you are surrounded by their outlying and far-radiating spurs. The
glen is some eight miles in length, and is wild and desolate beyond
conception. Walking along, too, the reticulations of the hills are
picked out with that pale greenish tint, which I had noted as
characteristic of the hills seen from Lord Macdonald's deer forest,
and which gives one the idea of the overflow of chemical fluids, of
metallic corrosions and discolorations. There is no proper path, and
you walk in the loose debris of torrents; and in Glen Sligachan, as
in many other parts of Skye, the scenery curiously repels you, and
drives you in on yourself. You have a quickened sense of your own
individuality. The enormous bulks, their gradual recedings to
invisible crests, their utter movelessness, their austere silence,
daunt you. You are conscious of their presence, and you hardly care
to speak lest you be overheard. You can't laugh. You would not
crack a joke for the world. Glen Sligachan would be the place to do
a little bit of self-examination in. There you would have a sense of
your own meannesses, selfishnesses, paltry evasions of truth and
duty, and find out what a shabby fellow you at heart are--and looking
up to your silent father-confessors, you would find no mercy in their
grim faces. I do not know what effect mountains have on the people
who live habitually amongst them, but the stranger they make serious
and grave at heart. Through this glen we trudged silently enough,
and when two-thirds of the distance had been accomplished, it was
with a feeling of relief that a lake was descried ahead. The sight
of anything mobile, of an element that could glitter and dimple and
dance, took away from the sense of the stony eternities, gray and
wrinkled as with the traces of long-forgotten passion, listening for
ever, dumb for ever. After rounding the lake, which plashed merrily
on its margin, and clambering over a long waste of boulder, we saw as
we ascended a low flank of Blaavin, the Bay of Camasunary, the house,
and the very boat which M'Ian had borrowed on the day we went to
visit Loch Coruisk, below us. The tobacco-less man was nowhere
visible, and I marvelled whether his messenger had yet returned from
Broadford.
[Sidenote: Kilmaree.]
When we got to the top of the hill we had to descend the slope to
Kilmaree; and as on my return from Loch Coruisk I had come down
pleasantly under the guidance of M'Ian, I fancied, naturally enough,
that I could act as guide on the present occasion. But there is a
knack in descending hills as there is in everything else. First of
all, I lost the narrow footpath at the top; then as we were bound to
reach Loch Eishart, and as Loch Eishart lay below us distinctly
visible, I led directly for it; but somehow we were getting
continually on the wrong bank of a pestilent stream, which, through
chasm and ravine, found its way to the sea by apparently the most
circuitous of courses. This stream we forded a dozen times at the
least, and sometimes in imminent danger of a ducking. It was now
late in the afternoon, and the weather had changed. The tops of the
hills began to be lost in mist, and long lines of sea fog to creep
along the lower grounds. There was at intervals a slow drizzle of
rain. Fetching a cunning circuit, as I supposed, we found the
inevitable stream again in our front, and got across it with
difficulty--happily for the last time. After we had proceeded about
a hundred yards we came upon the lost pathway, and in fifteen minutes
thereafter we were standing upon the shore of the Loch watching the
flying scud of Atlantic mist, and the green waves rolling underneath
with their white caps on.
[Sidenote: The wood-choppers.]
The question now arose--By what means could we reach Mr M'Ian? There
was no ferry at Kilmaree, but sundry boats were drawn up on the
shore, and a couple were bobbing on the restless water at the stony
pier. There were the boats certainly enough, but where were the
boatmen? In the neighbourhood men could surely be obtained who, for
a consideration, would take us across. We directed our steps to the
lodge at Kilmaree, which seemed untenanted, and after some little
trouble penetrated into the region of the offices and outhouses.
Here we found a couple of men chopping sticks, and to them my
companion--who as a man of business and learned in the law was the
spokesman on such occasions--addressed himself. "You want to go over
to Mr M'Ian's to-night?" said the elder, desisting from his task, and
standing up with his axe in his hand. "Yes, we are particularly
anxious to get across. Can you take us?" "I don't know; you see we
are no ferrymen, an' if we take you across we must leave our work."
"Of course you must; but we'll pay you for your trouble." Here the
two men exchanged a sentence or two of Gaelic, and then the elder
wood-chopper asked, "Do you know Mr M'Ian?" "Oh, yes, we know him
very well." "Does he expect you this night?" "No; but we are
anxious to see him, and he will be glad to see us." "I'm no sure we
can take you across," said the man hesitatingly; "you see the master
is from home, an' the wind is rising, an' we're no ferrymen, an'
we'll need to borrow a boat, an'"--here he hesitated still more--"it
would cost you something." "Of course it will. What will you
expect." "Wad you think ten shillings too much?" "No, we'll give
you ten shillings," said Fellowes, clinching the bargain. "And,"
said I, coming in like a swift charge of lancers on a
half-disorganised battalion, and making victory complete, "we'll give
you a glass of spirits at the house, too, when you get across." The
men then threw down their axes, put on their jackets, which hung on
nails on the walls, and talking busily in Gaelic, led the way to the
little stony pier where the boats were moored.
