[Sidenote: RETURN TO CORRICHATACHIN.]
At Sconser our travellers took boat for Strolimus, on their way to the
friendly farmhouse at Corrichatachin, where they had been so hospitably
received nearly three weeks earlier. Their horses they sent round a
point of land to meet them further down the coast.
“It was seven o’clock,” writes Boswell, “when we got into our
boat. We had many showers, and it soon grew pretty dark. Dr.
Johnson sat silent and patient. Once he said, as he looked on
the black coast of Skye—black, as being composed of rocks
seen in the dusk—‘This is very solemn.’ Our boatmen were
rude singers, and seemed so like wild Indians, that a very
little imagination was necessary to give one an impression of
being upon an American river. We landed at Strolimus, from
whence we got a guide to walk before us, for two miles, to
Corrichatachin. Not being able to procure a horse for our
baggage, I took one portmanteau before me, and Joseph another.
We had but a single star to light us on our way. It was about
eleven when we arrived. We were most hospitably received by
the master and mistress, who were just going to bed, but, with
unaffected ready kindness, made a good fire, and at twelve
o’clock at night had supper on the table.”
[Illustration: SAILING PAST THE ISLE OF RUM.]
[Sidenote: WEATHER-BOUND AT OSTIG.]
Here, as I have already described, they rested that twentieth Sunday
after Trinity, when Boswell, recovering from his drinking bout, “by
divine interposition, as some would have taken it,” opened his Prayer
Book at the Apostles’ injunction against drunkenness contained in the
Epistle for that day. Here, too, the Highlanders, drinking their toasts
over the punch, won by Johnson’s easy and social manners, “vied with
each other in crying out, with a strong Celtic pronunciation, ‘Toctor
Shonson, Toctor Shonson, your health!’” The weather was so stormy that
it was not till the afternoon of Tuesday, September 28, that they were
able to continue their journey. That night they arrived at Ostig,
on the north-western side of the promontory of Slate, and found a
hospitable reception at the Manse. Here, too, they were kept prisoners
by wind and rain. “I am,” writes Johnson, “still confined in Skye. We
were unskilful travellers, and imagined that the sea was an open road
which we could pass at pleasure; but we have now learned with some pain
that we may still wait for a long time the caprices of the equinoctial
winds, and sit reading or writing, as I now do, while the tempest is
rolling the sea or roaring in the mountains.” Nevertheless, so good was
the entertainment which they received that, as Boswell tells us, “the
hours slipped along imperceptibly.” They had books, and company, and
conversation. In strange contrast to the wildness of the scenery and
the roughness of the weather was their talk one day about Shenstone and
his Love Pastorals. It was surely not among the stormy Hebrides that
the poet of the Leasowes, whose “ambition was rural elegance,” would
have expected to be quoted. Yet here it was, in the midst of beating
winds and dashing showers, with the storm-tossed sea in view of the
windows, that Boswell repeated the pretty stanza:
“She gazed as I slowly withdrew;
My path I could hardly discern;
So sweetly she bade me adieu,
I thought that she bade me return.”
[Illustration: ARDNAMURCHAN POINT.]
On Friday, October 1, they took advantage of a break in the weather to
move on to Armidale, about a mile from the Sound of Slate, where they
waited for a favourable wind to carry them to Iona. It came, or rather
seemed to come, on the following Sunday.
[Sidenote: SETTING SAIL FOR IONA.]
“While we were chatting,” writes Boswell, “in the indolent
style of men who were to stay here all this day at least, we
were suddenly roused at being told that the wind was fair, that
a little fleet of herring-busses was passing by for Mull, and
that Mr. Simpson’s vessel was about to sail. Hugh M’Donald,
the skipper, came to us, and was impatient that we should get
ready, which we soon did. Dr. Johnson, with composure and
solemnity, repeated the observation of Epictetus, that ‘as
man has the voyage of death before him, whatever may be his
employment, he should be ready at the master’s call; and an old
man should never be far from the shore, lest he should not be
able to get himself ready.’”
For some hours they sailed along with a favourable breeze, catching
sight of the Isle of Rum as they rounded the point; but when they had
got in full view of Ardnamurchan, the wind changed. [Sidenote: THE
ISLAND OF COL.] They tried tacking, but a storm broke upon them, night
came on, and they were forced to run through the darkness for Col.
Boswell’s account of this dangerous voyage is too long to quote, and
too good to abridge. In this dreary spot they were weather-bound for
more than a week. “There is,” writes Johnson, “literally no tree upon
the island; part of it is a sandy waste, over which it would be really
dangerous to travel in dry weather, and with a high wind.” The sight of
these hills of sand struck him greatly. “I heard him,” writes Boswell,
“after we were in the house, repeating to himself, as he walked about
the room,
‘And smothered in the dusty whirlwind dies.’”
[Illustration: COL.]
Over this low-lying island the Atlantic blasts swept in all their fury.
On Sunday October 10, Boswell recorded:—“There was this day the most
terrible storm of wind and rain that I ever remember. It made such an
awful impression on us all, as to produce, for some time, a kind of
dismal quietness in the house.”
