A SUMMER IN SKYE
BY ALEXANDER SMITH
AUTHOR OF "A LIFE DRAMA," ETC.
VOLUME II.
ALEXANDER STRAHAN, PUBLISHER
148 STRAND, LONDON
1865
CONTENTS OF VOL. II.
THE LANDLORD'S WALK
ORBOST AND DUNVEGAN
DUNTULM
JOHN PENRUDDOCK
A SMOKING PARLIAMENT
THE EMIGRANTS
HOMEWARDS
GLASGOW
HOME
A SUMMER IN SKYE.
_THE LANDLORD'S WALK._
Walking into the interior of Skye is like walking into antiquity; the
present is behind you, your face is turned toward Ossian. In the
quiet silent wilderness you think of London, Liverpool, Edinburgh, or
whatever great city it may be given you to live and work in, as of
something of which you were cognisant in a former existence. Not
only do you breathe the air of antiquity; but everything about you is
a veritable antique. The hut by the road-side, thatched with turfs,
smoke issuing from the roof, is a specimen of one of the oldest
styles of architecture in the world. The crooked spade with which
the crofter turns over the sour ground carries you away into fable.
You remove a pile of stones on the moor, and you come to a flagged
chamber in which there is a handful of human bones--whose, no one can
tell. Duntulm and Dunsciach moulder on their crags, but the song the
passing milkmaid sings is older than they. You come upon old swords
that were once bright and athirst for blood; old brooches that once
clasped plaids; old churchyards with carvings of unknown knights on
the tombs; and old men who seem to have inherited the years of the
eagle or the crow. These human antiques are, in their way, more
interesting than any other: they are the most precious objects of
_virtu_ of which the island can boast. And at times, if you can keep
ear and eye open, you stumble on forms of life, relations of master
and servant, which are as old as the castle on the crag or the cairn
of the chief on the moor. Cash payment is not the "sole nexus
between man and man." In these remote regions your servants'
affection for you is hereditary as their family name or their family
ornaments; your foster-brother would die willingly for you; and if
your nurse had the writing of your epitaph, you would be the bravest,
strongest, handsomest man that ever walked in shoe leather or out of
it.
[Sidenote: Mr M'Ian's house]
The house of my friend Mr M'Ian is set down on the shore of one of
the great Lochs that intersect the island; and as it was built in
smuggling times, its windows look straight down the Loch towards the
open sea. Consequently at night, when lighted up, it served all the
purposes of a lighthouse: and the candle in the porch window, I am
told, has often been anxiously watched by the rough crew engaged in
running a cargo of claret or brandy from Bordeaux. Right opposite,
on the other side of the Loch, is the great rugged fringe of the
Cuchullin hills; and lying on the dry summer grass you can see it,
under the influence of light and shade, change almost as the
expression of a human face changes. Behind the house the ground is
rough and broken, every hollow filled, every knoll plumaged with
birches, and between the leafy islands, during the day, rabbits scud
continually, and in the evening they sit in the glades and wash their
innocent faces. A mile or two back from the house a glen opens into
soft green meadows, through which a stream flows; and on these
meadows Mr M'Ian, when the weather permits, cuts and secures his hay.
The stream is quiet enough usually, but after a heavy day's rain, or
when a waterspout has burst up among the hills, it comes down with a
vengeance, carrying everything before it. On such occasions its roar
may be heard a mile away. [Sidenote: View from the bridge.] About a
pistol-shot from the house the river is crossed by a plank bridge,
and in fine weather it is a great pleasure to sit down there and look
about one. The stream flows sluggishly over rocks, in the deep
places of a purple or port-wine colour, and lo! behind you, through
the arch, slips a sunbeam, and just beneath the eye there gleams a
sudden chasm of brilliant amber. The sea is at ebb, and the shore is
covered with stones and dark masses of sea-weed; and the rocks a
hundred yards off--in their hollows they hold pools of clear
sea-water in which you can find curious and delicately-coloured ocean
blooms--are covered with orange lichens, which contrast charmingly
with the masses of tawny dulse and the stone-littered shore on the
one side, and the keen blue of the sea on the other. Beyond the blue
of the sea the great hills rise, with a radiant vapour flowing over
their crests. Immediately to the left a spur of high ground runs out
to the sea edge,--the flat top smooth and green as a billiard table,
the sheep feeding on it white as billiard balls,--and at the foot of
this spur of rock a number of huts are collected. They are half lost
in an azure veil of smoke, you smell the peculiar odour of peat reek,
you see the nets lying out on the grass to dry, you hear the voices
of children. Immediately above, and behind the huts and the spur of
high ground, the hill falls back, the whole breast of it shaggy with
birch-wood; and just at the top you see a clearing and a streak of
white stony road, leading into some other region as solitary and
beautiful as the one in which you at present are. And while you sit
on the bridge in a state of half-sleepy contentment--a bee nuzzling
in a bell-shaped flower within reach of your stick, the sea-gulls
dancing silent quadrilles overhead, the white lightning flash of a
rabbit from copse to copse twenty yards off--you hear a sharp
whistle, then a shout, and looking round there is M'Ian himself
standing on a height, his figure clear against the sky: and
immediately the men tinkering the boat on the shore drop work and
stand and stare, and out of the smoke that wraps the cottages rushes
bonnetless, Lachlan Dhu, or Donald Roy, scattering a brood of poultry
in his haste, and marvelling much what has moved his master to such
unwonted exertion.