[Sidenote: On Loch Eishart.]
"There's a gale rising," said one of the men, as he pulled in a boat
to the pier by a rope, "an' it'll no be easy taking you across, and
still harder to get back ourselves." As, however, to this expression
of opinion we made no response, the men busied themselves with
getting the boat to rights, testing the rollock pins, rolling in
stones for ballast, examining the sail and ropes, and such like
matters. In a short time we took our seats, and then the men pulled
slowly out to sea in the opposite direction from Mr M'Ian's house, in
order to catch the wind, which was blowing freshly inland. The
course of the boat was then changed, the oars shipped, the sail
shaken out, and away we went through the green seas with long
lurches, the foam gathering up high at the bows, hissing along the
sides, and forming a long white wake behind. The elder man sat with
the rope of the sail in his hand, and taking a shrewd squint at the
weather at intervals. When not so engaged, he was disposed to be
talkative. "He's a fine gentleman, Mr M'Ian, a vera fine gentleman;
an' vera good to the poor." "I understand," I said, "that he is the
most generous of mankind." "He is that; he never lets a poor man go
past his door without a meal. Maybe, sir, ye'll be a friend o' his?"
"Yes, both of us are friends of his, and friends of his son's too."
"Maybe ye'll be a relation of his?--he has many relations in the
south country." "No," I said, "no relation, only a friend. Do you
smoke?" "Oh, yes, but I have forgot my spleuchan." "I can provide
you with tobacco," I said, and so when his pipe was lighted he became
silent.
[Sidenote: Mr M'Ian and the boatmen.]
We were now two-thirds across, and the white watery mists hung low on
the familiar coast as we approached. Gradually the well-known
objects became defined in the evening light--the clumps of
birch-wood, the huts seated on the shore, the house, the cliffs
behind on which the clouds lay half-way down. When we drew near the
stony quay we noticed that we were the subjects of considerable
speculation. It was but seldom that a boat stood across from the
Strathaird coast, and by our glass we could see a group of the
men-servants standing at the corner of the black kitchen watching our
movements, and Mr M'Ian himself coming out with his telescope. When
the keel grated on the pebbles we got out. "Now, my men," said
Fellowes, "come up to the house and have your promised glass of
spirits!" To our astonishment the men declined; they could not wait,
they were going back immediately. "But you must come," said my
companion, who acted as purser, "for before I can pay you I must get
Mr M'Ian to change me a sovereign. Come along." We climbed up to
the house, and were welcomed by Mr M'Ian, father and son, in the
ivy-covered porch. "By the way," said Fellowes, "I wish you to
change me a sovereign, as we have ten shillings to pay these men."
"Did the scoundrels charge that sum for bringing you over? It's
extortion; five shillings is quite enough. Let me go and speak to
them." "But," remonstrated Fellowes, "we don't consider the charge
immoderate: we made the bargain with them: and so anxious were we to
be here that we would willingly have paid them double." "Don't talk
to me," cried M'Ian, as he put on his hat and seized his stick.
"Why, you rascals, did you charge these gentlemen ten shillings for
taking them across the Loch? You know you are well enough paid if
you get half." "Sir," said the elder man respectfully, while both
touched their bonnets, "we'll just take what you please; just
anything you like, Mr M'Ian." "Don't you see the mischief you do and
the discredit you bring on the country by this kind of thing? Every
summer the big lying blackguard _Times_ is crammed with complaints of
tourists who have been cheated by you and the like of you--although I
don't believe half the stories. These fools"--here the old gentleman
made reference to us by a rapid backward chuck of his thumb--"may go
home to the south and write to the newspapers about you." "The
bargain the gentlemen made was ten shillings," said the man, "but if
you think we have asked too much we'll take six. But it's for your
sake we'll take it, not for theirs." "They're honest fellows these,"
cried the old gentleman, as he poured the coins into the palm of the
elder man; "Alick, bring them out a dram." The dram, prefaced by a
word or two of Gaelic, to which Mr M'Ian nodded, was duly swallowed,
and the men, touching their bonnets, descended to their boat. The
old gentleman led the way into the house, and we had no sooner
reached the porch than my companion remembered that he had left
something, and ran down to fetch it. He returned in a little while,
and in the course of the evening he gave me to understand that he had
seen the boatmen, and fully implemented his promise.
[Sidenote: Lamb-branding.]
The wind had changed during the night, and next morning broke forth
gloriously--not a speck of vapour on the Cuchullins; the long stretch
of Strathaird wonderfully distinct; the Loch bright in sunlight.
