Great Britain perhaps, but not in Europe," said J----; for we had
been but a moment before comparing it, as it now is, a cold, bare,
show-place, to the under church of Assisi with the frescos on the walls,
the old lamps burning before altars, the sweet smell of incense, and the
monks kneeling in prayer.
"I only tell you what those _qualified_ have said," and the verger
settled the matter and J----'s pretensions.
It was in the Glasgow crypt Rob Roy gave the warning to Frank
Osbaldistone. The guide-book recalled the incident, which we had
forgotten. Indeed the farther we went, the more we were reminded that to
travel in Scotland is to travel through the Waverley Novels, and that
these to us were but a name. Since our return we have tried to read them
again, to be quite honest, with but indifferent pleasure. We are so
wanting in appreciation that we find Scott's description of the crypt
stupid, and we are not thrilled by the daring deeds of the MacGregor.
The Art Gallery in Glasgow was no less a surprise to us than the
Cathedral. Its catalogue contains more Titians, Rembrandts. Hobbemas,
and other great masters than any other in Europe. But if we wondered at
the catalogue, we were still more astonished when we came to see the
pictures!
We stayed in Glasgow until Monday morning, when we again took the train,
but this time for a few miles only. We bought tickets for Kilpatrick,
and a sharp lookout we had to keep for it from the carriage windows. At
the stations, no one called the names, which, in true British fashion,
were less easy to find than that of the best brand of mustard or of the
best hotel in Glasgow. At Kilpatrick, when I pulled my head in after the
usual search, J---- was already at the opposite door. He did not care
where he was, he said; he would get out. In the distance, we could see
Dumbarton Rock rising from the plain against a blue sky. Here, as in our
plans for the day's journey, it was the one prominent landmark.
Kilpatrick is said to have been the birthplace of St. Patrick. I do not
know what authority Black[C] has for the legend; certainly not that of
the villagers. St. Patrick was no British man, one of them told us;
and, moreover, he never lived in Kilpatrick, but on the hill. But had we
ever heard of Captain Shonstone, the hairbor-maister? He was a great
man.
[C] Not William, but the guide-book Black.
We made a great show of briskness by going the long way round by the
canal. This was the only time throughout our journey that we turned from
the main road--except to take a short-cut. Mr. Lee Meriwether, in his
Tramp Abroad, thought it an advantage of walking that he could leave the
road to see whatever was to be seen near, but not from it. For our part,
after the first mile, we never took an extra step for any sight; that
is, whenever our knapsacks were on our backs. At Dumbarton we did not
even climb the rock, though Dr. Johnson walked to the very top. Instead,
we lunched and talked politics with the British workman in a coffee
tavern.
After Dumbarton, we left the Clyde to follow the Leven. It was just
beyond the town we first saw Ben-Lomond, a blue shadow on the horizon
when the clouds were heavy above; a high bare mountain, seamed and
riven, when the sun shone upon it. We lost sight of it in a succession
of long, stupid villages; on the shady road, where the trees met
overhead, we could see it again through the net-work of branches. Clouds
were low on its heights, and a veil of soft light rain fell before it
when, having left our knapsacks in the inn at Balloch, we rowed up the
Leven, a little quiet river between low woods and flat meadow-land, to
LOCH LOMOND.
It was the first Scotch lake we saw, and we thought it very like any
other lake.
We were off by eight in the morning. It was clear and cool, like an
October day at home. Our road lay for a while close to the loch, then
turned and went round the parks and lawns that sloped gently to the
shore, so that it was only over a stone wall or through a gap in the
hedge we could see the blue water and the wooded islands. We were now on
the fighting-ground of the Colquhoun and the MacGregor, we learned from
Black, who--we know it to our cost--is a better guide to the romance and
history of Scotland than to its roads. It is but poor comfort when you
ask for a good route to be given a quotation.