My friend's white house is a solitary one, no other dwelling of the
same kind being within eight miles of it. In winter, wind and rain
beat it with a special spite; and the thunder of the sea creeps into
your sleeping ears, and your dreams are of breakers and reefs, and
ships going to pieces, and the cries of drowning men. In summer, it
basks as contentedly on its green knoll; green grass, with the daisy
wagging its head in the soft wind, runs up to the very door of the
porch. But although solitary enough--so solitary; that if you are
asked to dine with your nearest neighbour you must mount and
ride--there are many more huts about than those we have seen nestling
on the shore beneath the smooth green plateau on which sheep are
feeding. If you walk along to the west,--and a rough path it is, for
your course is over broken boulders,--you come on a little bay with
an eagle's nest of a castle perched on a cliff, and there you will
find a school-house and a half-a-dozen huts, the blue smoke steaming
out of the crannies in the walls and roofs. Dark pyramids of peat
are standing about, sheep and cows are feeding on the bits of
pasture, gulls are weaving their eternal dances above, and during the
day the school-room is murmuring like a beehive--only a much less
pleasant task than the making of honey is going on within.
[Sidenote: The pensioner.] Behind the house to the east, hidden by
the broken ground and the masses of birch-wood, is another collection
of huts; and in one of these lives the most interesting man in the
place. He is an old pensioner, who has seen service in different
quarters of the world; and frequently have I carried him a string of
pigtail, and shared his glass of usquebaugh, and heard him, as he sat
on a stone in the sunshine, tell tales of barrack life in Jamaica; of
woody wildernesses filled with gorgeous undergrowth, of parasites
that climbed like fluttering tongues of fire, and of the noisy towns
of monkeys and parrots in the upper branches. I have heard him also
severely critical on the different varieties of rum. Of every fiery
compound he had a catholic appreciation, but rum was his special
favourite--being to him what a Greek text was to Person, or an old
master to Sir George Beaumont. So that you see, although Mr M'Ian's
house was in a sense solitary, yet it was not altogether bereaved of
the sight and sense of human habitations. On the farm there were
existing perhaps, women and children included, some sixty souls; and
to these the relation of the master was peculiar, and perhaps without
a parallel in the island.
[Sidenote: Rude courts of justice.]
When, nearly half-a-century ago, Mr M'Ian left the army and became
tacksman, he found cotters on his farm, and thought their presence as
much a matter of course as that limpets should be found upon his
rocks. They had their huts, for which they paid no rent; they had
their patches of corn and potato ground, for which they paid no rent.
There they had always been, and there, so far as Mr M'Ian was
concerned, they would remain. He had his own code of generous
old-fashioned ethics, to which he steadily adhered; and the man who
was hard on the poor, who would dream of driving them from the places
in which they were born, seemed to him to break the entire round of
the Commandments. Consequently the huts still smoked on the hem of
the shore and among the clumps of birch-wood. The children who
played on the green when he first became tacksman grew up in process
of time, and married; and on these occasions he not only sent them
something on which to make merry withal, but he gave them--what they
valued more--his personal presence; and he made it a point of honour,
when the ceremony was over, to dance the first reel with the bride.
When old men or children were sick, cordials and medicines were sent
from the house; when old man or child died, Mr M'Ian never failed to
attend the funeral. He was a Justice of the Peace; and when disputes
arose amongst his own cotters, or amongst the cotters of
others--when, for instance, Katy M'Lure accused Effie M'Kean of
stealing potatoes; when Red Donald raged against Black Peter on some
matter relating to the sale of a dozen lambs; when Mary, in her anger
at the loss of her sweetheart, accused Betty (to whom said sweetheart
had transferred his allegiance) of the most flagrant breaches of
morality--the contending parties were sure to come before my friend;
and many a rude court of justice I have seen him hold at the door of
his porch. Arguments were heard _pro_ and _con_, witnesses were
examined, evidence was duly sifted and weighed, judgment was made,
and the case dismissed; and I believe these decisions gave in the
long run as much satisfaction as those delivered in Westminster or
the Edinburgh Parliament-House. Occasionally, too, a single girl or
shepherd, with whose character liberties were being taken, would be
found standing at the porch-door anxious to make oath that they were
innocent of the guilt or the impropriety laid to their charge. Mr
M'Ian would come out and hear the story, make the party assert his or
her innocence on oath, and deliver a written certificate to the
effect that in his presence, on such and such a day, so and so had
sworn that certain charges were unfounded, false, and malicious.
Armed with this certificate, the aspersed girl or shepherd would
depart in triumph. He or she had passed through the ordeal by oath,
and nothing could touch them farther.