When we got down to breakfast we found Mr M'Ian alone. His son, he
said, had been on the hill since four o'clock in the morning
gathering the lambs together, and that about noon he and his
assistants would be branding them at the fank. When breakfast was
over,--Fellowes, having letters to write, remained in-doors,--I and
the old gentleman went out. We went up the glen, and as we drew near
the fank we saw a number of men standing about, their plaids thrown
on the turfen walls, with sheep-dogs couched thereupon; a thick
column of peat-smoke rising up, smelt easily at the distance of half
a mile; no sheep were visible, but the air was filled with
bleatings,--undulating with the clear plaintive trebles of
innumerable ewes, and the hoarser _baa_ of tups. When we arrived we
found the narrow chambers and compartments at one end of the fank
crowded with lambs, so closely wedged together that they could hardly
move, and between these chambers and compartments temporary barriers
erected, so that no animal could pass from one to the other. The
shepherds must have had severe work of it that morning. It was as
yet only eleven o'clock, and since early dawn they and their dogs had
coursed over an area of ten miles, sweeping every hill face, visiting
every glen, and driving down rills of sheep toward this central spot.
Having got the animals down, the business of assortment began. The
most perfect ewes--destined to be the mothers of the next brood of
lambs on the farm--were placed in one chamber; the second best, whose
fate it was to be sold at Inverness, were placed in a congeries of
compartments, the one opening into the other; the inferior
qualities--_shots_, as they are technically called--occupied a place
by themselves: these also to be sold at Inverness, but at lower
prices than the others. The fank is a large square enclosure; the
compartments into which the bleating flocks were huddled occupied
about one half of the walled-in space, the remainder being perfectly
vacant. One of the compartments opened into this space, but a
temporary barrier prevented all egress. Just at the mouth of this
barrier we could see the white ashes and the dull orange glow of the
peat-fire in which some half-dozen branding irons were heating. When
everything was prepared two or three men entered into this open
space. One took his seat on a large smooth stone by the side of the
peat-fire, a second vaulted into the struggling mass of heads and
fleeces, a third opened the barrier slightly, lugged out a struggling
lamb by the horns, and consigned it to the care of the man seated on
the smooth stone. This worthy got the animal dexterously between his
legs, so that it was unable to struggle, laid its head down on his
thigh, seized from the orange glow of the smouldering peat-fire one
of the red-hot heating irons, and with a hiss, and a slight curl of
smoke, drew it in a diagonal direction across its nose. Before the
animal was sufficiently branded the iron had to be applied twice or
thrice. It was then released, and trotted bleating into the open
space, perhaps making a curious bound on the way as if in bravado, or
shaking its head hurriedly as if snuff had been thrown into its eyes.
All day this branding goes on. The peat-fire is replenished when
needed; another man takes his seat on the smooth stone; by two
o'clock a string of women bring up dinner from the house, and all the
while, young M'Ian sits on the turfen wall, note-book in hand,
setting down the number of the lambs and their respective qualities.
Every farmer has his own peculiar brand, and by it he can identify a
member of his stock if it should go astray. The brand is to the
farmer what a trade mark is to a manufacturer. These brands are
familiar to the drovers even as the brands of wine and cigars are
familiar to the connoisseurs in these articles. The operation looks
a cruel one, but it is not perfectly clear that the sheep suffer much
under it. While under the iron they are perfectly quiet,--they
neither bleat nor struggle, and when they get off they make no sign
of discomfort save the high bound or the restless shake of the head
already mentioned--if indeed these are signs of discomfort--a
conclusion which no sheep farmer will in anywise allow. In a minute
or so they are cropping herbage in the open space of the fank, or if
the day is warm, lying down in the cool shadows of the walls as
composedly as if nothing had happened.
Leaning against the fank walls we looked on for about an hour, by
which time a couple of hundred lambs had been branded, and then we
went up the glen to inspect a mare and foal of which Mr M'Ian was
specially proud. Returning in the direction of the house, the old
gentleman pointed out what trenching had been done, what walls had
been built in my absence, and showed me on the other side of the
stream what brushwood he meant to clear next spring for potatoes,
what fields he would give to the people for their crops, what fields
he would reserve for his own use. Flowing on in this way with scheme
and petty detail of farm work, he suddenly turned round on me with a
queer look in his face. "Isn't it odd that a fellow like me,
standing on the brink of the grave, should go pottering about day
after day thinking of turnips and oats, tups and ewes, cows and
foals? The chances are that the oats I sow I shall never live to
reap--that I shall be gone before the blossom comes on my potatoes."
[Sidenote: Mr M'Ian on death.]
The strangeness of it had often struck me before, but I said nothing.