Rob Roy is the hero of Loch Lomond, and if you cross--as we did not--to
the other side, you may see his cave and his prison and a lot of his
other belongings. But I think that which is best worth seeing on the
loch is the Colquhoun's village of Luss, with its neat, substantial
cottages and trim gardens. In the Highlands you can have your fill of
tales of outlaws and massacres and horrors; but it is not every day you
come to a village like this, where men are allowed to live a little
better than their beasts.
[Illustration: TARBET, LOCH LOMOND.]
At the Colquhoun Arms in Luss we ate our lunch, and that was our
undoing. It left us in a mood for lounging, and we had still eight miles
to go. We found it harder work the second day than the first. Our
knapsacks weighed like lead, and did not grow lighter; each mile seemed
interminable. This was the more provoking because with every step the
way grew lovelier. Almost all the afternoon we were within sight of the
loch, while on our left the mountains now rose from the very road-side,
and hedges gave place to hill-sides of ferns and heather-patched
bowlders. Used as we both were to cycling, the slowness and monotony of
our pace was intolerable. We longed for a machine that would carry us
and our knapsacks with ease over the hard, dustless road. For one mile
we tried to keep each other in countenance. J---- was the first to rebel
openly. The Highlands were a fraud, he declared; the knapsack was an
infernal nuisance and he was a fool to carry it. About three miles from
Tarbet he sat down and refused to go any farther.
Just then, by chance, there came a drag full of young girls, and when
they saw us they laughed, and passed by on the other side. And likewise
a dog-cart, and the man driving, when he first saw us, waved his hand,
taking us to be friends; but when he was at the place and looked at us,
he also passed by on the other side. But two tricyclers, as they
journeyed, came where we were; and when they saw us they had compassion
on us, and came to us, and gathered up our knapsacks and set them on
their machines and brought them to the inn and took care of them. And
yet there are many who think cyclers nothing but cads on casters!
To tell the truth, had these two men been modern Rob Roys, we would have
yielded up our knapsacks as cheerfully; nor would we have sorrowed never
to see them again.
As we went on our way lightly and even gayly, we came to the inn at
TARBET,
and were received by a waiter in a dress-coat. It was a big hotel low
down by the loch, with Ben-Lomond for opposite neighbor. The company at
dinner was made up of Englishmen and Englishwomen. But everybody talked
to everybody else. An Englishman, it seems, becomes civilized in the
Highlands. There, those he sits down with at dinner, as is the way with
Frenchmen, are his friends; at home, he would look upon them as his
enemies.
After dinner we went to walk with the cyclers. As a great theatrical
moon came sailing up through the sky behind Ben-Lomond, one told us
in broad Scotch how from the Jungfrau he had once watched the moon rise,
and at the sight had bur-r-r-st into tee-eers. But just then, had I wept
at all, it must have been from sheer weariness, so I turned my back upon
the beauty of the evening and went to bed.
[Illustration: GLENCROE.]
It was well on towards noon the next day before we were on our way.
"It looks like business," said a young lady feeding a pet donkey, as she
saw us start.
"It feels like it too," said I, dolefully, for the knapsacks were no
lighter, and our feet were tender after the sixteen miles of the day
before.
It was two easy miles to Arrochar, a village of white cottages and a
couple of inns, one with a tap, the other with a temperance sign. Here
we were ferried across Loch Long by a fisherman sad as his native hills.
It was a wretched season, he told us; there were few people about. On
the west side of the loch, the road was wild, and soon turned up to
Glencroe. At the lower end of the pass, sheep browsed on the hill-sides,
and in tiny fields men and women were cutting grass. The few cottages
were new. But these things we left behind when the road began to wind
upward in short, sudden curves. It was shut in on both sides by
mountains; the sun glittered on their sheer precipices and overhanging
cliffs and on the hundreds of watercourses with which their slopes were
seamed. The way was steep, and I thought I should have died before I
reached the top. At the last we made a short-cut up to the stone known,
out of compliment to Wordsworth, as "Rest and be Thankful." There may be
men and women with so much poetry in their souls, that after that stiff
climb they will still care to find the appropriate lines in their
guide-books, and then have breath enough left to repeat them. But we
were too hot and tired to do anything but lie on the grass and, as we
rested, look down upon and enjoy the wonderful pictures away beyond and
below us.