[Sidenote: Mr M'Ian's cotters.]
Mr M'Ian paid rent for the entire farm; but to him the cotters paid
no rent, either for their huts or for their patches of corn and
potato ground. But the cotters were by no means merely
pensioners--taking, and giving nothing in return. The most active of
the girls were maids of various degree in Mr M'Ian's house; the
cleverest and strongest of the lads acted as shepherds, &c.; and
these of course received wages. The grown men amongst the cotters
were generally at work in the south, or engaged in fishing
expeditions, during summer; so that the permanent residents on the
farm were chiefly composed of old men, women, and children. When
required, Mr M'Ian demands the services of these people just as he
would the services of his household servants, and they comply quite
as readily. If the crows are to be kept out of the corn, or the cows
out of the turnip-field, an urchin is remorselessly reft away from
his games and companions. If a boat is out of repair, old Dugald is
deputed to the job, and when his task is completed, he is rewarded
with ten minutes' chat and a glass of spirits up at the house. When
fine weather comes, every man, woman, and child is ordered to the
hay-field, and Mr M'Ian potters amongst them the whole day, and takes
care that no one shirks his duty. When his corn or barley is ripe
the cotters cut it, and when the harvest operations are completed, he
gives the entire cotter population a dance and harvest-home. But
between Mr M'Ian and his cotters no money passes; by a tacit
understanding he is to give them house, corn-ground, potato-ground,
and they are to remunerate him with labour.
[Sidenote: Mr M'Ian's old-fashioned speech.]
Mr M'Ian, it will be seen, is a conservative, and hates change; and
the social system by which he is surrounded wears an ancient and
patriarchal aspect to a modern eye. It is a remnant of the system of
clanship. The relation of cotter and tacksman, which I have
described, is a bit of antiquity quite as interesting as the old
castle on the crag--nay, more interesting, because we value the old
castle mainly in virtue of its representing an ancient form of life,
and here is yet lingering a fragment of the ancient form of life
itself. You dig up an ancient tool or weapon in a moor, and place it
carefully in a museum: here, as it were, is the ancient tool or
weapon in actual use. No doubt Mr M'Ian's system has grave defects:
it perpetuates comparative wretchedness on the part of the cotters,
it paralyses personal exertion, it begets an ignoble contentment; but
on the other hand it sweetens sordid conditions, so far as they can
be sweetened, by kindliness and good services. If Mr M'Ian's system
is bad, he makes the best of it, and draws as much comfort and
satisfaction out of it, both for himself and for others, as is
perhaps possible. Mr M'Ian's speech was as old-fashioned as he was
himself; ancient matters turned up on his tongue just as ancient
matters turned up on his farm. You found an old grave or an old
implement on the one, you found an old proverb or an old scrap of a
Gaelic poem on the other. After staying with him some ten days, I
intimated my intention of paying a visit to my friend the
Landlord--with whom Fellowes was then staying--who lived some forty
miles off in the north-western portion of the island. The old
gentleman was opposed to rapid decisions and movements, and asked me
to remain with him yet another week. When he found I was resolute he
glanced at the weather-gleam, and the troops of mists gathering on
Cuchullin, muttering as he did so, "'Make ready my galley,' said the
king, 'I shall sail for Norway on Wednesday.' 'Will you,' said the
wind, who, flying about, had overheard what was said, 'you had better
ask my leave first.'"
[Sidenote: The Landlord.]
Between the Landlord and M'Ian there were many likenesses and
divergences. Both were Skyemen by birth, both had the strongest love
for their native island, both had the management of human beings,
both had shrewd heads, and hearts of the kindest texture. But at
this point the likenesses ended, and the divergences began. Mr M'Ian
had never been out of the three kingdoms. The Landlord had spent the
best part of his life in India, was more familiar with huts of ryots,
topes of palms, tanks in which the indigo plant was steeping, than
with the houses of Skye cotters and the processes of sheep-farming.
He knew the streets of Benares or Delhi better than he knew the
streets of London; and, when he first came home, Hindostanee would
occasionally jostle Gaelic on his tongue. The Landlord too, was
rich, would have been considered a rich man even in the southern
cities; he was owner of many a mile of moorland, and the tides of
more than one far-winding Loch rose and rippled on shores that called
him master. In my friend the Landlord there was a sort of
contrariety, a sort of mixture or blending of opposite elements which
was not without its fascination. He was in some respects a resident
in two worlds. He liked motion; he had a magnificent scorn of
distance: to him the world seemed comparatively small; and he would
start from Skye to India with as much composure as other men would
take the night train to London. He paid taxes in India and he paid
taxes in Skye. His name was as powerful in the markets of Calcutta
as it was at the Muir of Ord. He read the _Hurkaru_ and the
_Inverness Courier_. He had known the graceful salaam of the East,
as he now knew the touched bonnets of his shepherds. And in living
with him, in talking with him, one was now reminded of the green
western island on which sheep fed, anon of tropic heats, of pearl and
gold, of mosque and pinnacle glittering above belts of palm-trees.
