[Illustration:
CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL
OF
POPULAR
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.
Fourth Series
CONDUCTED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS.
NO. 740. SATURDAY, MARCH 2, 1878. PRICE 1½_d._]
THE GAELIC NUISANCE.
SECOND ARTICLE.
A few months ago, in an article entitled ‘The Gaelic Nuisance,’ we
endeavoured to point out the impolicy of fostering Gaelic as the
vernacular tongue in the Highlands and Islands. Our observations were
variously received. Many approved of the article; by some it was
apparently misunderstood. On this latter account, we return to the
subject, in the hope of removing such misapprehensions as may happen
to exist. This time, at anyrate, we shall take care to be perfectly
explicit as to our meaning.
In the article referred to, we offered no objection to the use of
Gaelic, provided the young were brought up with a knowledge of English.
That was distinctly our contention, and we believe that such is the
opinion of all who think seriously on this important question. We
therefore repeat in terms on which nothing but perversity can put a
wrong construction, that the fostering of Gaelic to the exclusion of
English—for it practically comes to that—is a grave error; it is a
cruelty which merits exposure and reprobation. Why it is a cruelty is
very clear. As previously stated, the use of Gaelic as the only known
vernacular, keeps large numbers of poor people ignorant, it usually
fixes them to their place of birth, and accordingly excludes them
from earning their bread in the general competition of the world. It
is very easy for enthusiasts living at a respectful distance to write
in glowing terms about the antiquity of Gaelic, about the wonderful
beauty of Gaelic poetry, about the philological value of Gaelic
phraseology, about the satisfaction of being able to speak Gaelic as
well as English. These are not the points in dispute. Let people, if
they will, and if they can afford the expense, learn to speak and read
Gaelic supplementary to English, just as many of us learn to speak
and read French or German. The more languages that can be acquired
the better. About that there is no contention. What we deem to be
a scandal and a cruelty is the practice of rearing, or allowing to
grow up, groups of children with a knowledge of no other language
than Gaelic; the consequence being that they are for the most part
condemned to life-long poverty and ignorance. And that is what is done
through the mistaken policy of it may be well-meaning sentimentalists
and philanthropists, who are seemingly unaware of the misery they
are helping to perpetuate. The English language, like the laws and
constitution of the country, is a common heritage, in which every child
has a claim to be instructed, so that all may be qualified to perform
such duties as fall to their lot. Is it not, then, shocking to find
groups of old and young scattered about the Highlands and Islands who
cannot speak a word of English, and who cannot so much as sign their
names? We might almost say they have no more knowledge of newspapers,
or of English literature generally, than the lower animals, amidst
which in dreary solitudes they hopelessly pass their existence.
The Highlanders have scarcely had justice done to them. They possess
characteristics of a noble race. Faithful, honest, and steady in
civil life. Valorous as soldiers. Peaceful and law-abiding in a very
extraordinary degree. Those among them who by some good fortune quit
their native glens and mix with the Lowland population, speedily learn
English, and are able to converse as fluently in that language as in
their native Gaelic. In fact, wherever they are brought in contact
with English-speaking neighbours, they manifest no mental deficiency.
In many instances they have attained to eminence. Only where they are
habitually neglected, and left in untoward circumstances to vegetate
in primitive ignorance, do they shew anything like laziness, and
an indifference to improvement. From all we happen to know of the
Highlanders, they only need to be put in the way of being cultivated by
education and contact with the outer world.
In hinting at educational deficiencies we tread on tender ground. There
is an Educational Act applicable to the whole of Scotland, whether
the mainland or islands. No spot is exempted from the operation of
a school-board. Although the Act was passed in 1872, it appears from
one cause or other that there are districts where no schooling is
available, and children are suffered to run about wild. In an article
in the _Scotsman_ newspaper of January 5, 1878, a correspondent writing
on the wretched condition of the Highland ‘crofters,’ or occupants of
small patches of land, refers to the educational deficiencies in the
parish of Barvas, on the west coast of Lewis. Here is what he says:
‘At present, the children know not a syllable of English; the women
and thirty per cent. of the men are as ignorant; and twenty per cent.
of the people married cannot sign their marriage papers. One thing
certain is that the people are themselves totally unprepared for the
good that the Act is expected to do them; and that it will be only by
means of vigilant compulsory officers that its full operation will
be secured. In the meantime the schools in the parish have not been
opened; and ragged boys and girls hang about on the moor all day long
herding cattle, or idle near the wayside in companies of threes and
fours, holding fast by tethers, at the ends of which small melancholy
lambs are grazing.’ What a picture of primitive rural life! Education
practically non-existent. The compulsory provisions of the School Act
in a state of abeyance!
The island of St Kilda, to which we called attention, exhibits a small
population with no means of learning English, and who for religious
instruction in Gaelic are wholly dependent on the Rev. John M’Kay, a
minister appointed by the Free Church. This worthy individual, who is
a bachelor of advanced age, and whom, by mistake, we spoke of as being
married, can speak and read English; but with the exception of the
imported wife of one of the natives, he is the only individual on the
island who can do so, and acts as a general interpreter on the occasion
of visits from strangers. There is no school in the island, nor is
there any attempt to teach English. Is this a condition of things which
commends itself to philanthropists?
