supposed to be of some use, we saw in miles of moorland one man
fishing, and a second shooting; for the latter a carriage waited on the
road below. In order that these two, and perhaps half a dozen more like
them, should have a fortnight's amusement, the land from Dunvegan to
Sligachan has been cleared of its inhabitants. On the high-road between
these two places--a distance of about twenty-two or twenty-three
miles--there are not above a dozen huts, and only one or two decent
houses. It is true, there is a large and flourishing distillery.
After Struan we were still on the moors. The only breaks in the monotony
were the showers, the mile-stones, and the water-falls. The mountains,
upon which we had counted for the beauty of the walk, were now
completely lost in the clouds. Not until we were within two miles of
Sligachan did the thick veil before them roll slowly up, showing us
peaks rising beyond peaks, rugged hollows, and deep precipices. But it
fell again almost at once, and for the rest of the way we saw but one
high mountain coming out and being swallowed up again in the mist and
clouds.
Near the inn, and a hundred yards or so from the road, was a reedy pool.
A man stood in the water, a woman on the shore, both silently fishing in
the rain. It is in duck-puddles like this--in which, were they at home,
an American boy would sail his boat or throw his line to his heart's
content--that guests in Highland inns, by special kindness of the
landlord, are allowed to fish, this permission being advertised as a
leading attraction of the inn.
We intended to stay a day or two in
SLIGACHAN.
We wanted to see the Cuchullins and the much-talked-about Loch Coruisk.
But here we found that we were again on the tourist route from which we
had gone so far astray. There was not a room to be had in the inn. It
was full of immaculately dressed young ladies and young Oxford men, all
with their knickerbockers at the same degree of bagginess, their
stockings turned down at the same angle. We might have thought that the
landlady objected to tramps when the company was so elegant, had she not
offered to put us up in the drawing-room and found places for us at the
_table-d'hote_ luncheon. The talk was all of hotels and lochs and glens
and travels. How long have you been in Skye? Is this your first visit?
Did you come by Loch Maree? At what hotel did you stay in Oban? But
there was not a word about cottages; for there is nothing in Sligachan,
or near it, as far as we could see, but this swell hotel, which seemed
very good.
Beds in the drawing-room meant to be at the mercy of the company. We did
not hesitate. And still the moors stretched out before us. No one who
has not tramped in Skye can imagine its dreariness. In Portree, a
miniature Oban, we lost all courage. We might have gone back to Loch
Coruisk. We might have tramped to take a nearer view of the Old Man of
Storr, which we had already seen in the distance. We might have walked
to Armadale, or steamed to Strome Ferry. There were, in fact, many
things we could and should have done; but we had seen enough of the
miserable life in the islands--those great deserts, with but here and
there a lovely oasis for the man of wealth. Our walks had been long; we
were tired physically and sick mentally.
And so, early one morning, we took the boat at Portree and steamed back
to the main-land; past Raasay, where Dr. Johnson stayed, and where there
was a big house with beautiful green lawn and fine woods; past Glenelg,
where we should have landed to follow the Doctor's route, but the
prospect of a thirty miles' walk to reach the nearest inn made cowards
of us; past Armadale, now as when Pennant saw it, "a seat, beautifully
wooded, gracing most unexpectedly this almost treeless tract;" past one
island of hills after another; and thus into the Sound of Mull, to get a
glimpse of Tobermory in sunshine. It was a lovely day; sea and sky and
far islands blue, the water like glass; though, before it had come to
an end, we had twice fled to the cabin from heavy showers. There were
many sight-seers on board, and we could but wonder why. The women read
novels, the men went to sleep. But they had done their duty--they had
been to Scotland for the holidays; they had probably seen the Quiraing
and Dunvegan. But they had not gone our way. The coach roads are those
from which the least misery is visible.
That evening Oban did its best for us. The sun went down in red fire
beyond Mull's now purpling hills. And as the burning after-glow cooled
into the quiet twilight, we looked for the last time on the island of
Mull. It seemed in its new beauty to have found peace and rest. May this
seeming have become reality before we again set foot on Hebridean
shores!