In his company you were in imagination travelling backwards and
forwards. You made the overland route twenty times a day. Now you
heard the bagpipe, now the monotonous beat of the tom-tom and the
keen clash of silver cymbals. You were continually passing backwards
and forwards, as I have said. You were in the West with your
half-glass of bitters in the morning, you were in the East with the
curry at dinner. Both Mr M'Ian and the Landlord had the management
of human beings, but their methods of management were totally
different. Mr M'Ian accepted matters as he found them, and
originating nothing, changing nothing, contrived to make life for
himself and others as pleasant as possible. The Landlord, when he
entered on the direction of his property, exploded every ancient form
of usage, actually _ruled_ his tenants; would permit no factor,
middle-man, or go-between; met them face to face, and had it out with
them. The consequence was that the poor people were at times sorely
bewildered. They received their orders and carried them out, with
but little sense of the ultimate purpose of the Landlord--just as the
sailor, ignorant of the principles of navigation, pulls ropes and
reefs sails and does not discover that he gains much thereby, the
same sea-crescent being around him day by day, but in due time a
cloud rises on the horizon, and he is in port at last.
[Sidenote: The waterspout.]
As M'Ian had predicted, I could only move from his house if the
weather granted permission; and this permission the weather did not
seem disposed to grant. For several days it rained as I had never
seen it rain before; a waterspout, too, had burst up among the hills,
and the stream came down in mighty flood. There was great hubbub at
the house. Mr M'Ian's hay, which was built in large stacks in the
valley meadows, was in danger, and the fiery cross was sent through
the cotters. Up to the hay-fields every available man was despatched
with carts and horses, to remove the stacks to some spot where the
waters could not reach them; while at the bridge nearer the house
women and boys were stationed with long poles, and what
rudely-extemporised implements Celtic ingenuity could suggest, to
intercept and fish out piles and trusses which the thievish stream
was carrying away with it seaward. These piles and trusses would at
least serve for the bedding of cattle. For three days the rainy
tempest continued; at last, on the fourth, mist and rain rolled up
like a vast curtain in heaven, and then again were visible the clumps
of birch-wood, and the bright sea and the smoking hills, and far away
on the ocean floor Rum and Canna, without a speck of cloud on them,
sleeping in the coloured calmness of early afternoon. This uprising
of the elemental curtain was, so far as the suddenness of the effect
was concerned, like the uprising of the curtain of the pantomime on
the transformation scene--all at once a dingy, sodden world had
become a brilliant one, and all the newly-revealed colour and
brilliancy promised to be permanent.
[Sidenote: The farm of Knock.]
Of this happy change in the weather I of course took immediate
advantage. About five o'clock in the afternoon my dog-cart was
brought to the door; and after a parting cup with Mr M'Ian--who pours
a libation both to his arriving and his departing guest--I drove away
on my journey to remote Portree, and to the unimagined country that
lay beyond Portree, but which I knew held Dunvegan, Duntulm,
Macleod's Tables, and Quirang. I drove up the long glen with a
pleasant exhilaration of spirit. I felt grateful to the sun, for he
had released me from rainy captivity. The drive, too, was pretty;
the stream came rolling down in foam, the smell of the wet
birch-trees was in the brilliant air, every mountain-top was
strangely and yet softly distinct; and looking back, there were the
blue Cuchullins looking after me, as if bidding me farewell! At last
I reached the top of the glen, and emerged on a high plateau of
moorland, in which were dark inky tarns with big white water-lilies
on them; and skirting across the plateau I dipped down on the
parliamentary road, which, like a broad white belt, surrounds Skye.
Better road to drive on you will not find in the neighbourhood of
London itself! and just as I was descending, I could not help
pulling up. The whole scene was of the extremest beauty--exquisitely
calm, exquisitely coloured. On my left was a little lake with a
white margin of water-lilies, a rocky eminence throwing a shadow
half-way across it. Down below, on the sea-shore, was the farm of
Knock, with white outhouses and pleasant patches of cultivation, the
school-house, and the church, while on a low spit of land the old
castle of the Macdonalds was mouldering. Still lower down and
straight away stretched the sleek blue Sound of Sleat, with not a
sail or streak of steamer smoke to break its vast expanse, and with a
whole congregation of clouds piled up on the horizon, soon to wear
their evening colours. I let the sight slowly creep into my study of
imagination, so that I might be able to reproduce it at pleasure;
that done, I drove down to Isle Oronsay by pleasant sloping stages of
descent, with green hills on right and left, and along the roadside,
like a guard of honour, the purple stalks of the foxglove.
[Sidenote: Mr Fraser's trouts.]