In a handsomely printed and illustrated work, _St Kilda Past and
Present_, by George Seton, Advocate (Blackwood and Sons), 1878, there
is an effective reference to the want of education in the island of St
Kilda. ‘Probably,’ says this observant writer, ‘the most beneficial
influence that could be brought to bear upon the St Kildans would be
of an educational kind. Through the instrumentality of the Harris
school-board or otherwise, an energetic effort ought to be made to
introduce a systematic course of instruction in English, with the view
of the inhabitants enjoying the vast benefits which would inevitably
ensue. At present, they are not only cut off from regular communication
with the mainland, but in consequence of their ignorance of the
language of the United Kingdom, they are debarred from the means of
enlarging their minds, and subverting their prejudices, by the perusal
of English literature. A recent number of _Chambers’s Journal_—to
which every English-speaking section of the globe owes such deep
obligations—contains an admirable article, from the pen of the veteran
senior editor, on the subject of “The Gaelic Nuisance,” to which I
venture to call the attention of all who are interested in the future
welfare of the inhabitants of St Kilda. The writer points to Galloway
on the one hand, and to the Orkney and Shetland Islands on the other,
as illustrative examples of the blessings which have flowed from the
substitution of English for Gaelic and Norse respectively; and in the
course of his remarks he makes special allusion to St Kilda.’
Thanking Mr Seton for this acknowledgment of the correctness of our
views, we pass on to a note lately received from a sheriff-substitute
in a Highland county. He says: ‘Allow me to thank you for your article
in the last part of _Chambers’s_ entitled “The Gaelic Nuisance.” I have
resided here for several years, and am convinced that the civilisation
of the Highlands is impossible so long as Gaelic continues to be the
language of the common people. I hope your article will open the eyes
of common-sense people to the necessity of abolishing Gaelic as a
spoken language, by the substitution of English.’
A gentleman connected by heritage with one of the outer Hebrides, sends
us a note, in which, after commenting on the grotesque objections
that had been made to our article, he observes: ‘We all understand
now—though a few may deceive themselves and others—that man is not
made for language, but language for man. We Highlanders are determined
to adopt the current language, just as we have adopted the current coin
of the realm.’ This is plain speaking; and we hope that the writer,
using the power which his position gives him, will in his own locality
see that the children are taught to read and understand English; such,
in our opinion, whatever others may think, being only a simple act of
justice.
In our former article we alluded to the case of Wales, in which
large numbers are as unhappily excluded from a knowledge of the
English language as are many of the Gaelic-speaking population of the
Highlands. We are glad to see that this deficiency is beginning to
attract attention, for reasons similar to those we employ. Recently
at a large meeting in connection with the Welsh Church in Chester,
presided over by the Bishop of Chester, as reported in _The Times_,
Jan. 10, the Dean of Bangor, in speaking of Wales, remarked: ‘Wales was
in a certain extent backward. In the power of influencing those outside
their own country, they were behind England, Scotland, and Ireland,
simply because their language excluded them from making their thoughts
and views known to those of different nationality.... He ventured to
hope that the day was rapidly approaching when every Welshman would be
able to use the English language.’ Such a public acknowledgment as this
is eminently satisfactory. It shews moral courage in combating popular
prejudice. We should like to see Highland proprietors quite as openly
avowing that it was time every Gaelic-speaking child ‘was able to use
the English language.’
The most conclusive evidence that could be advanced respecting the
serious disadvantage of maintaining Gaelic as an exclusively common
language is that offered by Mr Simon S. Laurie, the accomplished
Professor of Education in the University of Edinburgh, who lately
delivered an Address on the subject of Education in the Highlands.
According to a newspaper report of his address, he said in reference to
the Highlanders: ‘One thing needful was to secure for them freedom of
locomotion; so that when the pressure on one district became too great,
the people might move to another. Without a knowledge of the English
language, the country of the Highlander was bound round him as with
a brazen wall. He need not try to get out of it, because his native
language put him at such a disadvantage with other men that he had no
chance against them.... There was no doubt that the teaching of Gaelic
should be subordinate to the teaching of English. If they trained a boy
in a Highland school to read, write, and speak Gaelic, what were they
to do with him? How would we like to be in that position ourselves?
Fancy a boy at the age of fifteen or sixteen able only to point out
in Gaelic to a stranger the way he should take; would they not find
that he had been miseducated—in fact cut off from being a member of
the British Empire altogether? At the same time, while he held that,
he was of opinion that they could not teach English to the Highlanders
well except through the Gaelic. The Highland children learned very
quickly—more quickly than the Lowland children—they could soon read
with perfect fluency such a book as M’Culloch’s _Course of Reading_,
and yet not understand a single word; shewing that they would not learn
English well except through Gaelic. The aim of the whole teaching
should be to make the pupils thoroughly acquainted with English.’
