Having resolved to explore the island of Rasay, which could be done
only on foot, I last night obtained my fellow-traveller's permission
to leave him for a day, he being unable to take so hardy a walk. Old
Mr Malcolm M'Cleod, who had obligingly promised to accompany me, was
at my bedside between five and six. I sprang up immediately, and he
and I, attended by two other gentlemen, traversed the country during
the whole of this day. Though we had passed over not less than
four-and-twenty miles of very rugged ground, and had a Highland dance
on the top of Dun Can, the highest mountain in the island, we returned
in the evening not at all fatigued, and piqued ourselves at not being
outdone at the nightly ball by our less active friends, who had
remained at home.
My survey of Rasay did not furnish much which can interest my readers;
I shall therefore put into as short a compass as I can, the
observations upon it, which I find registered in my journal. It is
about fifteen English miles long, and four broad. On the south side is
the laird's family seat, situated on a pleasing low spot. The old
tower of three stories, mentioned by Martin, was taken down soon after
1746, and a modern house supplies its place. There are very good
grass-fields and corn-lands about it, well dressed. I observed,
however, hardly any inclosures, except a good garden plentifully
stocked with vegetables, and strawberries, raspberries, currants, &c.
On one of the rocks just where we landed, which are not high, there is
rudely carved a square, with a crucifix in the middle. Here, it is
said, the lairds of Rasay, in old times, used to offer up their
devotions. I could not approach the spot, without a grateful
recollection of the event commemorated by this symbol.
A little from the shore, westward, is a kind of subterraneous house.
There has been a natural fissure, or separation of the rock, running
towards the sea, which has been roofed over with long stones, and
above them turf has been laid. In that place the inhabitants used to
keep their oars. There are a number of trees near the house, which
grow well; some of them of a pretty good size. They are mostly plane
and ash. A little to the west of the house is an old ruinous chapel,
unroofed, which never has been very curious. We here saw some human
bones of an uncommon size. There was a heel-bone, in particular,
which Dr Macleod said was such, that if the foot was in proportion, it
must have been twenty-seven inches long. Dr Johnson would not look at
the bones. He started back from them with a striking appearance of
horrour. Mr M'Queen told us, it was formerly much the custom, in these
isles, to have human bones lying above ground, especially in the
windows of churches. On the south of the chapel is the family burying
place. Above the door, on the east end of it, is a small bust or image
of the Virgin Mary, carved upon a stone which makes part of the wall.
There is no church upon the island. It is annexed to one of the
parishes of Sky; and the minister comes and preaches either in Rasay's
house, or some other house, on certain Sundays. I could not but value
the family seat more, for having even the ruins of a chapel close to
it. There was something comfortable in the thought of being so near a
piece of consecrated ground. Dr Johnson said, 'I look with reverence
upon every place that has been set apart for religion'; and he kept
off his hat while he was within the walls of the chapel.
The eight crosses, which Martin mentions as pyramids for deceased
ladies, stood in a semicircular line, which contained within it the
chapel. They marked out the boundaries of the sacred territory within
which an asylum was to be had. One of them, which we observed upon our
landing, made the first point of the semicircle. There are few of them
now remaining. A good way farther north, there is a row of buildings
about four feet high: they run from the shore on the east along the
top of a pretty high eminence, and so down to the shore on the west,
in much the same direction with the crosses. Rasay took them to be the
marks for the asylum; but Malcolm thought them to be false sentinels,
a common deception, of which instances occur in Martin, to make
invaders imagine an island better guarded. Mr Donald M'Queen, justly
in my opinion, supposed the crosses which form the inner circle to be
the church's land-marks.
The south end of the island is much covered with large stones or rocky
strata. The laird has enclosed and planted part of it with firs, and
he shewed me a considerable space marked out for additional
plantations.