The evening sky was growing red above me when I drove into Isle
Oronsay, which consists of perhaps fifteen houses in all. It sits on
the margin of a pretty bay, in which the cry of the fisher is
continually heard, and into which the _Clansman_ going to or coming
from the south steams twice or thrice in the week. At a little
distance is a lighthouse with a revolving light.--an idle building
during the day, but when night comes, awakening to full
activity,--sending now a ray to Ardnamurchan, now piercing with a
fiery arrow the darkness of Glenelg. In Isle Oronsay is a merchant's
shop, in which every conceivable article may be obtained. At Isle
Oronsay the post-runner drops a bag, as he hies on to Armadale
Castle. At Isle Oronsay I supped with my friend Mr Fraser. From him
I learned that the little village had been, like M'Ian's house,
fiercely scourged by rains. On the supper-table was a dish of
trouts. "Where do you suppose I procured these?" he asked. "In one
of your burns, I suppose." "No such thing; I found them in my
potato-field." "In your potato-field! How came that about?" "Why,
you see the stream, swollen by three days' rain, broke over a
potato-field of mine on the hill-side and carried the potatoes away,
and left these plashing in pool and runnel. The Skye streams have a
slight touch of honesty in them!" I smiled at the conceit, and
expounded to my host the law of compensation which pervades the
universe, of which I maintained the trouts on the table were a
shining example. Mr Fraser assented; but held that Nature was a poor
valuator--that her knowledge of the doctrine of equivalents was
slightly defective--that the trouts were well enough, but no
reimbursement for the potatoes that were gone.
Next morning I resumed my journey. The road, so long as it skirted
the sea-shore, was pretty enough; but the sea-shore it soon left, and
entered a waste of brown monotonous moorland. The country round
about abounds in grouse, and was the favourite shooting-ground of the
late Lord Macdonald. By the road-side his lordship had erected a
stable and covered the roof with tin; and so at a distance it flashed
as if the Koh-i-noor had been dropped by accident in that dismal
region. As I went along, the hills above Broadford began to rise;
then I drove down the slope, on which the market was held--the tents
all struck, but the stakes yet remaining in the ground--and after
passing the six houses, the lime-kiln, the church, and the two
merchants' shops, I pulled up at the inn door, and sent the horse
round to the stable to feed and to rest an hour.
[Sidenote: Island of Scalpa.]
After leaving Broadford the traveller drives along the margin of the
ribbon of salt water which flows between Skye and the Island of
Scalpa. Up this narrow sound the steamer never passes, and it is
only navigated by the lighter kinds of sailing craft. Scalpa is a
hilly island of some three or four miles in length, by one and a half
in breadth, is gray-green in colour, and as treeless as the palm of
your hand. It has been the birthplace of many soldiers. After
passing Scalpa the road ascends; and you notice as you drive along
that during the last hour or so the frequent streams have changed
colour. In the southern portion of the island they come down as if
the hills ran sherry--here they are pale as shallow sea-water. This
difference of hue arises of course from a difference of bed. About
Broadford they come down through the mossy moorland, here they run
over marble. Of marble the island is full; and it is not impossible
that the sculptors of the twentieth century will patronise the
quarries of Strath and Kyle rather than the quarries of Carrara. But
wealth is needed to lay bare these mineral treasures. The fine
qualities of Skye marble will never be obtained until they are laid
open by a golden pickaxe.
Once you have passed Scalpa you approach Lord Macdonald's deer
forest. You have turned the flank of the Cuchullins now, and are
taking them in rear, and you skirt their bases very closely too. The
road is full of wild ascents and descents, and on your left, for a
couple of miles or so, you are in continual presence of bouldered
hill-side sloping away upward to some invisible peak, overhanging
wall of wet black precipice, far-off serrated ridge that cuts the sky
like a saw. Occasionally these mountain forms open up and fall back,
and you see the sterilest valleys running no man knows whither.
Altogether the hills here have a strange weird look. Each is as
closely seamed with lines as the face of a man of a hundred, and
these myriad reticulations are picked out with a pallid gray-green,
as if through some mineral corrosion. Passing along you are
strangely impressed with the idea that some vast chemical experiment
has been going on for some thousands of years; that the region is
nature's laboratory, and that down these wrinkled hill-fronts she had
spilt her acids and undreamed-of combinations. You never think of
verdure in connexion with that net-work of gray-green, but only of
rust, or of some metallic discoloration. You cannot help fancying
that if a sheep fed on one of those hill-sides it would to a
certainty be poisoned. Altogether the sight is very grand, very
impressive, and very uncomfortable, and it is with the liveliest
satisfaction that, tearing down one of the long descents, you turn
your back on the mountain monsters, and behold in front the green
Island of Raasay, with its imposing modern mansion, basking in
sunshine. It is like passing from the world of the gnomes to the
world of men.
[Sidenote: Lord Macdonald's forest.]
I have driven across Lord Macdonald's deer forest in sunshine and in
rain, and am constrained to confess that, under the latter
atmospherical condition, the scenery is the more imposing. Some
months ago I drove in the mail-gig from Sligachan to Broadford.