NOTE.--The Crofters' Act of 1886 was supposed to do away with
the crofters' wrongs. As yet it has accomplished little. In
some cases the Commissioners appointed for the purpose have
lowered the extortionate rents which crofters have been
starving for years to pay. Now that agitation in the islands
has made it absolutely necessary that something should be done
for the people, in one or two test cases, those clauses of the
act which prevent landlords evicting tenants at their own
pleasure have been enforced. Beyond this the condition of the
people is absolutely no better than it was before the act was
passed. They have not enough land to support them, and when
they appeal for more, their landlord answers, as Lady Matheson
has just answered her small tenants in the Lewis, "The land is
mine; you have nothing to do with it." Nothing has been done
for the cotters who have no land at all; nothing for fishermen,
who are, if possible, worse off at the end of the fishing
season than they were at the beginning. The money appropriated
for the building of piers and harbors and the purchase of boats
has not as yet been put to its proper use.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
TO THE EAST COAST, AND BACK AGAIN.
One always hears of Highland scenery at its best; one usually sees it at
its worst. We found the trip from Oban to Inverness up the Caledonian
Canal as tedious as it is said to be charming. The day was gray and
misty and rainy. In the first boat we sat in the cabin, in the second
under an awning. Occasionally we went on deck to look for the sights of
the journey.
As we steamed up Loch Linne a Scotchman pointed out Ben-Nevis.
"Well," said J----, critically, "if you were to put a top on it, it
might make a fairly decent mountain."
After that we were left to find the sights for ourselves.
The day would have been unbearably dull but for the exertions of a Mr.
Macdonell. He was, I am as ashamed to say as he seemed to be, our
fellow-countryman. He did not look in the least like an American, nor
like an Englishman, though his ulster, coat, trousers, collar, necktie,
gloves, and hat were all so English. He was a middle-aged man,
handsome, and gentlemanly enough until he began to talk. At the very
start he told everybody on board in general and each individual in
particular that he was a Macdonell. As all the people about here are
Macdonells, no one was startled. The name in these parts is rather more
common than, and about as distinguished as, Smith in the Directory.
"I'm a Macdonell," he said, "and I'm proud of it. It's a great clan. No
matter what our nationality may be now, sir, we're all Macdonells still.
I'll tell you the way we do in our clan. Not long ago one of the
Macdonells of Lochaber was married. He was not very rich--he had about
L12,000 a year perhaps--and the Macdonells thought it would be a nice
thing to give him a present of money from Macdonells all over the world.
There was not a Macdonell who did not respond. I was in Melbourne at the
time, and I was proud to give my guinea. Now, how different it was with
Grant, that man who was President of the United States. The clan Grant
tried to do the same thing when one of their chief's family was married,
and the factor sent to this Grant, and said they would be very proud and
had no doubt he would be very glad to contribute to this happy occasion
in the old clan. And what do you think he answered? He indorsed on the
letter sent him--I saw it myself--that he was not one of the tenantry,
and therefore would not contribute. That shows what a snob he was. But
it's very different with the Macdonells. I'll tell you what happened to
me the other day near Banavie. I lost one of my gloves; they were
driving gloves--expensive gloves, you know. I gave the odd one to the
driver, and said if he could find the other he would have a pair. The
next day he came to me with both gloves. 'Sir,' he said, 'I cannot keep
them; I too am a Macdonell!' I gave him the other glove and a guinea.
That shows the fine clannish feeling."
We have heard that there is a proverb about fools and Americans.
Mr. Macdonell stood on the upper deck to look towards the country of the
Macdonells, which he could not see through the mist. He took out his
guide-book and read poetry and facts about his clan, to two American
girls, until, quite audibly, they pronounced it all stuff and him a
bore. He praised the Macdonell chiefs to Englishmen until they laughed
almost in his face. "The Duke of New York," they called him before
evening. He sang the praises of his Macdonell land to any one who would
listen. "I like it better than Switzerland or our own country," he said;
"I'm coming back next year to rent a shooting-place. But the trouble is
the people here don't like us. It's the fault of men like Carnegie. He
comes and gives them L20,000 for a library. And then what does he do?
