shadow of a cloud. If he had a home at all, it was situated at
Ardvasar, near Armadale; but there Angus was found but seldom. He
was always wandering about with his gun over his shoulder, his
terriers, Spoineag and Fruich, at his heels, and the kitchen of every
tacksman was open to him. The tacksmen paid Angus so much per annum,
and Angus spent his time in killing their vermin. He was a dead
shot; he knew the hole of the fox, and the cairn in which an otter
would be found. If you wanted a brace of young falcons, Angus would
procure them for you; if ravens were breeding on one of your cliffs,
you had but to wait till the young ones were half-fledged, send for
Angus, and before evening the entire brood, father and mother
included, would be nailed on your barn door. He knew the
seldom-visited loch up amongst the hills which was haunted by the
swan, the cliff of the Cuchullins on which the eagles dwelt, the
place where, by moonlight, you could get a shot at the shy heron. He
knew all the races of dogs. In the warm blind pup he saw, at a
glance, the future terrier or staghound. He could cure the
distemper, could crop ears and dock tails. He could cunningly plait
all kinds of fishing tackle; could carve _quaichs_, and work you
curiously-patterned dagger-hilts out of the black bog-oak. If you
wished a tobacco-pouch made of the skin of an otter or a seal, you
had simply to apply to Angus. From his variety of accomplishment he
was an immense favourite. The old farmers liked him because he was
the sworn foe of pole-cats, foxes, and ravens; the sons of farmers
valued him because he was an authority in rifles and fowling-pieces,
and knew the warm shelving rocks on which bullet-headed seals slept,
and the cairns on the sea-shore in which otters lived; and because if
any special breed of dog was wanted he was sure to meet the demand.
He was a little, thick-set fellow, of great physical strength, and of
the most obliging nature; and he was called Angus-with-the-dogs,
because without Spoineag and Fruich at his heels, he was never seen.
The pipe was always in his mouth,--to him tobacco smoke was as much a
matter of course as peat reek is to a turf-hut.
[Sidenote: Waiting for Angus.]
One day, after Fellowes had gone to the Landlord's, where I was to
join him in a week or ten days, young M'Ian and myself waited for
Angus-with-the-dogs on one of the rising grounds at a little distance
from the house. Angus in his peregrinations had marked a cairn in
which he thought an otter would be found, and it was resolved that
this cairn should be visited on a specified day about noon, in the
hope that some little sport might be provided for the Sassenach.
About eleven A.M., therefore, on the specified day we lay on the
heather smoking. It was warm and sunny; M'Ian had thrown beside him
on the heather his gun and shot-belt, and lay back luxuriously on his
fragrant couch, meerschaum in mouth, his Glengary bonnet tilted
forward over his eyes, his left leg stretched out, his right drawn
up, and his brown hands clasped round the knee. Of my own position,
which was comfortable enough, I was not at the moment specially
cognisant; my attention being absorbed by the scenery around, which
was wild and strange. We lay on couches of purple heather, as I have
said; and behind were the sloping birch-woods--birch-woods always
remind one somehow of woods in their teens--which ran up to the bases
of white cliffs traversed only by the shepherd and the shadows of
hawks and clouds. The plateau on which we lay ran toward the sea,
and suddenly broke down to it in little ravines and gorges,
beautifully grassed and mossed, and plumed with bunches of ferns.
Occasionally a rivulet came laughing and dancing down from rocky
shelf to shelf. Of course, from the spot where we lay, this breaking
down of the hill-face was invisible, but it was in my mind's eye all
the same, for I had sailed along the coast and admired it a couple of
days before. Right in front flowed in Loch Eishart, with its islands
and white sea-birds. Down in the right-hand corner, reduced in size
by distance, the house sat on its knoll, like a white shell; and
beside it were barns and outhouses, the smoking turf-huts on the
shore, the clumps of birch-wood, the thread of a road which ran down
toward the stream from the house, crossed it by a bridge a little
beyond the turf-huts and the boat-shed, and then came up towards us
till it was lost in the woods. Right across the Loch were the round
red hills that rise above Broadford; and the entire range of the
Cuchullins--the outline wild, splintered, jagged, as if drawn by a
hand shaken by terror or frenzy. A glittering mesh of sunlight
stretched across the Loch, blinding, palpitating, ever-dying,
ever-renewed. The bee came booming past, the white sea-gull swept
above, silent as a thought or a dream. Gazing out on all this,
somewhat lost in it, I was suddenly startled by a sharp whistle, and
then I noticed that a figure was crossing the bridge below. M'Ian
got up; "That's Angus," he said; "let us go down to meet him;" and
so, after knocking the ashes out of his pipe and filling it anew,
picking up his gun and slinging his shot-belt across his shoulder, he
led the way.