In this lonely place a little loch lies dark and peaceful among the
hills. Restil, its name is; I do not know what it means, but it has a
pretty sound. Nothing could be more monotonous to tramp over than the
long stretch of road which follows Kinglas Water almost to the shores of
Loch Fyne. Our feet were blistered, and now ached at every step. Our
shoulders were sorely strained. The things we said are best not written.
When the coach from Inverary passed and until it was out of sight, we
made a feint of not being tired. But the rest of the way we now grew
eloquent in abuse, now limped in gloomy silence.
It was a mistake (which we afterward regretted) going to
CAIRNDOW,
and I do not know why we made it, except that in mapping out our route
we had little help from Black. We had to learn from experience, which is
but a poor way, if you find out your errors when it is too late to mend
them. We were bound to Inverary, Dr. Johnson's next stopping-place. At
the top of Glencroe, we should have turned to our left and walked down
Hell's Glen to St. Catharine's, where there is a steam ferry to Inverary
on the opposite shores of Loch Fyne. As it was, we had turned to our
right and walked to a point almost at the top of the loch where there
was no ferry, and where five miles lay between us and St. Catharine's.
This was the coach road from Tarbet, and the guide-book has but little
interest in travellers who go afoot. Though one hears much of walking
tours in the Highlands, but few are made. In seven weeks' walking we
scarcely met even a tramp.
We felt our mistake the more keenly because of the unpleasantness of the
inn. The landlady greeted us warmly; like the ferry-man of the morning,
she found there were too few tourists abroad. But her greeting was
better than her rooms or her dinner, and she herself was unco' canny.
There was in the inn a young artist whose name she told us. We had never
heard it, and this showed our ignorance; for he came from London, where
he had won the first prize in an exhibition, and his wife, who was with
him, had won the second, and altogether they were very great, and it was
small wonder they did not care to dine with unknown travellers who
carried sketch-books. But, indeed, I think in no country in the world
except Great Britain will one artist not be glad to meet another when
chance throws them together. An English artist wrecked on a desert
island would not recognize a brother artist in the same plight as "one
of the fraternity," unless the latter could make good his claims by the
excellence, not of his work, but of his letters of introduction or the
initials after his name. Nor does he unbend in the Highlands, where
Englishmen of other crafts become so very sociable.
When we walked out after a bad dinner, the eastern hills rose against
the pale yellow light of the coming moon. One star sent a shining track
across the dark water, over which every now and again the wind marked
its passage in long lines of silver ripples. Of all the sweet still
evenings of our journey, we shall always remember this as the sweetest
and stillest.
[Illustration: LOCH RESTIL.]
It was in the morning that the landlady showed her canniness. She sent
us off in her boat to be rowed across the loch; this, she said, we
should find the shorter way to Inverary. But on the water one of the
boys let slip the truth. We should have half the distance to walk if we
went straight from Cairndow to St. Catharine's, there to cross by the
steam ferry. Judge of our righteous wrath! When they rowed us back to
the Cairndow side, the boys were careful to land us a good quarter of a
mile below the inn. The worst of it was that once on shore again, we did
not know whom to believe, the mother or the children. We were in a fine
state of doubt, until a woman in the first cottage we came to reassured
us. This was by far the shorter way, and we need not hurry, she added;
we could not help reaching St. Catharine's in time for the ferry at
eleven.
[Illustration: INVERARY.]
She was right. It seemed a short walk by the loch. We stopped only once,
that J---- might get an old ruin on the very water's edge. When we came
to St. Catharine's we had an hour or more to sit at the inn door. It was
one of those hot, misty days, which are not rare during the short
Highland summer. The mountains were shrouded in a burning white haze.
The loch was like glass. On its opposite shore, Inverary, white and
shining, was reflected in its waters; and close by, at the foot of the
hills, the turreted castle of the Argylls stood out strongly against the
dark wood.