With such a concurrence of evidence, and with the knowledge that there
is a School Act of six years’ standing, why, it will be asked, are
children in the Highlands and Islands still left to remain untaught in
the elements of education? That is a question that could perhaps best
be answered by the Education Board for Scotland. We can only conjecture
that the educational deficiency in various quarters is due to the
difficulty, for pecuniary reasons, in establishing and maintaining
schools on a proper footing consistently with the obligations of the
statute. Mr Laurie mentions that the school-rates press with a severity
which in some places is perfectly paralysing. ‘In Shetland, for
example, the School Boards were brought to a stand-still. They could
not face a rate of four shillings a pound; the same proprietors having
to pay not less than four shillings a pound for poor-rate and other
burdens besides.’ This agrees with what we have privately heard of
Shetland, where the rates of one kind or other very nearly swallow up
the whole rental drawn by proprietors. Mr Laurie states emphatically
as to this difficulty of school-rates, that ‘unless the government paid
what was necessary above fifteen-pence per pound, the Highlands and
Islands would not have the full benefit of the Act of 1872.’
Evidently, the School Boards, notwithstanding their comprehensive and
compulsory powers, are unable to plant and sustain schools in all
quarters where required. The difficulty, it is observed, is financial.
Let us instance the island of St Kilda. Its inhabitants are said to be
seventy-six in number, while the annual rent exigible by the proprietor
is somewhere about a hundred pounds, payable in kind. How can the
School Board of Harris, with which the island is connected parochially,
be expected to build a school and sustain a schoolmaster for the
benefit of so small a population, in which there are perhaps only a
very few children of school age? To build a school of the ordinary
authorised type would cost at least six hundred pounds. And the payment
of a teacher with other expenses would amount to one hundred pounds a
year. The organisation of a school on this footing would go far beyond
what is desirable or what could be asked for from either the state or
the ratepayers.
A consideration of the financial difficulty leads to the conviction
that something very much less costly than the present school
organisation must in many parts of the Highlands be attempted, if the
children are to get any education at all. Mr Laurie very properly
remarks that children ‘would not well learn English except through the
Gaelic;’ meaning by this, we suppose, that the teacher would require
through the agency of Gaelic to explain the meaning of English words.
That surely would not be difficult to accomplish; nor would it be
unreasonable to establish schools on a much more modest footing than
those latterly sanctioned by School Boards. The Scotch were long
accustomed to see a very humble class of schools in secluded rural
districts. Often, these schools consisted of cottages of not more than
two apartments, one of which constituted the dwelling of the teacher.
These cottage schools were conducted at an exceedingly small expense,
yet they answered their purpose. Neither dignified nor imposing, they
were useful. They imparted to the few children in their respective
neighbourhoods a knowledge of letters. We are inclined to think that
a modification of this kind would solve some existing difficulties as
concerns the establishing of schools among the sparse population of the
Highlands and Islands. In short, it would be well to legalise a minor
or sub-class of schools, to be conducted at a small cost, designed to
effect a particular purpose, namely, that of communicating a knowledge
of the English language to large numbers of poor children who are at
present growing up in ignorance of any spoken tongue but their native
Gaelic, and who, in many cases, as is seen, have no education whatever.
We hope the nature of our pleading is no longer misunderstood. It is,
that all Gaelic-speaking children may in some shape or other be taught
to read and understand the language common to the United Kingdom.
There may be some statutory obstacles in the way. There should be none
in the light of humanity and common-sense. Perhaps we may return to
the subject. Considering that the welfare of successive generations
of helpless beings is concerned, the subject is too momentous to be
lightly treated, or to be swept aside by casual gusts of delirious
opposition.
W. C.
HELENA, LADY HARROGATE.
CHAPTER XIII.—FATHER AND SON.
Sir Sykes was a weak man, and there are few readier elements of
mischief than that of a weak man in a strong place—meaning thereby a
position where there is authority to be abused. Some of the world’s
worst tyrants have been emphatically weak, mere spiteful capricious
children grown to man’s estate, and indued respectively with all the
powers of the purple, the royal jika, and the triple tiara. But then
the mighty system which they, unworthy, swayed, resembled some gigantic
engine put into motion by the idle touch of a truant urchin’s hand, and
crushing all resistance by the resistless force of its swaying levers
and grinding wheels.
A Devonshire baronet, in common with baronets elsewhere, does expect
to be to a certain extent the petty autocrat of his own fields and
hamlets, to find that there are those who court the great man’s
smile and tremble at his frown, and to hold rule within strictly
constitutional limits over the dwellers on his land and the inmates
of his house. The melancholy which had become a part of Sir Sykes
Denzil’s inner nature, and the indolence which had gradually incrusted
him, had prevented the lord of Carbery from asserting in practice the
prerogatives which he knew to belong to him in theory. Thus he did
not really administer patriarchal justice on his estate, as some hale
landlords do. His bailiff decided which labourers should be employed,
which dismissed, and what wages should be allotted to crow-boys and
weeding-girls. The steward arranged as to the barns to be rebuilt, the
repairs to be granted or refused, the rent of whose cottage was to be
forgiven, or which arrears were to be sternly exacted. Poachers whom
the head-keeper did not like, found Sir Sykes’s vicarious wrath make
the parish too hot to hold them, while luckier depredators wired hares
unpunished.