[Sidenote: Arrival of Angus.]
At the bridge we found Angus seated, with his gun across his knee,
and Spoineag and Fruich coursing about, and beating the bushes, from
which a rabbit would occasionally bounce and scurry off. Angus
looked more alert and intelligent than I had ever before seen
him--probably because he had business on hand. We started at once
along the shore at the foot of the cliffs above which we had been
lying half an hour before. Our way lay across large boulders which
had rolled down from the heights above, and progression, at least to
one unaccustomed to such rough work, was by no means easy. Angus and
M'Ian stepped on lightly enough, the dogs kept up a continual barking
and yelping, and were continually disappearing in rents and crannies
in the cliffs, and emerging more ardent than ever. At a likely place
Angus would stop for a moment, speak a word or two to the dogs, and
then they rushed barking at every orifice, entered with a struggle,
and ranged through all the passages of the hollow cairn. As yet the
otter had not been found at home. [Sidenote: The otter hunt.] At
last when we came in view of a spur of the higher ground which,
breaking down on the shore, terminated in a sort of pyramid of loose
stones, Angus dashed across the broken boulders at a run, followed by
his dogs. When they got up, Spoineag and Fruich, barking as they had
never barked before, crept in at all kinds of holes and impossible
fissures, and were no sooner out than they were again in. Angus
cheered and encouraged them, and pointed out to M'Ian traces of the
otter's presence. I sat down on a stone and watched the behaviour of
the terriers. If ever there was an insane dog, it was Fruich that
day; she jumped and barked, and got into the cairn by holes through
which no other dog could go, and came out by holes through which no
other dog could come. Spoineag, on the other hand, was comparatively
composed; he would occasionally sit down, and taking a critical view
of the cairn, run barking to a new point, and to that point Fruich
would rush like a fury and disappear. Spoineag was a
commander-in-chief, Fruich was a gallant general of division.
Spoineag was Wellington, Fruich was the fighting Picton. Fruich had
disappeared for a time, and from the muffled barking we concluded she
was working her way to the centre of the citadel, when all at once
Spoineag, as if moved by a sudden inspiration, rushed to the top of
the cairn, and began tearing up the turf with teeth and feet.
Spoineag's eagerness now was as intense as ever Fruich's had been.
Angus, who had implicit faith in Spoineag's genius, climbed up to
assist, and tore away at the turf with his hands. In a minute or so
Spoineag had effected an entrance from the top, and began to work his
way downwards. Angus stood up against the sky with his gun in
readiness. We could hear the dogs barking inside, and evidently
approaching a common centre, when all at once a fell tumult arose.
The otter was reached at last, and was using teeth and claws. Angus
made a signal to M'Ian, who immediately brought his gun to his
shoulder. The combat still raged within, and seemed to be coming
nearer. Once Fruich came out howling with a bleeding foot, but a cry
from Angus on the height sent her in again. All at once the din of
barking ceased, and I saw a black lurching object flit past the
stones towards the sea. Crack went M'Ian's gun from the boulder,
crack went Angus's gun from the height, and the black object turned
half round suddenly and then lay still. It was the otter; and the
next moment Spoineag and Fruich were out upon it, the fire of battle
in their eyes, and their teeth fixed in its bloody throat. They
dragged the carcase backwards and forwards, and seemed unable to sate
their rage upon it. What ancient animosity existed between the
families of otters and terriers? What wrong had been done never to
be redressed? Angus came forward at last, sent Spoineag and Fruich
howling right and left with his foot, seized the otter by the tail,
and then over the rough boulders we began our homeward march. Our
progress past the turf-huts nestling on the shore at the foot of the
cliffs was a triumphal one. Old men, women, and brown half-naked
children came out to gaze upon us. When we got home the otter was
laid on the grass in front of the house, where the elder M'Ian came
out to inspect it, and was polite enough to express his approval, and
to declare that it was not much inferior in bulk and strength to the
otters he had hunted and killed at the close of last century.
