month or two ago I was tired, jaded, ill at ease. I put spots in the
sun, I flecked the loveliest blue of summer sky with bars of
darkness. I felt the weight of the weary hours. Each morning called
me as a slave-driver calls a slave. In sleep there was no
refreshment, for in dream the weary day repeated itself yet more
wearily. I was nervous, apprehensive of evil, irritable--ill, in
fact. Now I had the appetite of an ostrich, I laughed at dyspepsia;
I could have regulated my watch by my pulse; and all the dusty,
book-lettered, and be-cobwebbed chambers of my brain had been tidied
and put to rights by the fairies Wonder, Admiration, Beauty,
Freshness. Soul and body were braced alike--into them had gone
something of the peace of the hills and the strength of the sea. I
had work to do, and I was able to enjoy work. Here there was one
gain, very palpable and appreciable. Then by my wanderings up and
down, I had made solitude for ever less irksome, because I had
covered the walls of my mind with a variety of new pictures. The
poorest man may have a picture-gallery in his memory which he would
not exchange for the Louvre. In the picture-gallery of my memory
there hung Blaavin, the Cuchullins, Loch Coruisk, Dunsciach, Duntulm,
Lord Macdonald's deer-forest, Glen Sligachan, and many another place
and scene besides. Here was a gain quite as palpable and appreciable
as the other. The pictures hung in the still room of memory, and to
them I could turn for refreshment in dull or tedious hours; and
carrying that still room with its pictures about with me wherever I
went, I could enter and amuse myself at any time--whether waiting at
a station for a laggard train, or sitting under a dull preacher on a
hot Sunday afternoon. Then, again I had been brought in contact with
peculiar individuals, which is in itself an intellectual stimulus, in
so far as one is continually urged to enter into, explore, and
understand them. What a new variety of insect is to an entomologist,
that a new variety of man is to one curious in men, who delights to
brood over them, to comprehend them, to distinguish the shades of
difference that exist between them, and, if possible, sympathetically
to be them. This sympathy enables a man in his lifetime to lead
fifty lives. I don't think in the south I shall ever find the
counterparts of John Kelly, Lachlan Roy, or Angus-with-the-dogs. I
am certain I shall never encounter a nobler heart than that which has
beat for so long a term in the frame of Mr M'Ian, nor a wiser or
humaner brain than the Landlord's. Even to have met the tobacco-less
man was something on which speculation could settle. Then, in the
matter of gain, one may fairly count up the being brought into
contact with songs, stories, and superstitions; for through means of
these one obtains access into the awe and terror that lay at the
heart of that ancient Celtic life which is fast disappearing now.
Old songs illustrate the spiritual moods of a people, just as old
weapons, agricultural implements, furniture, and domestic dishes,
illustrate the material conditions. I delighted to range through
that spiritual antiquarian museum, and to take up and examine the
bits of human love, and terror, and hate, that lay fossilised there.
All these things were gains: and waiting at Portree for the steamer,
and thinking over them all, I concluded that my Summer in Skye had
not been misspent; and that no summer can be misspent anywhere,
provided the wanderer brings with him a quick eye, an open ear, and a
sympathetic spirit. It is the cunningest harper that draws the
sweetest music from the harp-string; but no musician that ever played
has exhausted all the capacities of his instrument--there is more to
take for him who can take.
[Sidenote: The steamer.]