The part of a _roi fainéant_ suited better with Sir Sykes Denzil’s
languid habits than they did with his tolerably active mind. He was
well aware that the lethargy of King Log is always supplemented by the
not wholly disinterested activity of King Log’s zealous ministers, and
had formed frequent resolutions as to taking into his own hands the
reins of government and becoming in fact as well as in name the lord of
the manor—of six manors indeed, of which Carbery was the chief. These
resolutions had never been acted upon; but Sir Sykes had always been
able to lay to his soul the flattering unction that it rested with him
alone to choose the time for realising them.
The events of the last few weeks had given some rude shocks to the
baronet’s indolent self-complacency. He had been threatened with
consequences of which he, and he alone, could thoroughly comprehend
the direful nature, and he had been forced to a series of compliances,
each of which had degraded him in his own eyes. He had borne with the
cynic effrontery of the sailor Hold. He had beneath his roof, seated
at his table, in constant association with him and his, an unbidden
guest. Mr Wilkins he had, through an unlucky chance, encountered, and
instantly the fetters of a new vassalage appeared to be fastened on his
reluctant limbs. And he owed this fresh humiliation to the misconduct
of his own son!
Sir Sykes was very angry as he quitted No. 11 to seek out the chamber
in which Jasper lay, so angry that his temper overmastered for the
moment both the pleadings of natural affection and the instinct of
caution. He laid his hand brusquely on the door of the room which had
been pointed out to him as that to which Jasper had been conveyed, and
was about to enter, with small regard to the nerves of the invalid
within, when he felt a grasp upon his sleeve, and turned to be
confronted by the wiry figure, anxious face, and bead-like black eyes
of little Dr Aulfus.
‘Excuse me. Sir Sykes Denzil, unless I am very much mistaken?’ said
the doctor, taking off his hat with such an air, that Sir Sykes,
irritable as he was, felt compelled to acknowledge the bow. ‘Allow me
to introduce myself: Dr Aulfus, Benjamin Aulfus, Ph.D., M.D., M.R.C.S.
of Heidelberg, Edinburgh, and London respectively. We never chanced,
before to-day, Sir Sykes, to come personally into contact, and I regret
that the occasion of our first interview should be so sad a one.’
During this speech, the doctor’s eyes had taken stock as it were of Sir
Sykes’s aspect, and had read the signs of anger in his knitted brows
and quivering mouth as accurately as a mountain shepherd discerns the
portents of the coming storm. Nor was the reason far to seek. Gossip
had been busy, of course, with the private affairs of so exalted a
family as that which dwelt at Carbery Chase; and Sir Sykes would have
been astonished to hear at how many minor tea-tables the surgeon—for,
his medical diplomas notwithstanding, Dr Aulfus was consulted nineteen
times out of twenty as a general practitioner—had listened while
Captain Denzil’s debts and his father’s displeasure were freely
canvassed.
Of the arrival of Mr Wilkins and of the acceptances which the lawyer
held, the little man of healing could of course know nothing. But he
shrewdly surmised that Jasper had staked all that he could scrape
together, and probably more, on the event of the desperate race which
he had ridden on that day, and that his pecuniary losses had provoked
the indignation of Sir Sykes, already smarting under recent sacrifices.
‘You are very good, sir; I shall see my son, and then’——
Sir Sykes had got thus far in his speech, attempting the while to brush
past the doctor, when he found himself gently but resolutely repulsed.
‘Now, Sir Sykes,’ said the little man, interposing his diminutive
person between the tall baronet and the door, as some faithful dog
might have done, ‘pray have patience with me. Captain Denzil is my
patient. He has sustained severe injury, the precise extent of which it
is impossible yet for science to determine, and I am responsible for
his safety, humanly speaking—the pilot, in fact, with whom it rests to
bring him into port. We have just succeeded, by the help of an opiate,
in inducing sleep. It will not last long, on account of the smallness
of the dose. But it is of the utmost consequence that it should not be
broken; and in fact, Sir Sykes, my patient is my patient, and I must
protect him even against his own father.’
These last words were uttered in consequence of a renewed attempt on
the baronet’s part to force a passage, and the persuasive tone in which
they were spoken contrasted oddly with the firmness of the doctor’s
attitude.
‘Really, Mr Aulfus,’ said Sir Sykes, half apologetically, half in
dudgeon; but the other cut him short with: ‘Excuse me, Sir Sykes. _Dr_
Aulfus, if you please. It is perhaps the weakness of a professional
purist, but I do like to be dubbed a doctor; as your noble neighbour
and connection, the Earl, no doubt has a preference for the title of
“My Lord.” It has cost me dear enough, sir, that handle to my name;
kept me, I may safely say, out of a good four hundred a year of
practice I might have had, since old women and heads of families are
shy of sending for a regular physician; and that’s why such fellows as
Lancetter at High Tor, and Druggett the apothecary in Pebworth High
Street, rattle about the county, feeling pulses and sending out physic,
when a man who has more learning in his little finger than—— You
smile, sir; and indeed I was unduly warm. No selfish love of lucre,
believe me, prompted my remarks, but a sincere scorn for the prejudices
and gullibility, if the word be not too strong, of our Devonshire
Bœotians.’