Here we made up our minds to go to Dalmally by coach. It was much too
hot to walk. This left us free to take a nearer look at the castle,
which, when we saw how painfully it had been restored, we thought less
fine. In the town itself, though there is plenty sketchable, there is
nothing notable, save the old town-cross, with its weather-worn
carvings, which stands upon the shore, with loch and hills for
background.
After lunch at the Argyll Arms, suddenly an excursion steamer and the
coach from Tarbet poured streams of tourists into the place. Two more
coaches dashed out from the hotel stables. The wide street was one mass
of excursionists and landlords and waiters, and coachmen in red coats
and gray beavers, and guards with bundles and boxes. There was a short,
sharp struggle for seats, and in the confusion we came off with the
best, and found ourselves on the leading coach, whirling from the glare
of the loch, through the cool shade of a wooded glen, to the stirring
sounds of the "Standards on the Braes of Mar," shouted by a party of
Lowland Sandies who filled the other seats.
At the first pause, the coachman pointed to deer standing quietly under
the graceful silver birches that shut in the road.
"Shush-sh-sh-sh!" screamed the Sandies, in a new chorus.
"Why canna ye put salt on their tails?" cried one.
Though later, cows and sheep and ducks fled before their noise, the deer
never stirred. And yet, I suppose, in the season the Duke of Argyll and
his guests come stalking these tame creatures, and call it sport.[D]
[D] It is for this supposition we have already been taken so
severely to task and laughed at for our imagined ignorance of the
difference between roe deer and red deer. We are glad to have afforded
the critics amusement; but we have since looked into the matter, and a
friend, a Highlander who knows the Highlands as well as if not better
than any of our critics, assures us there are red deer in these woods.
So much for that wild burst of criticism! But if this were not the
case, our supposition would not have been unnatural when certain aspects
of British sport are considered--the hunting in Epping Forest, the
performances of her Majesty's stag-hounds, for example!
All that afternoon, through the woods of Glenaray and across the purple
moorland beyond, afar over the banks and braes and streams around, there
rang out the strong voice of Sandy off for a holiday. Highland valleys
were filled with the pathetic strains of
"We started up a candy shop, John,
But couldna make it pay,
John Anderson, my jo!"
Highland hills re-echoed the burden of a loving father's song:
"For she's my only daughter,
'Tis I myself that taught her
To wear spangled clothes
And twirl round on her toes,
And her name it was Julia McNaughter."
Between songs there were jokes, as at the minstrels.
"Ta-ta, James; au revore," they called to men mowing in the meadows.
"And havna ye a letter for us?" they asked the old woman at a lonely
post-office.
To a beggar by the way-side they gave witticisms with their pennies:
"Canna ye sing a Gaelic song?"
"Canna ye stand on your head?"
"He's a Grecian!"
If the point of their jokes is not very clear, the fault is not mine; I
am trying to be not witty, but realistic.
There was one in the party--a woman, of course--who remembered duty.
"Isn't it bonny country?" she kept asking. "And what's yon bonny glen,
my laddie?" and she poked the guard.
"And Sandy, mon, ye're nae lookin' at the scenery," she said to her
husband.
"Toot, I clean forgot the scenery," and Sandy broke off in his singing
to stare through his field-glass at a bare hill-side.
Almost within sight of Loch Awe we came to a hill that was so steep we
all left the coach and walked a couple of miles up the shadeless hot
road. An objection sometimes made to cycling is that it is half walking;
but in the Highlands you would walk less if you rode a cycle than if you
travelled by coach. From the top of the hill we looked down to where,
far below, lay Loch Awe and its many islands. In this high place, with
the beautiful broad outlook, gypsies had camped. I never yet knew the
Romany who did not pitch his tent in the loveliest spot for miles
around.