He makes a speech against their queen. It's shocking. It's atrocious."
I wonder why Americans, as soon as they borrow the Englishman's clothes,
must add his worst traits to their own faults. "That kind of American,"
a Londoner on board said to us, "has all the arrogance and insolence of
a lord combined with the ignorance and snobbishness of a cad." He was
right. Of all the men who rent the great deer forests of Scotland, none
are such tyrants as the American millionaires who come over, as Mr.
Macdonell probably will next summer, for the shooting. More than one
Scotchman we met told us so plainly. There is a famous case where the
cruelty of an American sportsman, who plays the laird in the Highlands,
so far outdid that of the real laird that the latter came forward to
defend his people against it! Now that the war of emancipation is being
fought from one end of Great Britain to the other, it is to our shame
that there are Americans who uphold the oppressors. One might think we
struggled for freedom at home only to strive against it abroad. Mrs.
Stowe could write "Uncle Tom's Cabin" on behalf of slaves in the United
States; in Great Britain she saw only the nobility and benevolence of
the slave-driver. From the plantations of the South there never rose
such a cry of sorrow and despair as that which rang through the glens
and straths of Sutherland when men were driven to the sea to make room
for sheep. And yet to Mrs. Stowe this inhuman chase was but a sublime
instance of the benevolent employment of superior wealth and power in
shortening the struggle of advancing civilization, and elevating in a
few years a whole community to a point of education and material
prosperity which, unassisted, they might never have attained. You might
as well call the slavery of negroes a sublime instance of the power of
traders to shorten the natural course of human development, since if
left to themselves the blacks could not have advanced beyond the savage
state in which they were found. I fear the American love for a lord is
not exaggerated, if even Mrs. Stowe could be blinded by it.
There was little to break the monotony of the journey except the
Macdonells. "If the sun only shone," Mrs. Macdonell explained, "there
would be the lights and shadows." As it was, however, water and sky and
shores were of uniform grayness. Now and then we passed the ruins of an
old castle. At a place whose name I have forgotten the boat stopped that
everybody might walk a mile or more to see a water-fall. It may have
been our loss that we did not go with the rest; certainly a party of
Frenchmen on their return declared it _une cascade vraiment charmante_.
At Fort Augustus the boat was three-quarters of an hour getting through
the locks, and in the mean time enterprising tourists climbed the tower
of the new Benedictine monastery, which stands where was once the old
fort. We went instead to the telegraph office, and secured a room in
Inverness, and gave the landlord an order for the letters we hoped were
waiting for us at the bank. Young Benedictines in black gowns, like
students of the Propaganda on the Pincian, were walking out two by two.
These were the day's excitements.
As we neared Inverness, Mr. Macdonell was again on deck. "I always go to
the Caledonian Hotel in Inverness," he told us. "What I like is to stay
at the best hotels, where I meet the society of England and
Scotland--the real society. There's the Royal Hotel in Edinburgh; it
suits me because you are sure to find it full of good English and Scotch
society. I must always have the best society. Besides, they're very good
hotels, both of them. In our country we boast of the products of the
Chesapeake; but we have nothing so delicious, nothing so delicate, as
the fresh herring they will serve you for breakfast at the Caledonian."
As we drove from the boat to
INVERNESS,
we passed the stage of the Caledonian Hotel. In it sat the Macdonell
with a family of Jews, and an Englishman and his daughter who,
throughout the journey, had shown themselves so superior, we should not
wonder some day to find them behind the counter of an Oxford Street
store. They were all on their way to mingle with the real society of
England and Scotland.
It probably was a pleasure to Mr. Macdonell to find that the tobacconist
next to the hotel, and the dry goods merchant but a few doors off, were
his fellow-clansmen. In fact, every other banner--I mean sign--flung out
on the outward walls of Inverness bore his name.