"I suppose it is best that I should take an interest in these
things," went on the old gentleman. "Death is so near me that I can
hear him as if it were through a crazy partition. I know he is
there. I can hear him moving about continually. My interest in the
farm is the partition that divides us. If it were away I should be
with him face to face."
Mr M'Ian was perhaps the oldest man in the island, and he did not
dislike talking about his advanced age. A man at fifty-five,
perhaps, wishes to be considered younger than he really is. The man
above ninety has outlived that vanity. He is usually as proud of the
years he has numbered as the commander of the battles he has won, or
the millionaire of the wealth he has acquired. In respect of his
great age, such a one is singular amongst his fellows. After a
little pause Mr M'Ian flowed on:
"I remember very well the night the century came in. My regiment was
then lying in the town of Galway in Ireland. We were all at supper
that evening at the quarters of Major M'Manus, our commanding
officer. Very merry we were, singing songs and toasting the belles
we knew. Well, when twelve o'clock struck the major rose and
proposed in a flowing bowl the health of the stranger--the nineteenth
century--coupled with the hope that it would be a better century than
the other. I'm not sure that it has been a whit better, so far at
least as it has gone. For thirty years I have been the sole survivor
of that merry table."
"Sixty-five years is a long time to look back, Mr M'Ian."
The old gentleman walked on laughing to himself. "What fools men
are--doctors especially! I was very ill shortly after with a liver
complaint, and was sent to Edinburgh to consult the great doctors and
professors there. They told me I was dying; that I had not many
months to live. The fools! they are dead, their sons are dead, and
here I am, able to go about yet. I suppose they thought that I would
take their stuffs."
By this time we had reached the house. Mr M'Ian left his white hat
and staff in the porch: he then went to the cupboard and took out a
small spirit case in which he kept bitters cunningly compounded. He
gave Fellowes and myself--Fellowes had finished his letters by this
time--a tiny glassful, took the same amount himself. We then all
went out and sat down on a rocky knoll near the house which looked
seaward, and talked about Sir John Moore and Wellington till dinner
time.
[Sidenote: Departure from Mr M'Ian's.]
We stayed with the M'Ians for a couple of days, and on the third we
drove over to Ardvasar to catch the steamer there that afternoon on
its way to Portree.
As we drove slowly up the glen, my companion said, "That old
gentleman is to my mind worth Blaavin, Coruisk, Glen Sligachan, and
all the rest of it. In his own way he is just as picturesque and
strange as they are. When he goes, the island will have lost one of
its peculiar charms."
"He is a thorough Islesman," said I; "and for him Blaavin forms as
appropriate a background as the desert for the Arab, or the prairie
for the Pawnee Indian. When he dies it will be like the dying of the
last eagle. He is about the end of the old stock. The younger
generation of Skyemen will never be like their fathers. They have
more general information than their elders, they have fewer
prejudices, they are more amenable to advice, much less stubborn and
self-willed--but they are by comparison characterless. In a few
years, when they will have the island in their own hands, better
sheep will be produced I have no doubt, finer qualities of wool will
be sent south, grand hotels will be erected here and there--but for
all that Skye will have become tame: it will have lost that
unpurchaseable something--human character; and will resemble Blaavin
shorn of its mist-wreaths."
[Sidenote: Armadale Castle.]
When we reached the top of the glen, and dropped down on the
Parliamentary Road near the lake of water lilies, we held our way to
the right, toward the point of Sleat. We passed the farm of Knock,
the white outhouses, the church and school-house, the old castle on
the shore, and driving along, we could pleasantly depasture our eyes
on the cultivated ground, with a picturesque hut perched here and
there; the towering masses of the Knoydart hills and the Sound of
Sleat between. Sleat is the best wooded, the sunniest, and most
carefully cultivated portion of the island; and passing along the
road the traveller is struck with signs of blithe industry and
contentment. As you draw near Armadale Castle you can hardly believe
that you are in Skye at all. The hedges are as trim as English
hedges, the larch plantations which cover the faces of the low hills
that look towards the sea are not to be surpassed by any larch
plantations in the country. The Armadale home farm is a model of
neatness, the Armadale porter-lodges are neat and white; and when,
through openings of really noble trees, you obtain a glimpse of the
castle itself, a handsome modern-looking building rising from sweeps
of closely-shaven lawn, you find it hard to believe that you are
within a few miles of the moory desolation that stretches between
Isle Oronsay and Broadford. Great lords and great seats, independent
of the food they provide the imagination, are of the highest
practical uses to a country. From far Duntulm Macdonald has come
here and settled, and around him to their very tops the stony hills
laugh in green. Great is the power of gold. Drop a sovereign into
the hat of the mendicant seated by the wayside and into his face you
bring a pleasant light. Bestow on land what gold can purchase,
Labour, and of the stoniest aridity you make an emerald.
[Sidenote: Waiting the steamer.]