We had no definite plan for the night. We left it to chance, and we
could not have done better. At the station at Dalmally we said goodby
to our friends, who went gayly to another bonny glen, and we took the
train for Loch Awe. It hurried us round the top of the loch in a few
minutes to Loch Awe station, where on the platform were crowds of men in
conventional tweed knickerbockers and Norfolk jackets, and women in
jockey caps and fore-and-afts; and moreover, there were pipers with
their pipes under their arms. From the carriage window we had seen the
Loch Awe hotel, perched high on the hill-side, and looking down to the
gray ivy-grown ruins of Kilchurn. It seemed no place for tourists who
carried their baggage on their backs. But hardly had we left the
carriage, when up stepped an immaculate creature in blue coat and brass
buttons to tell us, with his cap in his hand, that our telegram had been
received and the Port Sonachan boat was in waiting. That from all that
elegant crowd of travellers he should have picked us out, the only two
in the least disreputable-looking and travel-worn, showed, we thought,
his uncommon discrimination. If, without knowing it, we had telegraphed
to a hotel of which we had never heard, if in consequence a private
steam-yacht was now at our disposal, why should we hesitate? Indeed, we
had not time, for immediately a sailor seized our shabby knapsacks and
carried them off with as much respect as if they had been Saratoga
trunks. We followed him into a little yacht, which we graciously shared
with an Englishman, his wife, two children, eleven bags, and three
bath-tubs.
[Illustration: CROSS AT INVERARY.]
The man in the blue coat kindly kept his boat at the pier until J----
had made quite a decent note of Kilchurn Castle. It has its legends, but
it is not for me to tell them. Mr. Hamerton, who has written poetry
about it and ought to know, declares they are not to be told in prose.
Then we steamed down the loch, past the islands, one with a lonely
graveyard, another with a large house; past the high mountains shutting
in the Pass of Brander, to a hotel perfect of its kind. It stood on a
little promontory of its own. A bay-window in the dining-room commanded
the view north, south, and west over the loch. As we ate our dinner we
could watch the light slowly fade and the hills darken against it. The
dinner was excellent, and the people at table were friendly. There was a
freedom about the house that made us think of Dingman's Ferry in its
best days, of the Water Gap before its splendor came upon it, of Bar
Harbor before it was exploited. It was not a mere place of passage, like
the hotels at Tarbet and at Loch Awe; but those who came to it stayed
for their holiday. All the men were there for the fishing, which is
good, and most of them, tired after their day's work, came to dinner in
their fishing clothes. Their common sport made them sociable. They were
kind to us, but in their kindness was pity that we too were not
fishermen. The landlord, who was a Cameron, was neither great nor
obsequious. He had interest for this man's salmon and that man's trout,
and good counsel for our journeying. He had been game-keeper for many
years on the shores of Loch Awe, which he knew and loved. He had seen
Mr. Hamerton, and his boats and his painter's camp. Since we have been
to Loch Awe we have had an admiration for Mr. Hamerton which his book
about it never gave us. Seldom do men show greater love for beauty in
their choice of a home than he did, when he set up his tent on the
island of the dead. As his books show, he is sufficient unto himself.
Before the first month had ended, many might have wearied for other
company save that of the hills and the water, the dead and a madman.
[Illustration: SCOTLAND AND THE HEBRIDES.]
We left Port Sonachan in the morning. Mr. Cameron walked down to his
pier with us, and a Duncan rowed us across to South Port Sonachan, where
there is another hotel, and where we took the road to Loch Etive. Again
the morning was hot and misty. In the few fields by the way men and
women were getting in the hay, and the women, in their white sacks and
handkerchiefs about their heads, looked not unlike French peasants. On
each hill-top was a group of Highland cattle, beautiful black and tawny
creatures, standing and lying in full relief against the sky. Two miles,
a little more or less, brought us to a village wandering up and down a
weed-grown, stone-covered hill-side. To our left a by-road climbed to
the top of the hill, past the plain, bare kirk, with its little
graveyard, and higher still to two white cottages, their thatched roofs
green with a thick growth of grass, and vines growing about their doors,
the loch and the mountain in the background.