Dun Can is a mountain three computed miles from the laird's house. The
ascent to it is by consecutive risings, if that expression may be used
when vallies intervene, so that there is but a short rise at once; but
it is certainly very high above the sea. The palm of altitude is
disputed for by the people of Rasay and those of Sky; the former
contending for Dun Can, the latter for the mountains in Sky, over
against it. We went up the east side of Dun Can pretty easily. It is
mostly rocks all around, the points of which hem the summit of it.
Sailors, to whom it is a good object as they pass along, call it
Rasay's cap. Before we reached this mountain, we passed by two lakes.
Of the first, Malcolm told me a strange fabulous tradition. He said,
there was a wild beast in it, a sea-horse, which came and devoured a
man's daughter; upon which the man lighted a great fire, and had a sow
roasted at it, the smell of which attracted the monster. In the fire
was put a spit. The man lay concealed behind a low wall of loose
stones, and he had an avenue formed for the monster, with two rows of
large flat stones, which extended from the fire over the summit of the
hill, till it reached the side of the loch. The monster came, and the
man with the red-hot spit destroyed it. Malcolm shewed me the little
hiding-place, and the rows of stones. He did not laugh when he told
this story. I recollect having seen in the Scots Magazine, several
years ago, a poem upon a similar tale, perhaps the same, translated
from the Erse, or Irish, called Albin and the Daughter of Mey.
There is a large tract of land, possessed as a common, in Rasay. They
have no regulations as to the number of cattle. Every man puts upon it
as many as he chooses. From Dun Can northward, till you reach the
other end of the island, there is much good natural pasture
unincumbered by stones. We passed over a spot, which is appropriated
for the exercising ground. In 1745, a hundred fighting men were
reviewed here, as Malcolm told me, who was one of the officers that
led them to the field. They returned home all but about fourteen. What
a princely thing is it to be able to furnish such a band! Rasay has
the true spirit of a chief. He is, without exaggeration, a father to
his people.
There is plenty of lime-stone in the island, a great quarry of
free-stone, and some natural woods, but none of any age, as they cut
the trees for common country uses. The lakes, of which there are many,
are well stocked with trout. Malcolm catched one of four-and-twenty
pounds weight in the loch next to Dun Can, which, by the way, is
certainly a Danish name, as most names of places in these islands are.
The old castle, in which the family of Rasay formerly resided, is
situated upon a rock very near the sea: the rock is not one mass of
stone, but a concretion of pebbles and earth, so firm that it does not
appear to have mouldered. In this remnant of antiquity I found nothing
worthy of being noticed, except a certain accommodation rarely to be
found at the modern houses of Scotland, and which Dr Johnson and I
fought for in vain at the Laird of Rasay's new-built mansion, where
nothing else was wanting. I took the liberty to tell the laird it was
a shame there should be such a deficiency in civilized times. He
acknowledged the justice of the remark. But perhaps some generations
may pass before the want is supplied. Dr Johnson observed to me, how
quietly people will endure an evil, which they might at any time very
easily remedy; and mentioned as an instance, that the present family
of Rasay had possessed the island for more than four-hundred years,
and never made a commodious landing place, though a few men with
pickaxes might have cut an ascent of stairs out of any part of the
rock in a week's time.
The north end of Rasay is as rocky as the south end. From it I saw the
little Isle of Fladda, belonging to Rasay, all fine green ground; and
Rona, which is of so rocky a soil that it appears to be a pavement. I
was told however that it has a great deal of grass, in the
interstices. The laird has it all in his own hands. At this end of the
island of Rasay is a cave in a striking situation. It is in a recess
of a great cleft, a good way up from the sea. Before it the ocean
roars, being dashed against monstrous broken rocks; grand and aweful
propugnacula. On the right hand of it is a longitudinal cave, very low
at the entrance, but higher as you advance. The sea having scooped it
out, it seems strange and unaccountable that the interior part, where
the water must have operated with less force, should be loftier than
that which is more immediately exposed to its violence. The roof of it
is all covered with a kind of petrifications formed by drops, which
perpetually distil from it. The first cave has been a place of much
safety. I find a great difficulty in describing visible objects. I
must own too that the old castle and cave, like many other things, of
which one hears much, did not answer my expectations. People are every
where apt to magnify the curiosities of their country.