By this time the doctor had succeeded in getting Sir Sykes into a
neighbouring room, the door of which stood invitingly open, and thus
securing the sleeper against the chance of being rudely awakened
from his slumber. The baronet too had employed a minute or two in
reflections which shewed him how unseemly was the part which he had
been about to play, while some dim consciousness that it was unfair to
visit on Jasper the unwelcome recognition and jocular impertinence of
Mr Wilkins, began to creep into his perturbed mind.
‘You forget, Dr Aulfus,’ he said mildly enough, ‘that I have as yet
heard no details as to the injuries which my son has sustained. They
are not, I apprehend, of a very serious or indeed dangerous character?’
‘Umph! Dislocation of right shoulder, now reduced, but attended with
much pain; severe contusion on temple; some bad bruises, and complete
prostration of nervous system from the stunning blow and violent
concussion of spinal cord,’ dryly rejoined the doctor, summing up the
facts as though he had been a judge putting the pith of some case
before a jury. ‘These are all the results that I know of’—— And he
paused, hesitating, so that Sir Sykes for the first time felt a genuine
twinge of alarm.
‘Have you any suspicion, doctor, that there is something worse than
this?’ he asked, drawing his breath more quickly.
‘I don’t know. I hope not,’ returned Dr Aulfus thoughtfully. ‘Our
knowledge after all is but cramped and bounded. I remember once at
sea (I was assistant-surgeon in the navy and also on board Green’s
Indiamen, before I graduated in medicine) seeing a look in the face of
a young sailor who had fallen from the mizzen shrouds to the deck, very
like what I saw, or fancied I saw, in Captain Denzil’s face to-day.
But that was a fall, compared with which even the accidents of a
steeplechase are trifles,’ added the doctor more cheerfully, and with
an evident wish to change the subject.
‘It is a mad sport, taken as a form of excitement,’ said Sir Sykes,
his resentment beginning to turn itself towards the institution of
steeplechasing; ‘worse still, when mere greed actuates the performers,
brutal curiosity the spectators.’
‘I quite agree with you, Sir Sykes, quite,’ chimed in the doctor, with
a bird-like chirrup of acquiescence. ‘The mob, my dear sir, whether in
decent coats or in torn fustian, is animated by much the same spirit
which caused the Roman amphitheatre to ring with applause as wild
beasts and gladiators, pitted against one another in the arena, stained
the sand with’——
Here Captain Prodgers came in on tiptoe to say that Jasper was awake
and sensible; that he had twice asked if his father had not yet
arrived; and that he, Prodgers, had volunteered to make inquiries,
and hearing the sound of voices as he passed the half-closed door,
had entered. ‘You, Sir Sykes, I have had the pleasure of meeting once
before—at Lord Bivalve’s, in Grosvenor Place,’ he said with a bow.
‘Captain Prodgers of the Lancers,’ he added, by way of an introduction.
The baronet returned the bow stiffly. He had some recollection of
Captain Jack’s jolly face beaming across the Bivalve mahogany; but he
felt anything but well disposed towards the owner of Norah Creina and
the man who had led his son into the present scrape.
‘A friend of my son’s, I am aware,’ said Sir Sykes half bitterly.
‘And I am afraid, “Save me from my friends,” is the saying just now
uppermost in your mind, Sir Sykes,’ returned Captain Prodgers. ‘But
I do assure you that, hard hit in the pocket as I have been in this
precious business, I’d sooner have lost the double of my bets, than
have seen that poor fellow knocked about as he has been. I’m no
chicken, and sentiment don’t come natural to me, but I give you my word
that had the tumble turned out as bad as I feared it would when first I
saw it, I should—never have forgiven, myself, that’s all.’ Having said
which, Jack Prodgers mentioned to the doctor that he should be found
when required in the coffee-room, and with another bow to Sir Sykes,
withdrew. The baronet, guided by Dr Aulfus, entered the darkened room
where Jasper lay.
‘Is that you, sir? I thought you would come,’ said the hurt man from
the bed, stretching out his feeble hand, and as Sir Sykes took the
thin fingers within his own grasp, his anger, smouldering yet, seemed
for the moment to die away, chased by the crowd of early recollections
that beset his memory. He could remember Jasper as a lisping child, a
quick intelligent boy, unduly indulged and pampered it is true, but
bold-faced and free-spoken at an age when many a youngster, far nobler
in every quality of heart and head, is sheepish and tongue-tied. In
those days father and mother had been proud and fond of the boy, and
Jasper’s future prosperity had been no unimportant element in Sir
Sykes’s schemes and day-dreams.
‘You do not feel much pain now?’ asked the baronet gently.
‘In my arm and head I do,’ said the patient, stirring uneasily.