There was a high wind, the sun was bright, and consequently a great
carry and flight of sunny vapours. All at once, too, every half-hour
or so, the turbulent brightness of wind and cloud was extinguished by
fierce squalls of rain. You could see the coming rain-storm blown
out on the wind toward you like a sheet of muslin cloth. On it came
racing in its strength and darkness, the long straight watery lines
pelting on road and rock, churning in marsh and pool. Over the
unhappy mail-gig it rushed, bidding defiance to plaid or waterproof
cape, and wetting every one to the skin. The mail jogged on as best
it could through the gloom and the fury, and then the sunshine came
again making to glisten, almost too brightly for the eye, every
rain-pool on the road. In the sunny intervals there was a great race
and hurry of towered vapour, as I said; and when a shining mass smote
one of the hill-sides, or shrouded for a while one of the more
distant serrated crests, the concussion was so palpable to the eye
that the ear felt defrauded, and silence seemed unnatural. And when
the vast mass passed onward to impinge on some other mountain
barrier, it was singular to notice by what slow degrees, with what
evident reluctance the laggard skirts combed off. [Sidenote: The
meek-faced man of fifty.] All these effects of rain and windy vapour
I remember vividly, and I suppose that the vividness was partly due
to the lamentable condition of a fellow-traveller. He was a
meek-faced man of fifty. He was dressed in sables, his
swallow-tailed coat was thread-bare, and withal seemed made for a
smaller man. There was an uncomfortable space between the wrists of
his coat and his black-thread gloves. He wore a hat, and against the
elements had neither the protection of plaid nor umbrella. No one
knew him, to no one did he explain his business. To my own notion he
was bound for a funeral at some place beyond Portree. He was not a
clergyman--he might have been a schoolmaster who had become
green-moulded in some out-of-the-way locality. Of course one or two
of the rainy squalls settled the meek-faced man in the thread-bare
sables. Emerging from one of these he resembled a draggled rook, and
the rain was pouring from the brim of his pulpy hat as it might from
the eaves of a cottage. A passenger handed him his spirit-flask, the
meek-faced man took a hearty pull, and returning it, said
plaintively, "I'm but poorly clad, sir, for this God-confounded
climate." I think often of the utterance of the poor fellow: it was
the only thing he said all the way; and when I think of it, I see
again the rain blown out towards me on the wind like a waving sheet
of muslin cloth, and the rush, the concussion, the upbreak, and the
slow reluctant trailing off from the hill-side of the sunny cloud.
The poor man's plaintive tone is the anchor which holds these things
in my memory.
The forest is of course treeless. Nor are deer seen there
frequently. Although I have crossed it frequently, only once did I
get a sight of antlers. Carefully I crept up, sheltering myself
behind a rocky haunch of the hill to where the herd were lying, and
then rushed out upon them with a halloo. In an instant they were on
their feet, and away went the beautiful creatures, doe and fawn, a
stag with branchy head leading. They dashed across a torrent,
crowned an eminence one by one and disappeared. Such a sight is
witnessed but seldom; and the traveller passing through the brown
desolation sees usually no sign of life. In Lord Macdonald's deer
forest neither trees nor deer are visible.
When once you get quit of the forest you come on a shooting-box,
perched on the sea-shore; then you pass the little village of
Sconser; and, turning the sharp flank of a hill, drive along Loch
Sligachan to Sligachan Inn, about a couple of miles distant. This
inn is a famous halting-place for tourists. There are good fishing
streams about, I am given to understand, and through Glen Sligachan
you can find your way to Camasunary, and take the boat from thence to
Loch Coruisk, as we did. It was down this glen that the messenger
was to have brought the tobacco to our peculiar friend. If you go
you may perhaps find his skeleton scientifically articulated by the
carrion crow and the raven. From the inn door the ridges of the
Cuchullins are seen wildly invading the sky, and in closer proximity
there are other hills which cannot be called beautiful. Monstrous,
abnormal, chaotic, they resemble the other hills on the earth's
surface, as Hindoo deities resemble human beings. The mountain,
whose sharp flank you turned after you passed Sconser, can be
inspected leisurely now, and is to my mind supremely ugly. In summer
it is red as copper, with great ragged patches of verdure upon it,
which look by all the world as if the coppery mass had _rusted_
green. On these green patches cattle feed from March to October.
You bait at Sligachan,--can dine on trout which a couple of hours
before were darting hither and thither in the stream, if you
like,--and then drive leisurely along to Portree while the setting
sun is dressing the wilderness in gold and rose. And all the way the
Cuchullins follow you; the wild irregular outline, which no
familiarity can stale, haunts you at Portree, as it does in nearly
every quarter of Skye.
[Sidenote: Portree.]