The _Clansman_ reached Portree Bay at eleven P.M., and I went on
board at once and went to bed. When I awoke next morning, the
engines were in full action, and I could hear the rush of the water
past my berth. When I got on deck we were steaming down the Sound of
Raasay; and when breakfast-time arrived, it needed but a glance to
discover that autumn had come and that the sporting season was
well-nigh over. A lot of sheep were penned up near the bows,
amidships were piles of wool, groups of pointers and setters were
scattered about, and at the breakfast-table were numerous sportsmen
returning to the south, whose conversation ran on grouse-shooting,
salmon-fishing, and deer-stalking. While breakfast was proceeding
you saw everywhere sun-browned faces, heard cheery voices, and
witnessed the staying of prodigious appetites. Before these stalwart
fellows steaks, chops, platefuls of ham and eggs disappeared as if by
magic. The breakfast party, too, consisted of all orders and degrees
of men. There were drovers going to, or returning from markets;
merchants from Stornoway going south; a couple of Hebridean
clergymen, one of whom said grace; several military men of frank and
hearty bearing; an extensive brewer; three members of Parliament, who
had entirely recovered from the fatigues of legislation; and a tall
and handsome English Earl of some repute on the turf. Several
ladies, too, dropped in before the meal was over. We were all
hungry, and fed like Homer's heroes. The brewer was a valiant
trencher-man, and the handsome Earl entombed cold pie to an extent
unprecedented in my experience. The commissariat on board the
Highland steamers is plentiful and of quality beyond suspicion; and
the conjunction of good viands, and appetites whetted by the
sea-breeze, results in a play of knife and fork perfectly wonderful
to behold. When breakfast was over we all went up stairs; the
smoking men resorted to the hurricane deck, the two clergymen read,
the merchants from Stornoway wandered uneasily about as if seeking
some one to whom they could attach themselves, and the drovers smoked
short pipes amidships, and talked to the passengers there, and when
their pipes were out went forward to examine the sheep. The morning
and forenoon wore away pleasantly--the great ceremony of dinner was
ahead, and drawing nearer every moment--that was something--and then
there were frequent stoppages, and the villages on the shore, the
coming and going of boats with cargo and passengers, the throwing out
of empty barrels here, the getting in of wool there, were incidents
quite worthy of the regard of idle men leading for the time being a
mere life of the senses. We stopped for a couple of hours in
Broadford Bay--we stopped at Kyleakin--we stopped at Balmacara; and
the long looked-for dinner was served after we had past Kyle-Rhea,
and were gliding down into Glenelg. For some little time previously
savoury steams had assailed our nostrils. We saw the stewards
descending into the cabin with covered dishes, and at the first sound
of the bell the hurricane deck, crowded a moment before, was left
entirely empty. The captain took his seat at the head of the table
with a mighty roast before him, the clergyman said grace--somewhat
lengthily, I fear, in the opinion of most--the covers were lifted
away by deft waiters, and we dined that day at four as if we had not
previously breakfasted at eight, and lunched at one. Dinner was
somewhat protracted; for as we had nothing to do after the ladies
went, we sat over cheese and wine, and then talk grew animated over
whisky-punch. When I went on deck again we had passed Knock, and
were steaming straight for Armadale. The Knoydart hills were on the
one side, the low shores of Sleat, patched here and there by strips
of cultivation, on the other; and in a little we saw the larch
plantations of Armadale, and the castle becoming visible through the
trees on the lawn.
[Sidenote: Loch Nevis.]
In autumn the voyage to the south is lengthened by stoppages, and
frequently the steamer has to leave her direct course and thread long
inland running lochs to take wool on board. These stoppages and
wanderings out of the direct route would be annoying if you were
hurrying south to be married, or if you were summoned to the deathbed
of a friend from whom you had expectations; but as it is holiday with
you, and as every divergence brings you into unexpected scenery, they
are regarded rather as a pleasure than anything else. At Armadale we
stayed for perhaps half an hour, and then struck directly across the
Sound of Sleat, and sailed up the windings of Loch Nevis. When we
reached the top there was an immense to do-on the beach; some three
or four boats laden with wool were already pulling out towards the
steamer, which immediately lay to and let off noisy steam; men were
tumbling bales of wool into the empty boats that lay at the stony
pier, and to the pier laden carts were hurrying down from the
farm-house that stood remote. The wool boats came on either side of
the steamer; doors were opened in the bulwarks, to these doors steam
cranes were wheeled, and with many a shock of crank and rattle of
loosened chain, the bales were hoisted on deck and consigned to the
gloomy recesses of the hold. As soon as a boat was emptied, a laden
one pulled out to take its place; the steam cranes were kept
continually jolting and rattling, and in the space of a couple of
hours a considerable amount of business had been done. On the
present occasion the transference of wool from the boats to the hold
of the steamer occupied a longer time than was usual; sunset had come
in crimson and died away to pale gold and rose, and still the laden
boats came slowly on, still storms of Gaelic execration surged along
the sides of the ship, and still the steam cranes were at their noisy
work. The whole affair, having by this time lost all sense of
novelty, was in danger of becoming tiresome, but in the fading light
the steward had lighted up the saloon into hospitable warmth and
glow, and then the bell rang for tea. In a moment all interest in
the wool boats had come to an end, the passengers hurried below, and
before the tinklings of cup and saucer had ceased, the last bale of
wool had been transferred from the boats alongside to the hold, and
the _Clansman_ had turned round, and was softly gliding down Loch
Nevis.
[Sidenote: Arisaig.]