The doctor, as he adjusted the pillows, smiled hopefully. ‘A very good
sign that,’ he whispered to Sir Sykes; ‘better than I had hoped for,
after the draught. I think we may pronounce all immediate cause for
anxiety to be over.’
‘When can he be moved?’ asked Sir Sykes, in the same cautious tone.
‘To Carbery? I should say, if he goes on as well as he is doing now,
to-morrow,’ replied Dr Aulfus. ‘I will write down some instructions,
with which it will be well to comply, for it will be some few days at
least before he can resume his former habits of life.’
‘What are you two conspiring about?’ demanded Jasper, with an invalid’s
customary peevishness, from the bed. And then Sir Sykes had to resume
his seat and to say a few soothing words.
‘You’ll soon be well, my boy,’ he said kindly; ‘and sooner back with us
at Carbery, under your sisters’ good nursing. Dr Aulfus here will, I
hope, contrive to come over and give us a call every day till you get
your strength again.’
Dr Aulfus said that he should be delighted to attend his patient at
Carbery Chase, and indeed he looked radiant as he said it. A physician
is, after all, a man, and probably a parent, and little Dr Aulfus had
a wife and was the happy donor of six hostages to fortune. He valued
the privilege of professional admittance at Carbery very highly, less
on account of the emoluments directly derived therefrom, than of the
many small people who would augur well of his skill, since beneath a
baronet’s roof he should prescribe for a baronet’s heir.
The brief conversation between Sir Sykes and his son was rendered the
less marked because of Jasper’s habitual reticence, and of his father’s
unwillingness to touch on any topic that might prove painful. Thus the
lawyer and his bills met with no mention, and the steeplechase would
also have been passed over, had not Jasper himself said: ‘I told Jack
Prodgers I shouldn’t go in for cross-country work again, except with
the hounds in winter. No fear, sir, of my donning the silk jacket any
more, after this sharp lesson of aching bones and empty pockets. Don’t
be angry, please, though, with poor old Jack. He meant all for the
best, he did.’
Sir Sykes replied that he had already had the pleasure of shaking
hands with Captain Prodgers, whom he had formerly met, it appeared,
in London society. And soon afterwards, in compliance with an almost
imperceptible motion of the doctor’s head, he withdrew; and Captain
Jack was recalled to keep watch, uncomplainingly, beside his friend’s
couch, while the patient dozed or talked in snatches.
‘Smoke away, old man; it rather does me good than not,’ Jasper had
said, and the captain’s cigar was seldom extinguished during his vigil.
‘He’ll do!’ was the little doctor’s cheery whisper as he paid his early
morning visit to his charge. And soon after noon, Jasper, pale and
tottering, and with his bruised arm in a sling, was helped into one of
the Carbery carriages and propped with cushions; and under the tender
escort of his two sisters, Lucy and Blanche Denzil, was slowly and
heedfully conveyed home to Carbery Chase.
OUR SEA AND SALMON FISHERIES.
In the department of fishing-industries the march of scientific
inquiry has already borne good fruit. The influence of the weather,
or more properly speaking of the variations of temperature, on
the plentifulness or scarcity of our food-fishes, has grown in
importance as an element in determining the success or failure of the
herring-fishery, for example; and at more than one fishing-station
thermometrical observations are daily made by the fishermen, and
reported to the meteorological authorities, who in their turn deduce
generalisations and laws from the observations thus recorded. Thus the
teachings of the formerly despised ‘science’ are beginning to bear
fruit, and to be openly and fully recognised; and in the future, the
fisherman, as a result of the generalisations just alluded to, may be
able to determine with tolerable accuracy, before setting sail for the
fishing-grounds, the chances of a successful or unsuccessful day’s
labour. Add to this, that, with increased knowledge of the conditions
of life, development, and general history of our food-fishes, wise
legislation may provide for the protection of these fishes and for
the determination of the proper periods for the exercise of the
fisher’s art, and it will be owned that the gains from a scientific
investigation of the fishing-industries are simply incalculable.
For these reasons we have peculiar pleasure in noting the appearance
of a small volume, under the title of _Sea Fisheries_, by E. W. H.
Holdsworth, and _Salmon Fisheries_, by Archibald Young, Commissioner
of Scotch Salmon Fisheries (London: E. Stanford. 1877). The work is
produced under the joint authorship of two gentlemen long connected
with this important branch of British industry. To Mr E. W. H.
Holdsworth has been allotted the task of giving an account of the
sea fisheries of Britain; whilst Mr Archibald Young, one of the
Commissioners of Scotch Salmon Fisheries, has undertaken the task of
giving an account of the interests connected with the capture of the
king of fishes. Mr Holdsworth has to do with the salt water, Mr Young
chiefly with the fresh.