[Sidenote: Skinning the otter.] After dinner young M'Ian skinned his
trophy, and nailed and stretched the hide on the garden gate amid the
dilapidated kites and ravens. In the evening, Angus, with his gun
across his shoulder, and Spoineag and Fruich at his heels, started
for that mysterious home of his which was supposed to be at Ardvasar,
somewhere in the neighbourhood of Armadale Castle.
A visit to Loch Coruisk had for some little time been meditated; and
in the evening of the day on which the otter was slain the boat was
dragged from its shed down towards the sea, launched, and brought
round to the rude pier, where it was moored for the night. We went
to bed early, for we were to rise with the sun. We got up,
breakfasted, and went down to the pier where two or three sturdy
fellows were putting oars and rowlocks to rights, tumbling in huge
stones for ballast, and carefully stowing away a couple of guns and a
basket of provisions. In about an hour we were fairly afloat; the
broad-backed fellows bent to their oars, and soon the house began to
dwindle in the distance, the irregular winding shores to gather into
compact masses, and the white cliffs, which we knew to be a couple of
miles inland, to come strangely forward, and to overhang the house
and the surrounding stripes of pasturage and clumps of birchwood.
[Sidenote: Loch Eishart.] On a fine morning there is not in the whole
world a prettier sheet of water than Loch Eishart. Everything about
it is wild, beautiful, and lonely. You drink a strange and
unfamiliar air. You seem to be sailing out of the nineteenth century
away back into the ninth. You are delighted, and there is no
remembered delight with which you can compare the feeling. Over the
Loch the Cuchullins rise crested with tumult of golden mists; the
shores are green behind; and away out, towards the horizon, the
Island of Rum--ten miles long at the least--shoots up from the flat
sea like a pointed flame. It is a granite mass, you know, firm as
the foundations of the world; but as you gaze the magic of morning
light makes it a glorious apparition--a mere crimson film or shadow,
so intangible in appearance you might almost suppose it to exist on
sufferance, and that a breath could blow it away. Between Rum,
fifteen miles out yonder, and the shores drawing together and
darkening behind, with the white cliffs coming forward to stare after
us, the sea is smooth, and flushed with more varied hues than ever
lived on the changing opal--dim azures, tender pinks, sleek emeralds.
It is one sheet of mother-of-pearl. The hills are silent. The voice
of man has not yet awoke on their heathery slopes. But the sea,
literally clad with birds, is vociferous. They make plenty of noise
at their work, these fellows. Darkly the cormorant shoots across our
track. The air is filled with a confused medley of sweet,
melancholy, and querulous notes. As we proceed, a quick head ducks;
a troop of birds sinks suddenly to reappear far behind, or perhaps
strips off the surface of the water, taking wing with a shrill cry of
complaint. Occasionally, too, a porpoise, or "fish that hugest swims
the ocean stream," heaves itself slowly out of the element, its wet
sides flashing for a moment in the sunlight, and then heeling lazily
over, sinks with never a ripple. As we approached the Strathaird
coast, M'Ian sat high in the bow smoking, and covering with his gun
every now and again some bird which came wheeling near, while the
boatmen joked, and sang snatches of many-chorused songs. As the
coast behind became gradually indistinct, the coast in front grew
bolder and bolder. You let your hand over the side of the boat and
play listlessly with the water. You are lapped in a dream of other
days. Your heart is chanting ancient verses and sagas. The northern
sea wind that filled the sails of the Vikings, and lifted their locks
of tarnished gold, is playing in your hair. And when the keel grates
on the pebbles at Kilmaree you are brought back to your proper
century and self--for by that sign you know that your voyage is over
for the present, and that the way to Coruisk is across the steep hill
in front.
[Sidenote: Camasunary.]