A lovely, transparent autumn night arched above us, a young moon and
single star by her side, when we reached Arisaig. By this time the
ladies had retired, and those of the gentlemen who remained on deck
were wrapped in plaids, each shadowy figure brought out more keenly
by the red tip of a cigar. The entrance into Arisaig is difficult,
and the _Clansman_ was put on half steam. The gentlemen were
requested to leave the hurricane-deck, and there the captain
stationed himself, while a couple of men were sent to the bows, and
three or four stationed at the wheel. Slowly the large vessel moved
onward, with low black reefs of rocks on either side, like smears of
dark colour, but perfectly soft and tender in outline; and every here
and there we could see the dark top of a rock peering out of the dim
sea like a beaver's head. From these shadowy reefs, as the vessel
moved on, the sea-birds were awaked from their slumbers, and
strangely sweet, and liquid as flute-notes, were their cries and
signals of alarm. Every now and again, too, with a sort of weary
sigh, a big wave came heaving in, and broke over the dark reefs in
cataracts of ghostly silver; and in the watery trouble and movement
that followed, the moon became a well of moving light, and the star a
quivering sword-blade. The captain stood alone on the hurricane
deck, the passengers leaned against the bulwarks watching rock and
sea, and listening to the call and re-call of disturbed mews, when
suddenly there was a muffled shout from the outlook at the bows, the
captain shouted "Port! port! hard!" and away went the wheel spinning,
the stalwart fellows toiling at the spokes, and the ship slowly
falling off. After a little while there was another noise at the
bows, the captain shouted "Starboard!" and the wheel was rapidly
reversed. We were now well up the difficult channel; and looking
back we could see a perfect intricacy of reefs and dim single rocks
behind, and a fading belt of pallor wandering amongst them, which
told the track of the ship--a dreadful place to be driven upon on a
stormy night, when the whole coast would be like the mouth of a
wounded boar--black tusks and churning foam. After a while, however,
a low line of coast became visible, then a light broke upon it; and
after a few impatient turns of the paddles we beheld a dozen boats
approaching, with lights at their bows. These were the Arisaig
boats, laden with cargo. At sight of them the captain left the
hurricane deck, the anchor went away with a thundering chain, the
passengers went to bed, and, between asleep and awake, I could hear
half the night the trampling of feet, the sound of voices, and the
jolt of the steam-cranes, as the Arisaig goods were being hoisted on
deck and stowed away.
[Sidenote: Ardnamurchan.]
I was up early next morning. The sky was clear, the wind blowing on
shore, and the bright, living, rejoicing sea came seething in on the
rocky intricacies through which we slowly sailed. Skye was perfectly
visible, the nearer shores dark and green; farther back the dim
Cuchullins, standing in the clouds. Eig rose opposite, with its
curiously-shaped sciur; Muck lay ahead. The _Clansman_ soon reached
the open sea, and we began to feel the impulse of the Atlantic. By
the time the passengers began to appear on deck the ship was lurching
heavily along towards the far-stretching headland of Ardnamurchan.
It was difficult to keep one's feet steady--more difficult to keep
steady one's brain. Great glittering watery mounds came heaving on,
to wash with unavailing foam the rocky coast; and amongst these the
steamer rolled and tossed and groaned, its long dark pennon of smoke
streaming with the impulse of the sea. The greater proportion of the
passengers crawled amidships--beside the engines and the cook's
quarters, which were redolent with the scent of herrings frying for a
most unnecessary breakfast--for there the motion was least felt. To
an unhappy landsman that morning the whole world seemed topsy-turvy.
There was no straight line to be discovered anywhere; everything
seemed to have changed places. Now you beheld the steersman against
the sky on the crest of an airy acclivity, now one bulwark was buried
in surge, now the other, and anon the sheep at the bows were brought
out against a foamy cataract. But with all this turmoil and dancing
and rolling, the _Clansman_ went swiftly on, and in due time we were
off the Ardnamurchan lighthouse. Here we rolled and tossed in an
unpleasant manner,--the smitten foam springing to the top of the
rocks and falling back in snowy sheets,--and seemed to make but
little progress. Gradually, however, the lighthouse began to draw
slowly behind us, slowly we rounded the rocky buttress, slowly the
dark shores of Mull drew out to sea, and in a quarter of an hour,
with dripping decks and giddy brains, we had passed from the great
bright heave and energy of the Atlantic to the quiet waters of Loch
Sunart; and, sheltered by Mull, were steaming towards Tobermory.