Within the last sixty or seventy years, the herring fisheries of
Scotland, chiefly prosecuted on the north-east coast, have risen to be
a most important national industry and source of wealth, the value of
the catch in a good year amounting to between two and three millions
sterling. Needing no cultivation, the sea yields an annual harvest
almost incredible in amount. Of course much capital is embarked; but
without the hardihood, the enterprise, and the daring risks encountered
by the fishermen, all would be unavailing. It is seen by a late Report,
that in the united fisheries of herrings, cod, and ling, in 1876,
nearly fifteen thousand boats, decked and undecked, were engaged, the
total value of which amounted to upwards of a million sterling. Ever
on the outlook for what will advance the interests of the herring
fishery, the capitalists engaged in the business have latterly added a
fast-sailing steamer to the fleets of boats; by which means herrings
caught at a considerable distance are transferred from the boats to the
steamer, rapidly brought into port, and being there properly prepared,
are despatched by railway to various parts of the United Kingdom.
Railways, by facilitating transit, have been immensely advantageous
to all kinds of fisheries. It might now be said that by this ready
means of transit the most inland towns in the country are now as well
supplied with fresh fish as towns on the coast; in many cases better.
Ice has also played an important part in the transmission of fish to
distant places. Salmon being thus preserved till it reaches the market,
arrives in the best condition, and is sent to table fresh as when
caught. One has only to look at the quantities of beautiful salmon
and other fish spread out on marble benches of the fishmongers in any
of our larger towns, to see what railways and ice have done for this
branch of industry.
Mr Holdsworth expresses strong regret that the prospects of the Irish
fisheries are not by any means of a promising kind, as far as the
cultivation of the art or industry is concerned. All authorities agree
in regarding the coasts of Ireland in most instances as representing
fishing-grounds in which stores of wealth lie unheeded and uncared for.
This is a state of matters much to be deplored, for the sake of all
parties concerned—fishermen, consumers, and the nation at large. Some
years ago, when we were in Ireland, we heard it mentioned that much of
the fish sold in Dublin was supplied by fishermen from the coast of
Wales; and we likewise heard that large quantities of dried white-fish
were introduced to Portrush by fishermen from Islay and other western
isles of Scotland. Though it is stated that the famine of thirty years
ago has had much to do with the depressed state of the Irish fisheries,
and that emigration has also affected them, we yet fail to see why, by
a little enterprise, the still resident natives should not be able to
beat both the Welsh and Scotch out of their own market.
As regards the salmon fisheries, Mr Young leads us into a region which
is still in some particulars a field of debate and controversy. There
are very few readers, it may be presumed, who are ignorant of the
controversies, for instance, which have been carried on concerning the
correct answer to the question, ‘Are parr the young of salmon?’—a
query which Mr Young, along with the great majority of naturalists,
answers unhesitatingly in the affirmative. The natural history of the
salmon forms the starting-point of all knowledge of the fish, and of
the information necessary for determining the conditions under which
it may be properly and successfully caught—the terms ‘properly’
and ‘successfully’ in this case being taken as including the best
interests of the fish and its race, as well as the interests of its
human captors. Briefly detailed, the life-history of a salmon may be
said to begin with the ascent of the parent-fishes in autumn and early
winter to the upper reaches of our rivers for the purpose of depositing
their eggs. In each salmon-mother it has been calculated about nine
hundred eggs exist for every pound of her weight, and these eggs she
deposits in a trench, excavated by aid of the jaw, in the gravelly
bed of the stream. Fertilised after being deposited, by the milt of
the male parent, the latter covers the eggs with gravel by means of
his fins—the tail-fin being, as far as can be ascertained, the chief
agent and means in effecting this necessary action. Such eggs as escape
the attack of enemies—and of these, in the shape of aquatic birds
and of other fishes, the salmon-ova have more than enough—undergo
development, and are hatched in from ninety to one hundred and thirty
days.
It would be an interesting study were we to trace the stages through
which the young fish becomes evolved from its simple germ, and the
wondrous formation of tissues and organs out of the soft jelly-like
matter of which the egg is primarily composed. But want of space
forbids; and our readers must therefore fancy for themselves the
process whereby the hidden artist Nature works through development,
and at length shapes out the young salmon, or ‘parr.’ It may be
mentioned in proof of the small proportion borne by the salmon-eggs
actually deposited, to those developed, that authorities agree in
stating that out of three thousand eggs deposited, scarcely _one_ egg
may survive—so terrible is the destruction of young salmon. This fact
alone, as Mr Young argues, should tell powerfully as an argument in
favour of _artificial_ propagation; since out of three thousand eggs
which are thus hatched, at least one thousand young fishes may be
successfully reared.
The curious fact is noticed that in most if not all broods of salmon,
half of the parrs will become ‘smolts’—as they are called in their
next stage—at the end of a year or so, whilst the other half will
not become smolts _until after the lapse of two years and more_. This
incongruity, if we may so term it, has led to the questions, ‘Do the
parrs become smolts between thirteen and fifteen months after they
have left the egg, or at the age of two years and two months?’ Both
questions may apparently be answered in the affirmative, since each
brood exhibits this peculiar feature of some of its members coming
to the smolt-stage long before the others. Mr Young remarks on the
authority of a salmon-breeder in the north, that about eight per cent.
of the salmon hatched by this gentleman became smolts at the end of
the first year; about sixty per cent. at the end of the second year;
and about thirty-two per cent. at the end of the third year. These
facts would seem to indicate that the end of the second year is the
most natural period for the assumption of the smolt-guise, which, as
distinguished from that of the parr, exhibits a beautiful coat of
silvery mail.