Portree folds two irregular ranges of white houses, the one range
rising steeply above the other, around a noble bay, the entrance to
which is guarded by rocky precipices. At a little distance the
houses are white as shells, and as in summer they are all set in the
greenness of foliage the effect is strikingly pretty; and if the
sense of prettiness departs to a considerable extent on a closer
acquaintance, there is yet enough left to gratify you so long as you
remain there, and to make it a pleasant place to think about when you
are gone. The lower range of houses consists mainly of warehouses
and fish-stores; the upper, of the main hotel, the two banks, the
court-house, and the shops. A pier runs out into the bay, and here,
when the state of tide permits, comes the steamer, on its way to or
from Stornoway and unlades. Should the tide be low the steamer lies
to in the bay, and her cargo and passengers come to shore by means of
boats. She usually arrives at night; and at low tide, the burning of
coloured lights at the mast-heads, the flitting hither and thither of
busy lanterns, the pier boats coming and going with illumined wakes,
and ghostly fires on the oar-blades, the clatter of chains and the
shock of the crank hoisting the cargo out of the hold, the general
hubbub and storm of Gaelic shouts and imprecations make the arrival
at once picturesque and impressive. In the bay the yacht of the
tourist is continually lying, and at the hotel door his dog-cart is
continually departing or arriving. In the hotel parties arrange to
visit Quirang or the Storr, and on the evenings of market-days, in
the large public rooms, farmers and cattle-dealers sit over tumblers
of smoking punch and discuss noisily the prices and the qualities of
stock. Besides the hotel and the pier, the banks, and the
court-house already mentioned, there are other objects of interest in
the little island town--three churches, a post-office, a poor-house,
and a cloth manufactory. And it has more than meets the eye--one of
the Jameses landed here on a visitation of the Isles, Prince Charles
was here on his way to Raasay, Dr Johnson and Boswell were here; and
somewhere on the green hill on which the pretty church stands, a
murderer is buried--the precise spot of burial is unknown, and so the
entire hill gets the credit that of right belongs only to a single
yard of it. In Portree the tourist seldom abides long; he passes
through it as a fortnight before he passed through Oban. It does not
seem to the visitor a specially remarkable place, but everything is
relative in this world. It is an event for the Islesman at Dunvegan
or the Point of Sleat to go to Portree, just as it is an event for a
Yorkshireman to go to London.
[Sidenote: Skeabost.]
When you drive out of Portree you are in Macleod's country, and you
discover that the character of the scenery has changed. Looking
back, the Cuchullins are wild and pale on the horizon, but everything
around is brown, softly-swelling, and monotonous. The hills are
round and low, and except when an occasional boulder crops out on
their sides like a wart, are smooth as a seal's back. They are
gray-green in colour, and may be grazed to the top. Expressing once
to a shepherd my admiration of the Cuchullins, the man replied, while
he swept with his arm the entire range, "There's no feeding there for
twenty wethers!" here, however, there is sufficient feeding to
compensate for any lack of beauty. About three miles out of Portree
you come upon a solitary-looking school-house by the wayside, and a
few yards farther to a division of the roads. A finger-post informs
you that the road to the right leads to Uig, that to the left to
Dunvegan. As I am at present bound for Dunvegan, I skirr along to
the left, and after an hour's drive come in sight of blue Loch
Snizort, with Skeabost sitting whitely on its margin. Far inland
from the broad Minch, like one of those wavering swords which
mediæval painters place in the hands of archangels, has Snizort come
wandering; and it is the curious mixture of brine and pasture-land,
of mariner life and shepherd life, which gives its charm to this
portion of the island. The Lochs are narrow, and you almost fancy a
strong-lunged man could shout across. The sea-gull skims above the
feeding sheep, the shepherd can watch the sail of the sloop, laden
with meal, creeping from point to point. In the spiritual atmosphere
of the country the superstitions of ocean and moorland mingle like
two odours. Above all places which I have seen in Skye, Skeabost has
a lowland look. There are almost no turf-huts to be seen in the
neighbourhood; the houses are built of stone and lime, and are tidily
white-washed. The hills are low and smooth; on the lower slopes corn
and wheat are grown; and from a little distance the greenness of
cultivation looks like a palpable smile--a strange contrast to the
monotonous district through which, for an hour or so, you have
driven. As you pass the inn, and drive across the bridge, you notice
that there is an island in the stony stream, and that this island is
covered with ruins. The Skyeman likes to bury his dead in islands,
and this one in the stream at Skeabost is a crowded cemetery. I
forded the stream, and wandered for an hour amongst the tombs and
broken stones. [Sidenote: The Island of Graves.] There are traces of
an ancient chapel on the island, but tradition does not even make a
guess at its builder's name or the date of its erection. There are
old slabs, lying sideways, with the figures of recumbent men with
swords in their hands, and inscriptions--indecipherable now--carved
on them. There is the grave of a Skye clergyman who, if his epitaph
is to be trusted, was a burning and a shining light in his day--a
gospel candle irradiating the Hebridean darkness. I never saw a
churchyard so mounded, and so evidently over-crowded. Here laird,
tacksman, and cotter elbow each other in death. Here no one will
make way for a new-comer, or give the wall to his neighbour. And
standing in the little ruined island of silence and the dead, with
the river perfectly audible on either side, one could not help
thinking what a picturesque sight a Highland funeral would be,
creeping across the moors with wailing pipe-music, fording the river,
and his bearers making room for the dead man amongst the older dead
as best they could. And this sight, I am told, may be seen any week
in the year. To this island all the funerals of the country-side
converge. Standing there, too, one could not help thinking that this
space of silence, girt by river noises, would be an _eerie_ place by
moonlight. The broken chapel, the carved slabs lying sideways, as if
the dead man beneath had grown restless and turned himself, and the
head-stones jutting out of the mounded soil at every variety of
angle, would appal in the ink of shadow and the silver of moonbeam.