This island has abundance of black cattle, sheep, and goats; a good
many horses, which are used for ploughing, carrying out dung, and
other works of husbandry. I believe the people never ride. There are
indeed no roads through the island, unless a few detached beaten
tracks deserve that name. Most of the houses are upon the shore; so
that all the people have little boats, and catch fish. There is great
plenty of potatoes here. There are black-cock in extraordinary
abundance, moor-fowl, plover and wild pigeons, which seemed to me to
be the same as we have in pigeon-houses, in their state of nature.
Rasay has no pigeon-house. There are no hares nor rabbits in the
island, nor was there ever known to be a fox, till last year, when one
was landed on it by some malicious person, without whose aid he could
not have got thither, as that animal is known to be a very bad
swimmer. He has done much mischief. There is a great deal of fish
caught in the sea round Rasay; it is a place where one may live in
plenty, and even in luxury. There are no deer; but Rasay told us he
would get some.
They reckon it rains nine months in the year in this island, owing to
its being directly opposite to the western coast of Sky, where the
watery clouds are broken by high mountains. The hills here, and indeed
all the healthy grounds in general, abound with the sweet-smelling
plant which the highlanders call gaul, and (I think) with dwarf
juniper in many places. There is enough of turf, which is their fuel,
and it is thought there is a mine of coal. Such are the observations
which I made upon the island of Rasay, upon comparing it with the
description given by Martin, whose book we had with us.
There has been an ancient league between the families of Macdonald and
Rasay. Whenever the head of either family dies, his sword is given to
the head of the other. The present Rasay has the late Sir James
Macdonald's sword. Old Rasay joined the Highland army in 1745, but
prudently guarded against a forfeiture, by previously conveying his
estate to the present gentleman, his eldest son. On that occasion, Sir
Alexander, father of the late Sir James Macdonald, was very friendly
to his neighbour. 'Don't be afraid, Rasay,' said he; 'I'll use all my
interest to keep you safe; and if your estate should be taken, I'll
buy it for the family.' And he would have done it.
Let me now gather some gold dust--some more fragments of Dr Johnson's
conversation, without regard to order of time. He said, he thought
very highly of Bentley; that no man now went so far in the kinds of
learning that he cultivated; that the many attacks on him were owing
to envy, and to a desire of being known, by being in competition with
such a man; that it was safe to attack him, because he never answered
his opponents, but let them die away. It was attacking a man who would
not beat them, because his beating them would make them live the
longer. And he was right not to answer; for, in his hazardous method
of writing, he could not but be often enough wrong; so it was better
to leave things to their general appearance, than own himself to have
erred in particulars. He said, Mallet was the prettiest drest puppet
about town, and always kept good company. That, from his way of
talking, he saw, and always said, that he had not written any part of
the Life of the Duke of Marlborough, though perhaps he intended to do
it at some time, in which case he was not culpable in taking the
pension. That he imagined the duchess furnished the materials for her
Apology, which Hooke wrote, and Hooke furnished the words and the
order, and all that in which the art of writing consists. That the
duchess had not superior parts, but was a bold frontless woman, who
knew how to make the most of her opportunities in life. That Hooke got
a LARGE sum of money for writing her Apology. That he wondered Hooke
should have been weak enough to insert so profligate a maxim, as that
to tell another's secret to one's friend, is no breach of confidence;
though perhaps Hooke, who was a virtuous man, as his History shews,
and did not wish her well, though he wrote her Apology, might see its
ill tendency, and yet insert it at her desire. He was acting only
ministerially. I apprehend, however, that Hooke was bound to give his
best advice. I speak as a lawyer. Though I have had clients whose
causes I could not, as a private man, approve; yet, if I undertook
them, I would not do any thing that might be prejudicial to them, even
at their desire, without warning them of their danger.