The first appearance of Tobermory is prepossessing; but further
acquaintance is if possible to be eschewed. As the _Clansman_ steams
into the bay, the little town, with its half circle of white houses,
backed by hill terraces on which pretty villas are perched, and
flanked by sombre pine plantations, is a pleasant picture, and takes
heart and eye at once. As you approach, however, your admiration is
lessened, and when you go ashore quite obliterated. It has a "most
ancient and fish-like smell," and all kinds of refuse float in the
harbour. Old ocean is a scavenger at Tobermory, and is as dirty in
his habits as Father Thames himself. The houses look pretty and
clean when seen from the steamer's deck, but on a nearer view they
deteriorate and become squalid, and several transform themselves into
small inns, suggestive of the worst accommodation and the fiercest
alcohol. The steamer is usually detained at Tobermory for a couple
of hours, and during all that time there is a constant noise of
lading and unlading. You become tired of the noise and tumult, and
experience a sense of relief when steam is got up again, and with
much backing and turning and churning of dirty harbour water into
questionable foam, the large vessel works its way through the
difficult channel, and slides calmly down the Sound of Mull.
[Sidenote: The Sound of Mull.]
Gliding down that magnificent Sound, the "Lord of the Isles" is in
your memory, just as the "Lady of the Lake" is in your memory at Loch
Katrine. The hours float past in music. All the scenes of the noble
poem rise in vision before you. You pass the entrance to the
beautiful Loch Aline; you pass Ardtornish Castle on the Morven shore,
where the Lords of the Isles held their rude parliaments and
discussed ways and means; while opposite, Mull draws itself grandly
back into lofty mountains. Further down you see Duart Castle, with
the rock peering above the tide, on which Maclean exposed his wife--a
daughter of Argyle's--to the throttling of the waves. After passing
Duart, Mull trends away to the right, giving you a space of open
sun-bright sea, while on the left the Linnhe Loch stretches toward
Fort-William and Ben Nevis. Straight before you is the green
Lismore--long a home of Highland learning--and passing it, while the
autumn day is wearing towards afternoon, you reach Oban, sheltered
from western waves by the island of Kerrera.
[Sidenote: The passengers.]
The longest delay during the passage is at Oban, but then we had
dinner there, which helped to kill the time in a pleasant way. The
_Clansman_ had received a quantity of cargo at Tobermory, at Loch
Aline a flock of sheep were driven on board, goods were taken in
plentifully at other places in the Sound at which we touched, and
when we had received all the stuffs waiting for us at Oban, the
vessel was heavily laden. The entire steerage deck was a bellowing
and bleating mass of black cattle and sheep, each "parcel" divided
from the other by temporary barriers. The space amidships was a
chaos of barrels and trunks and bales of one kind or another, and
amongst these the steerage passengers were forced to dispose
themselves. Great piles of wooden boxes containing herring were laid
along the cabin deck, so that if a man were disposed to walk about it
behoved him to take care of his footsteps. But who cared! We were
away from Oban now, the wind was light, the sun setting behind us,
and the bell ringing for tea. It was the last meal we were to have
together, and through some consciousness of this the ice of reserve
seemed to melt, and the passengers to draw closer to each other. The
Hebridean clergymen unbent; the handsome earl chatted to his
neighbours as if his forehead had never known the golden clasp of the
coronet; the sporting men stalked their stags over again; the members
of Parliament discussed every subject except the affairs of the
nation; the rich brewer joked; the merchants from Stornoway laughed
immoderately; while the cattle-dealers listened with awe. Tea was
prolonged after this pleasant fashion, and then, while the Stornoway
merchants and the cattle-dealers solaced themselves with a tumbler of
punch, the majority of the other passengers went up stairs to the
hurricane deck to smoke. What a boon is tobacco to the modern
Englishman! It stands in place of wife, child, profession, and the
interchange of ideas. With a pipe in your mouth indifference to your
neighbour is no longer churlish, and silent rumination becomes the
most excellent companionship. The English were never very great
talkers, but since Sir Walter Raleigh introduced the Virginian weed
they have talked less than ever. Smoking parliaments are always
silent--and as in silence there is wisdom, they are perhaps more
effective than the talking ones. Mr Carlyle admired those still
smoke-wreathed Prussian assemblies of Frederick's, and I am
astonished that he does not advocate the use of the weed in our
English Witenagemote. Slowly the night fell around the smokers, the
stars came out in the soft sky, as the air grew chill, and one by one
they went below. Then there was more toddy-drinking, some playing at
chess, one or two attempts at letter-writing, and at eleven o'clock
the waiters cleared the tables, and began to transform the saloon
into a large sleeping apartment.
[Sidenote: The Mull of Cantyre.]