The boat was moored to a rude pier of stones, very similar to the one
from which we started a couple of hours before, the guns were taken
out, so was also the basket of provisions, and then the party, in
long-drawn straggling procession, began to ascend the hill. The
ascent is steep and laborious. At times you wade through heather as
high as your knee; at other times you find yourself in a bog, and
must jump perforce from solid turf to turf. Progress is necessarily
slow; and the sun coming out strongly makes the brows ache with
intolerable heat. The hill-top is reached at last, and you behold a
magnificent sight. Beneath, a blue Loch flows in, on the margin of
which stands the solitary farm-house of Camasunary. Out on the
smooth sea sleep the islands of Rum and Canna--Rum towered and
mountainous, Canna flat and fertile. On the opposite side of the
Loch, and beyond the solitary farm-house, a great hill breaks down
into ocean with shelf and precipice. On the right Blaavin towers up
into the mists of the morning, and at his base opens the desolate
Glen Sligachan, to which Glencoe is Arcady. On the left, the eye
travels along the whole south-west side of the island to the Sound of
Sleat, to the hills of Knoydart, to the long point of Ardnamurchan,
dim on the horizon. In the presence of all this we sink down in
heather or on boulder, and wipe our heated foreheads; in the presence
of all this M'Ian hands round the flask, which is received with the
liveliest gratitude. In a quarter of an hour we begin the descent,
and in another quarter of an hour we are in the valley, and
approaching the solitary farm-house. While about three hundred yards
from the door a man issued therefrom and came towards us. It would
have been difficult to divine from dress and appearance what order of
man this was. He was evidently not a farmer, he was as evidently not
a sportsman. His countenance was grave, his eye was bright, but you
could make little out of either; about him there was altogether a
listless and a weary look. He seemed to me to have held too constant
communion with the ridges of Blaavin and the desolations of Glen
Sligachan. He was not a native of these parts, for he spoke with an
English accent. [Sidenote: The tobacco-less man.] He addressed us
frankly, discussed the weather, told us the family was from home, and
would be absent for some weeks yet; that he had seen us coming down
the hill, and that, weary of rocks and sheep and sea-birds, he had
come out to meet us. He then expressed a wish that we would oblige
him with tobacco, that is, if we were in a position to spare any:
stating that tobacco he generally procured from Broadford in rolls of
a pound weight at a time; that he had finished his last roll some ten
days ago, and that till this period, from some unaccountable
accident, the roll, which was more than a week due, had never
arrived. He feared it had got lost on the way--he feared that the
bearer had been tempted to smoke a pipe of it, and had been so
charmed with its exquisite flavour that he had been unable to stir
from the spot until he had smoked the entire roll out. He rather
thought the bearer would be about the end of the roll now, and that,
conscious of his atrocious conduct, he would never appear before him,
but would fly the country--go to America, or the Long Island, or some
other place where he could hold his guilt a secret. He had found the
paper in which the last roll had been wrapt, had smoked _that_, and
by a strong effort of imagination had contrived to extract from it
considerable enjoyment. And so we made a contribution of bird's-eye
to the tobacco-less man, for which he returned us politest thanks,
and then strolled carelessly toward Glen Sligachan--probably to look
out for the messenger who had been so long on the way.
"Who is our friend?" I asked of my companion. "He seems to talk in a
rambling and fanciful manner."
"I have never seen him before," said M'Ian; "but I suspect he is one
of those poor fellows who, from extravagance, or devotion to opium or
strong waters, have made a mull of life, and who are sent here to end
it in a quiet way. We have lots of them everywhere."
"But," said I, "this seems the very worst place you could send such a
man to--it's like sending a man into a wilderness with his remorse.
It is only in the world, amid its noise, its ambitions, its
responsibilities, that men pick themselves up. Sea-birds, and misty
mountains, and rain, and silence are the worst companions for such a
man."
"But then, you observe, sea-birds, and misty mountains, and rain, and
silence hold their tongues, and take no notice of peccadilloes.
Whatever may be their faults, they are not scandal-mongers. The
doings in Skye do not cause blushes in London. The man dies here as
silently as a crow; it is only a black-bordered letter, addressed in
a strange hand, that tells the news; and the black-bordered epistle
can be thrown into the fire--if the poor mother does not clutch at it
and put it away--and no one be a bit the wiser. It is sometimes to
the advantage of his friends that a man should go into the other
world by the loneliest and most sequestered path."
So talking, we passed the farm-house, which, with the exception of a
red-headed damsel, who thrust her head out of a barn to stare, seemed
utterly deserted, and bent our steps towards the shore of the Loch.