Our social pretensions were more modest. We went to the Station Hotel
for comfort, and trusted to luck for society. In the great hall of the
hotel we first realized the full extent of our shabbiness. Our knapsacks
shrank out of sight of porters and maids. The proprietor was too busy
distributing rooms to decently dressed travellers--the most gorgeous of
whom gloried in his allegiance to the _Police Gazette_ of New York--to
notice us. But as he paused for a moment, J---- asked if there were any
letters for Mr. Pennell. "Where is Mr. Pennell?" asked the proprietor,
with interest. When he heard where he was, then came the transformation
scene. Two gentlemen in dress-coats, each carrying a diminutive knapsack
preceded us up the stairs; two gentlemen in dress-coats, each carrying a
huge bundle of letters, the accumulation of weeks, followed us. We felt
like a lord mayor's procession, but we did not look it. We were led into
the best bedroom, but before the door was closed we thought we saw
disappointment in the eyes of the proprietor. We at once consulted the
tariff on the wall to learn what it cost to send a telegram in Scotland.
We can only say that it did not prove very expensive, that the hotel was
very good, that everybody was very attentive, and that the society may
have been the best for all we knew.
The next morning we started on foot, all our baggage on our backs, to
the disgust of the gentlemen in dress-coats. We walked at a good pace
out of the town, and on the broad, smooth road that leads to Culloden.
The country was quiet and pastoral, and the way, in places, pleasant and
shady. It was a striking contrast to the western wilderness from which
we had just come.
But twenty miles lay between us and Nairn; like Dr. Johnson, we were
going out of our way to see Culloden Moor and Cawdor Castle. The road
was too good. It set us thinking again of a tricycle on which we could
travel at stimulating speed over country monotonous in its prosperous
prettiness. Walking meant steady trudging all day, and a hasty glance at
castle and moor when we came to them.
It was unbearable. Weeks of experience had taught us all the drudgery
of tramping, none of its supposed delights. We asked people we met if
there was a cycle agent in Inverness. No one knew. Then the trees by the
road-side gave place to open country with waving wheat-fields; and oh,
how hot it grew! Peddlers whom we had passed--the only people, besides
ourselves, we saw tramping in Scotland--overtook and passed us. Two men
went by on bicycles. How cool and comfortable they looked! How hot and
dirty and dusty and miserable we felt! This was too much.
"Confound this walking! If ever I walk again!" said J----; and, almost
within sight of Culloden, he turned. After looking over to where I knew
the moor must be, I meekly followed him, and in silence we went back to
Inverness.
The roads about here being particularly good, there was not a cycle
agent in the town. There was no getting a machine for love or money. It
was now too late to attempt to walk to Nairn. There was nothing to do
but to train it. In the interval of waiting we saw Inverness. It is a
pretty city, with a wide river flowing through it, many bridges--one
with a great stone archway--a new cathedral, and a battlemented,
turreted castle high above the river. Clothes dry on the green bank that
slopes down to the water's edge, women in white caps go and come through
the streets, which, with their gabled houses, show that curious French
feeling found all over the East of Scotland, and even the costumes of
the women help to carry it out.
In Inverness, and in fact all the way to Fraserburgh, J---- made many
notes and sketches, the best, he says, of our journey. All but a few
have been lost, and so the world will never enjoy them. This is sad, but
true. If any one should happen to find the sketch-book he need not
return it in hopes of a reward. J---- has no use for it at this moment.
In fact, the finder had better keep it; it may be valuable some day.
When the train reached
NAIRN,
"Well," said J----, in triumph, "we've got through a day's work in half
an hour;" and we dropped our knapsacks at the hotel and set out for
Cawdor, which is five miles from the town.
The day so far had been fine. Once we were on the road again the sun
went behind the clouds, mist fell over the country before us. A lady in
a dog-cart warned us of rain, and offered us a lift. To make up for the
morning's weakness, we refused heroically. There was nothing by the way
but broad fields of grain, which seemed broader after the wretched
little patches of Skye and Harris, and large farm-houses, larger by
comparison with Hebridean hovels. When the roofs and gables of the
castle came in sight, had we had our Macbeth at our fingers' ends, I
have no doubt we might have made an appropriate quotation. A long fence
separated two fields; on each post sat a solemn rook, and hundreds more
made black the near grass. But we did not call them birds of ill-omen
and speak of the past as we should have done; J---- only said it was
right to find so many cawing things at the gate of Cawdor Castle.