The rough weather spread far. In London, as the old weather tables tell
us, it was “a stormy day with heavy rains and with little intermission
night and day.”[667] On the previous Friday Horace Walpole had come
home in a tempest from Bushey Park. “I hope,” he wrote, “Jupiter
Pluvius has not been so constant at Ampthill. I think he ought to be
engraved at the top of every map of England.”[668] Happily in the
young Laird of Col our travellers had the kindest of hosts. His house
“new-built and neat” still stands; Grissipol, which they visited, is
in ruins. It was not till the morning of Thursday, the 14th, that they
were able to set sail. With a fair breeze they were soon carried over
to Tobermory, or Mary’s Well, a beautiful bay in the Isle of Mull.
“There are (writes Boswell) sometimes sixty or seventy sail
here: to-day there were twelve or fourteen vessels. To see such
a fleet was the next thing to seeing a town. The vessels were
from different places; Clyde, Campbeltown, Newcastle, &c. One
was returning to Lancaster from Hamburgh. After having been
shut up so long in Col, the sight of such an assemblage of
moving habitations, containing such a variety of people engaged
in different pursuits, gave me much gaiety of spirit. When we
had landed, Dr. Johnson said, ‘Boswell is now all alive. He
is like Antæus; he gets new vigour whenever he touches the
ground.’”
[Illustration: COL: THE LAIRD’S HOUSE.]
No such fleet is, I imagine, ever to be seen there at the present day,
for one steamer does the work of many small vessels. The beauty of this
little haven has been long celebrated. Sacheverell, who visited it two
hundred years ago, thus describes it:—
“To the landward it is surrounded with high mountains covered
with woods, pleasantly intermixed with rocks, and three or
four cascades of water, which throw themselves from the top of
the mountain with a pleasure that is astonishing, all which
together make one of the oddest and most charming prospects I
ever saw. Italy itself, with all the assistance of art, can
hardly afford anything more beautiful and diverting.”[669]
[Illustration: COLL ISLAND.
SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE & RIVINGTON, LTD, PUBLISHERS, LONDON.
IMP. & HÉLIOG. LEMERCIER & C^{IE.} PARIS.]
[Sidenote: THE SUNKEN GALLEON.]
He had been sent there to fish for sunken treasure. Martin, whose
_Description of the Western Isles_ was published the year after
Sacheverell’s book, gives the following account of this expedition:—
“One of the ships of the Spanish Armada, called the Florida,
perished in this Bay, having been blown up by one Smallet, of
Dumbarton, in the year 1588. There was a great sum of gold and
money on board, which disposed the Earl of Argyle and some
Englishmen to attempt the recovery of it. Some pieces of gold
and money and a golden chain was taken out of her. I have seen
some fine brass cannon, some pieces of eight, teeth, beads
and pins that had been taken out of that ship. Several of the
inhabitants of Mull told me that they had conversed with their
relations that were living at the harbour when the ship was
blown up.”[670]
[Illustration: COLVAY.]
“One Smallet” was an ancestor of the great novelist, who in his
_Humphry Clinker_ artfully brings old Matthew Bramble to Tobermory so
that he may celebrate the great deed of his forefather. According to
his account “the divers found the hull of the vessel still entire,
but so covered with sand that they could not make their way between
decks.”[671] Mr. Froude mentions the loss of this great Spanish
galleon, but did not know the name of the harbour.[672] Sir Walter
Scott, who visited Tobermory a century and a quarter after Sacheverell,
said that, “the richness of the round steep green knolls, clothed
with copse and glancing with cascades, and a pleasant peep at a
small fresh-water loch embosomed among them—the view of the bay
surrounded and guarded by the island of Colvay—the gliding of two or
three vessels in the more distant sound—and the row of the gigantic
Ardnamurchan mountains closing the scene to the north, almost justify
his eulogium who in 1688 declared the Bay of Tobermory might equal any
prospect in Italy.”[673] With one thing Sacheverell was not content,
and that was the weather. “With the dog-days,” he says, “the autumnal
rains began, and for six weeks we had scarce a good day. The whole
frame of nature seemed inhospitable, bleak, stormy, rainy, windy.”
There was a tolerable inn, where “a dish of tea and some good bread
and butter” restored Johnson’s good humour, which had been somewhat
ruffled by the miserable accommodation which he had had on shipboard.
They did not pass the night here, but became the guests of a Dr.
Macleane who lived close by. “Col,” wrote Johnson, “made every Macleane
open his house where we came, and supply us with horses when we
departed.” Here they were once more kept prisoners by the weather. Not
only was there wind and rain, but the rivers, they were told, were
impassable. They had books and good talk. In the daughter of the house
Johnson at last found “an interpreter of Erse poetry.” At Dunvegan he
complained that “he could never get the meaning of a song explained
to him.” Miss Macleane had been bred in the Lowlands, and had gained
Gaelic by study. She therefore understood the exact nature of his
inquiries.
“She is [he said] the most accomplished lady that I have found
in the Highlands. She knows French, music, and drawing, sews
neatly, makes shell-work, and can milk cows; in short, she can
do every thing. She talks sensibly, and is the first person
whom I have found, that can translate Erse poetry literally.”