I climbed up to my berth and fell comfortably asleep. I must have
been asleep for several hours, although of the lapse of time I was of
course unconscious, when gradually the horror of nightmare fell upon
me. This horror was vague and formless at first, but gradually it
assumed a definite shape. I was Mazeppa, they had bound me on the
back of the desert-born, and the mighty brute, maddened with pain and
terror, was tearing along the wilderness, crashing through forests,
plunging into streams, with the howling of wolves close behind and
coming ever nearer. At last, when the animal cleared a ravine at a
bound, I burst the bondage of my dream. For a moment I could not
understand where I was. The sleeping apartment seemed to have fallen
on one side, then it righted itself, but only to fall over on the
other, then it made a wild plunge forward as if it were a living
thing and had received a lash. The ship was labouring heavily, I
heard the voices of the sailors flying in the wind, I felt the shock
of solid, and the swish of broken seas. In such circumstances sleep,
for me at least, was impossible, so I slipped out of bed, and,
steadying myself for a favourable moment, made a grab at my clothes.
With much difficulty I dressed, with greater difficulty I got into my
boots, and then I staggered on deck. Holding on by the first
support, I was almost blinded by the glare of broken seas. From a
high coast against which the great waves rushed came the steady glare
of a lighthouse, and by that token I knew we were "on" the Mull of
Cantyre. The ship was fuming through a mighty battle of tides.
Shadowy figures of steerage passengers were to be seen clinging here
and there. One--a young woman going to Glasgow as a housemaid, as
she afterwards told me--was in great distress, was under the
impression that we were all going to the bottom, and came to me for
comfort. I quieted her as best I could, and procured her a seat.
Once when the ship made a wild lurch, and a cloud of spray came
flying over the deck, she exclaimed to a sailor who was shuffling
past wearing a sou'-wester and canvas overalls, "O sailor, is't ever
sae bad as this?" "As bad as this," said the worthy, poising himself
on the unsteady deck, "as bad as this! Lod, ye sud jist a seen oor
last vi'age. There was only three besides mysel o' the ship's crew
able to haud on by a rape." Delivering himself of this scrap of
dubious comfort, the sailor shuffled onward. Happily the turmoil was
not of long duration. In an hour we had rounded the formidable Mull,
had reached comparatively smooth water, and with the lights of
Campbelton behind the pallid glare of furnaces seen afar on the
Ayrshire coast, and the morning beginning to pencil softly the east,
I went below again, and slept till we reached Greenock.
_GLASGOW._
The idea of Glasgow in the ordinary British mind is probably
something like the following:--"Glasgow, believed by the natives to
be the second city of the empire, is covered by a smoky canopy
through which rain penetrates, but which is impervious to sunbeam.
It is celebrated for every kind of industrial activity: it is fervent
in business six days of the week, and spends the seventh in hearing
sermon and drinking toddy. Its population consists of a great
variety of classes. The 'operative,' quiet and orderly enough while
plentifully supplied with provisions, becomes a Chartist when hungry,
and extracts great satisfaction in listening to orators--mainly from
the Emerald Isle--declaiming against a bloated aristocracy. The
'merchant prince,' known to all ends of the earth, and subject
sometimes to strange vagaries; at one moment he is glittering away
cheerily in the commercial heaven, the next he has disappeared, like
the lost Pleiad, swallowed up of night for ever. The history of
Glasgow may be summed up in one word--cotton; its deity, gold; its
river, besung by poets, a sewer; its environs, dust and ashes; the
_gamin_ of its wynds and closes less tinctured by education than a
Bosjesman; a creature that has never heard a lark sing save perhaps
in a cage outside a window in the sixth story, where a consumptive
seamstress is rehearsing the 'Song of the Shirt,' 'the swallows with
their sunny backs' omitted." Now this idea of Glasgow is entirely
wrong. It contains many cultivated men and women. It is the seat of
an ancient university. Its cathedral is the noblest in Scotland; and
its statue of Sir John Moore the finest statue in the empire. It is
not in itself an ugly city, and it has many historical associations.
Few cities are surrounded by prettier scenery; and of late years it
has produced two books--both authors dead now--one of which mirrors
the old hospitable, social life of the place, while the other
pleasantly sketches the interesting localities in its neighbourhood.
Dr Strang, in his "Clubs of Glasgow," brings us in contact with the
old jolly times; and Mr Macdonald, in his "Rambles round Glasgow,"
visits, stick in hand, every spot of interest to be found for miles
around, knows every ruin and its legend, can tell where each unknown
poet has lived and died, and has the martyrology of the district at
his fingers' ends. So much for the books; and now a word or two
concerning their authors.
[Sidenote: Dr Strang.]