I wish that we had found nothing worse. Just as we reached it the mist
turned to heavy rain. This is the depressing side of sight-seeing in
Scotland; you must take your holidays in water-proofs. J---- made
several sketches, for the rain poured in such torrents our stay was
long. We stood under the old gate-way and at the window of the porter's
lodge. The sketches were very charming, very beautiful, but they are
lost! We walked about in the rain and looked at the castle from every
side. But as everybody who has travelled in Scotland has described
Cawdor, there is no special reason why I should do it again. The
sketches would have been original.
The most provoking part of it was that we had scarce left the castle a
mile behind when the rain became mist again; at the third mile-stone we
were once more in a dry world.
Boswell called Nairn "a miserable place." Dr. Johnson said next to
nothing about it. Perhaps the people laughed at them as they did at us.
We thought their manners miserable, though their town now is decent
enough. It is long and narrow, stretching from the railway-station to
the sea. After the hotels and shops, we came to the fishermen's quarter.
The houses were mostly new; a few turned old gables and chimneys to the
street. Women in white caps, with great baskets on their backs, strode
homeward in the twilight. Everywhere brown nets were spread out to dry,
boats lay along the sands, beyond was the sea, and the smell of the fish
was over it all.
The next morning we learned from the maid that Macbeth's blasted heath
was but a few miles from Nairn; all the theatricals went there, she
said. We made a brave start; but bravery gave out with the first mile.
Walking was even more unbearable than it had been the day before. There
could be nothing more depressing than to walk on a public highway
through a well-cultivated country under a hot sun. Already, when we came
to the near village of Auldearn, we had outwalked interest in everything
but our journey's end. We would not go an extra step for the monuments
the guide-book directs the tourist to see, though the graveyard was
within sight of the road.
Macbeth seems to have shared the fate of prophets in their own country.
We asked a man passing with a goat the distance to Macbeth's Hill, as
it is called on the map. He didna know, he answered. But presently he
ran after us. Was the gentleman we spoke of a farmer? Another man,
however, knew all about it. He had never been to the top of the hill; he
had been told there were trees up there, and that it wasn't different
from the other hills around. And yet he had heard people came great
distances to see it. He supposed we had travelled far just to go up the
hill. He knew from our talk, many words of which he couldna understand,
that we were no from this part of the country. But then sometimes he
couldna understand the broad Scotch of the people in Aberdeenshire.
There were some people hereabouts who could talk only Gaelic. They had
been turned off the Western Islands, and had settled here years ago, but
they still talked only the Gaelic.
He went our way for half a mile or less, and he walked with us. His
clothes were ragged, his feet bare, and over his shoulders was slung a
small bundle done up in a red handkerchief. In the last three years, he
said, he had had but two or three days' work. Work was hard to get. Here
rents were high, farmers complained, and this year the crops were ruined
because of the long drought. He did think at times of going to America.
He had a sister who had gone to live in Pittsburg. It might be a good
thing. There are Scotchmen who have done well in Pittsburg. He left us
with minute directions. The hill, though not far from the road, which
now went between pine woods and heather, could not be seen from it. We
came to the point at which we should have turned to the blasted heath.
"It's a blasted nuisance," J---- said, and we kept straight on to the
nearest railway-station.
This was Brodie. The porters told us there was a fine castle within a
ten minutes' walk, and a train for Elgin in fifteen minutes. We waited
for the train.
We were so tired, so disgusted, that everything put us out of patience.
Even a small boy who had walked with us earlier in the morning to show
us the way, simply by stopping when we stopped and starting when we
started, had driven us almost frantic. I mention this to show how
utterly wearisome a walking tour through beautiful country can be.
At the town of
ELGIN