Rough grass bordered a crescent of yellow sand, and on the rough
grass a boat lay on its side, its pitchy seams blistering in the
early sunshine. Of this boat we immediately took possession, dragged
it down to the sea margin, got in our guns and provisions, tumbled in
stones for ballast, procured oars, and pushed of. We had to round
the great hill which, from the other side of the valley, we had seen
breaking down into the sea; and as we sailed and looked up, sheep
were feeding on the green shelves, and every now and again a white
smoke of sea-birds burst out dangerously from the black precipices.
Slowly rounding the rocky buttress, which on stormy days the Atlantic
fillips with its spray, another headland, darker still and drearier,
drew slowly out to sea, and in a quarter of an hour we had passed
from the main ocean into Loch Scavaig, and every pull of the oars
revealed another ridge of the Cuchullins. Between these mountain
ramparts we sailed, silent as a boatful of souls being conveyed to
some Norse hades. [Sidenote: Lock Coruisk.] The Cuchullins were
entirely visible now; and the sight midway up Loch Scavaig is more
impressive even than when you stand on the ruined shore of Loch
Coruisk itself--for the reason, perhaps, that, sailing midway, the
mountain forms have a startling unexpectedness, while by the time you
have pulled the whole way up, you have had time to master them to
some extent, and familiarity has begun to dull the impression. In
half an hour or so we disembarked on a rude platform of rock, and
stepped out on the very spot on which, according to Sir Walter, the
Bruce landed:
"Where a wild stream with headlong shock
Comes brawling down a bed of rock
To mingle with the main."
Picking your steps carefully over huge boulder and slippery stone,
you come upon the most savage scene of desolation in Britain.
Conceive a large lake filled with dark green water, girt with torn
and shattered precipices; the bases of which are strewn with ruin
since an earthquake passed that way, and whose summits jag the sky
with grisly splinter and peak. There is no motion here save the
white vapour steaming from the abyss. The utter silence weighs like
a burden upon you: you feel an intruder in the place. The hills seem
to possess some secret; to brood over some unutterable idea which you
can never know. You cannot feel comfortable at Loch Coruisk, and the
discomfort arises in a great degree from the feeling that you are
outside of everything--that the thunder-splitten peaks have a life
with which you cannot intermeddle. The dumb monsters sadden and
perplex. Standing there, you are impressed with the idea that the
mountains are silent because they are listening so intently. And the
mountains are listening, else why do they echo our voices in such a
wonderful way? Shout here like an Achilles in the trenches. Listen!
The hill opposite takes up your words, and repeats them one after
another, and curiously tries them over with the gravity of a raven.
Immediately after, you hear a multitude of skyey voices.
"Methinks that there are spirits among the peaks."
How strangely the clear strong tones are repeated by these granite
precipices! Who could conceive that Horror had so sweet a voice!
Fainter and more musical they grow; fainter, sweeter, and more
remote, until at last they come on your ear as if from the blank of
the sky itself. M'Ian fired his gun, and it reverberated into a
whole battle of Waterloo. We kept the hills busy with shouts and the
firing of guns, and then M'Ian led us to a convenient place for
lunching. As we trudge along something lifts itself off a rock--'tis
an eagle. See how grandly the noble creature soars away. What sweep
of wings! What a lord of the air! And if you cast up your eyes you
will see his brother hanging like a speck beneath the sun. Under
M'Ian's guidance, we reached the lunching-place, unpacked our basket,
devoured our bread and cold mutton, drank our bottled beer, and then
lighted our pipes and smoked--in the strangest presence. Thereafter
we bundled up our things, shouldered our guns, and marched in the
track of ancient Earthquake towards our boat. Embarked once again,
and sailing between the rocky portals of Loch Scavaig, I said, "I
would not spend a day in that solitude for the world. I should go
mad before evening."
"Nonsense," said M'Ian. "Sportsmen erect tents at Coruisk, and stay
there by the week--capital trout, too, are to be had in the Loch.
The photographer, with his camera and chemicals, is almost always
here, and the hills sit steadily for their portraits. It's as well
you have seen Coruisk before its glory has departed. Your friend,
the Landlord, talks of mooring a floating hotel at the head of Loch
Scavaig full of sleeping apartments, the best of meats and drinks,
and a brass band to perform the newest operatic tunes on the summer
evenings. At the clangour of the brass band the last eagle will take
his flight for Harris."
"The Tourist comes, and poetry flies before him as the red man flies
before the white. His Tweeds will make the secret top of Sinai
commonplace some day."