In such circumstances one would hear something more in the stream as
it ran past than the mere breaking of water on stones.
After passing the river and the island of graves you drive down
between hedges to Skeabost church, school, post-office, and manse,
and thereafter you climb the steep hill towards Bernesdale and its
colony of turf-huts; and when you reach the top you have a noble view
of the flat blue Minch, and the Skye headlands, each precipitous,
abrupt, and reminding you somehow of a horse which has been suddenly
reined back to its haunches. The flowing lines of those headlands
suggest an onward motion, and then, all at once, they shrink back
upon themselves, as if they feared the roar of breakers and the smell
of the brine. But the grand vision is not of long duration, for the
road descends rapidly towards Taynlone Inn. In my descent I beheld
two bare-footed and bare-headed girls yoked to a harrow, and dragging
it up and down a small plot of delved ground.
[Sidenote: A Highland hut.]
Sitting in the inn I began to remember me how frequently I had heard
in the south of the destitution of the Skye people and the discomfort
of the Skye hut. During my wanderings I had the opportunity of
visiting several of these dwellings, and seeing how matters were
transacted within. Frankly speaking, the Highland hut is not a model
edifice. It is open to wind, and almost always pervious to rain. An
old bottomless herring-firkin stuck in the roof usually serves for
chimney, but the blue peat-reek disdains that aperture, and steams
wilfully through the door and the crannies in the walls and roof.
The interior is seldom well-lighted--what light there is proceeding
rather from the orange glow of the peat-fire, on which a large pot is
simmering, than from the narrow pane with its great bottle-green
bull's-eye. The rafters which support the roof are black and glossy
with soot, as you can notice by sudden flashes of firelight. The
sleeping accommodation is limited, and the beds are composed of
heather or ferns. The floor is the beaten earth, the furniture is
scanty; there is hardly ever a chair--stools and stones, worn smooth
by the usage of several generations, have to do instead. One portion
of the hut is not unfrequently a byre, and the breath of the cow is
mixed with the odour of peat-reek, and the baa of the calf mingles
with the wranglings and swift ejaculations of the infant Highlanders.
In such a hut as this there are sometimes three generations. The
mother stands knitting outside, the children are scrambling on the
floor with the terrier and the poultry, and a ray of cloudy sunshine
from the narrow pane smites the silver hairs of the grandfather near
the fire, who is mending fishing-nets against the return of his
son-in-law from the south. Am I inclined to lift my hands in horror
at witnessing such a dwelling? Certainly not. I have only given one
side of the picture. The hut I speak of nestles beneath a rock, on
the top of which dances the ash-tree and the birch. The emerald
mosses on its roof are softer and richer than the velvets of kings.
Twenty yards down that path you will find a well that needs no ice in
the dog-days. At a little distance, from rocky shelf to shelf, trips
a mountain burn, with abundance of trout in the brown pools. At the
distance of a mile is the sea, which is not allowed to ebb and flow
in vain; for in the smoke there is a row of fishes drying; and on the
floor a curly-headed urchin of three years or thereby is pommeling
the terrier with the scarlet claw of a lobster. Methought, too, when
I entered I saw beside the door a heap of oyster shells. Within the
hut there is good food, if a little scant at times; without there is
air that will call colour back to the cheek of an invalid, pure
water, play, exercise, work. That the people are healthy, you may
see from their strong frames, brown faces, and the age to which many
attain; that they are happy and light-hearted, the shouts of laughter
that ring round the peat-fire of an evening may be taken as
sufficient evidence. I protest I cannot become pathetic over the
Highland hut. I have sat in these turfen dwellings, amid the
surgings of blue smoke, and received hospitable welcome, and found
amongst the inmates good sense, industry, family affection,
contentment, piety, happiness. And when I have heard
philanthropists, with more zeal than discretion, maintain that these
dwellings are a disgrace to the country in which they are found, I
have thought of districts of great cities which I have seen,--within
the sound of the rich man's chariot wheels, within hearing of
multitudinous Sabbath bells--of evil scents and sights and sounds; of
windows stuffed with rags; of female faces that look out on you as
out of a sadder Inferno than that of Dante's; of faces of men
containing the debris of the entire decalogue, faces which hurt you
more than a blow would: of infants poisoned with gin, of children
bred for the prison and the hulks. Depend upon it there are worse
odours than peat smoke, worse next-door neighbours than a cow or a
brood of poultry; and although a couple of girls dragging a harrow be
hardly in accordance with our modern notions, yet we need not forget
that there are worse employment for girls than even that. I do not
stand up for the Highland hut; but in one of these smoky cabins I
would a thousand-fold rather spend my days than in the Cowgate of
Edinburgh, or in one of the streets that radiate from Seven Dials.
[Sidenote: A Highland village.]