The parr, it may be remarked, dies if placed in sea-water, whereas the
smolt thrives in the latter element. On reaching the sea, the young
smolt may measure from four to five inches. After a residence in the
sea of some six or eight weeks, the smolt returns to its river as a
‘grilse,’ which varies from five to eight or nine pounds in weight,
according to the time it has remained in the sea. After returning to
its river the grilse spawns, and then returns to the sea. The features
of the mature salmon are now apparent, and the fish increases in size
after each such annual migration to the sea. Indeed nothing is more
extraordinary in the history of the salmon than its rapid increase and
growth after these periodical migrations to salt water. Three salmon
which weighed ten, eleven and a half, and twelve and a half pounds as
they were migrating seawards, were duly marked; and on being caught
six months afterwards when returning to the fresh water, were found
to have increased in weight to the extent of seventeen, eighteen, and
nineteen pounds respectively. Although salmon usually return to the
rivers in which they first saw the light, yet it has been ascertained
that the practice is not an invariable one. There is no good reason why
one river should not suit a salmon as well as another, and in their
wide migrations these fishes are exceedingly likely to enter rivers
other than their native streams.
One of the most interesting topics touched upon by Mr Young in his
observations, is that regarding the relative late or early development
of salmon in different Scotch rivers. Prefacing, that a ‘clean’ salmon
is a fish that has been for some time in the sea, it has been generally
believed that rivers which issue from a lake are ‘early’ rivers—or in
other words that they are streams which clean salmon will ascend in the
early spring. But this idea receives little or no support from facts
as they stand. Many early Scotch rivers have no lake heads; whilst
many Scotch rivers which run out of or through lakes are late rivers.
Mr Frank Buckland thinks a river’s ‘earliness’ in the matter of salmon
depends on its proportion of mileage in length to its square mileage
of ‘catchment’—that is of the land-area from which the river is fed.
This, however, seems to us a whimsical theory, and might be disproved
by facts. As regards the ‘earliness’ of rivers, Mr Young’s theory is
that much depends on temperature; in fact, temperature is known to be
the chief cause which regulates the distribution of life in the sea,
and there is no one fact, so far as we are aware, which can be said to
militate against his views. His theory is, however, being tested by the
Scottish Meteorological Society at Inverugie; by the Duke of Richmond,
on the Spey; by the Duke of Sutherland, on two early and two late
rivers in Sutherlandshire; and by the Tweed Commissioners—the method
of testing being by thermometers applied to the fresh water of the
rivers, and to the sea near their mouths.
The latter part of the volume under notice is occupied with statements
relative to salmon fishery laws and legislation, a subject in which
the author is naturally deeply interested, and in which our knowledge
of the salmon naturally culminates when the fish is regarded from an
economic standpoint. In Scotland, it seems we are far behind England
and Ireland in respect that there are no Inspectors of salmon fisheries
empowered to make annual inspections and reports on the Scotch salmon
fisheries! And this fact becomes the more inexplicable, and the more
urgently demands remedy, when we consider that the Scotch fisheries
are many times as valuable as those of our English neighbours. Then
also, Mr Young has a most justifiable grumble at the fact that, in our
statutes, there are very inadequate provisions made for the removal
of artificial and natural obstructions in salmon rivers, and for the
prevention of pollutions; and no close-time for trout or char. The
importance of clearing away natural obstructions to the ascent of the
salmon in rivers is well exemplified when it is found that in Scotland
no less than 478 miles of river and loch are thus closed against these
fishes. No less forcibly shewn is the vexatious fact that rivers
are polluted and rendered unfitted for breeding-streams by means and
methods which the River Pollution Commissioners in their Reports
declare to be preventable at a moderate cost, without injury to the
manufactures with which they are connected.
Besides pollution, two things are especially detrimental to the
Scottish salmon fisheries. The first to be mentioned, is the abominable
practice of building weirs across rivers in order to send water
into mill-lades, and the ignoring of the law that requires that the
water shall be periodically diverted into the river again. Certain
proprietors, to make the most of their lands, give perpetual leases of
ground to manufacturers of one kind or other, with liberty to build a
weir and take water to turn their machinery. There may be provisions
in the lease as there is in law to the effect that the withdrawal of
water shall cease during the night and on Sundays. Such provisions
are, however, in many instances neglected, as giving too much trouble.
The result is, that the whole river, or very nearly the whole, except
in times of flood, is diverted into the mill-lade, whereby trout and
salmon are unable to surmount the weir, and are effectually barred
from getting to the upper part of the stream. In plain terms, by the
selfishness of a proprietor (or a pair of them, one on each side), all
who dwell on the river above the weir are deprived of the fish which
nature had bountifully assigned to them. Already in these pages we have
alluded to a scandalous case of this kind on the Tweed.