Chapter IV: Part 4

At the bridge we found Angus seated, with his gun across his knee, and Spoineag and Fruich coursing about, and beating the bushes, from which a rabbit would occasionally bounce and scurry off. Angus looked more alert and intelligent than I had ever before seen him--probably because he had business on hand. We started at once along the shore at the foot of the cliffs above which we had been lying half an hour before. Our way lay across large boulders which had rolled down from the heights above, and progression, at least to one unaccustomed to such rough work, was by no means easy. Angus and M'Ian stepped on lightly enough, the dogs kept up a continual barking and yelping, and were continually disappearing in rents and crannies in the cliffs, and emerging more ardent than ever. At a likely place Angus would stop for a moment, speak a word or two to the dogs, and then they rushed barking at every orifice, entered with a struggle, and ranged through all the passages of the hollow cairn. As yet the otter had not been found at home. [Sidenote: The otter hunt.] At last when we came in view of a spur of the higher ground which, breaking down on the shore, terminated in a sort of pyramid of loose stones, Angus dashed across the broken boulders at a run, followed by his dogs. When they got up, Spoineag and Fruich, barking as they had never barked before, crept in at all kinds of holes and impossible fissures, and were no sooner out than they were again in. Angus cheered and encouraged them, and pointed out to M'Ian traces of the otter's presence. I sat down on a stone and watched the behaviour of the terriers. If ever there was an insane dog, it was Fruich that day; she jumped and barked, and got into the cairn by holes through which no other dog could go, and came out by holes through which no other dog could come. Spoineag, on the other hand, was comparatively composed; he would occasionally sit down, and taking a critical view of the cairn, run barking to a new point, and to that point Fruich would rush like a fury and disappear. Spoineag was a commander-in-chief, Fruich was a gallant general of division. Spoineag was Wellington, Fruich was the fighting Picton. Fruich had disappeared for a time, and from the muffled barking we concluded she was working her way to the centre of the citadel, when all at once Spoineag, as if moved by a sudden inspiration, rushed to the top of the cairn, and began tearing up the turf with teeth and feet. Spoineag's eagerness now was as intense as ever Fruich's had been. Angus, who had implicit faith in Spoineag's genius, climbed up to assist, and tore away at the turf with his hands. In a minute or so Spoineag had effected an entrance from the top, and began to work his way downwards. Angus stood up against the sky with his gun in readiness. We could hear the dogs barking inside, and evidently approaching a common centre, when all at once a fell tumult arose. The otter was reached at last, and was using teeth and claws. Angus made a signal to M'Ian, who immediately brought his gun to his shoulder. The combat still raged within, and seemed to be coming nearer. Once Fruich came out howling with a bleeding foot, but a cry from Angus on the height sent her in again. All at once the din of barking ceased, and I saw a black lurching object flit past the stones towards the sea. Crack went M'Ian's gun from the boulder, crack went Angus's gun from the height, and the black object turned half round suddenly and then lay still. It was the otter; and the next moment Spoineag and Fruich were out upon it, the fire of battle in their eyes, and their teeth fixed in its bloody throat. They dragged the carcase backwards and forwards, and seemed unable to sate their rage upon it. What ancient animosity existed between the families of otters and terriers? What wrong had been done never to be redressed? Angus came forward at last, sent Spoineag and Fruich howling right and left with his foot, seized the otter by the tail, and then over the rough boulders we began our homeward march. Our progress past the turf-huts nestling on the shore at the foot of the cliffs was a triumphal one. Old men, women, and brown half-naked children came out to gaze upon us. When we got home the otter was laid on the grass in front of the house, where the elder M'Ian came out to inspect it, and was polite enough to express his approval, and to declare that it was not much inferior in bulk and strength to the otters he had hunted and killed at the close of last century. [Sidenote: Skinning the otter.] After dinner young M'Ian skinned his trophy, and nailed and stretched the hide on the garden gate amid the dilapidated kites and ravens. In the evening, Angus, with his gun across his shoulder, and Spoineag and Fruich at his heels, started for that mysterious home of his which was supposed to be at Ardvasar, somewhere in the neighbourhood of Armadale Castle.

A visit to Loch Coruisk had for some little time been meditated; and in the evening of the day on which the otter was slain the boat was dragged from its shed down towards the sea, launched, and brought round to the rude pier, where it was moored for the night. We went to bed early, for we were to rise with the sun. We got up, breakfasted, and went down to the pier where two or three sturdy fellows were putting oars and rowlocks to rights, tumbling in huge stones for ballast, and carefully stowing away a couple of guns and a basket of provisions. In about an hour we were fairly afloat; the broad-backed fellows bent to their oars, and soon the house began to dwindle in the distance, the irregular winding shores to gather into compact masses, and the white cliffs, which we knew to be a couple of miles inland, to come strangely forward, and to overhang the house and the surrounding stripes of pasturage and clumps of birchwood. [Sidenote: Loch Eishart.] On a fine morning there is not in the whole world a prettier sheet of water than Loch Eishart. Everything about it is wild, beautiful, and lonely. You drink a strange and unfamiliar air. You seem to be sailing out of the nineteenth century away back into the ninth. You are delighted, and there is no remembered delight with which you can compare the feeling. Over the Loch the Cuchullins rise crested with tumult of golden mists; the shores are green behind; and away out, towards the horizon, the Island of Rum--ten miles long at the least--shoots up from the flat sea like a pointed flame. It is a granite mass, you know, firm as the foundations of the world; but as you gaze the magic of morning light makes it a glorious apparition--a mere crimson film or shadow, so intangible in appearance you might almost suppose it to exist on sufferance, and that a breath could blow it away. Between Rum, fifteen miles out yonder, and the shores drawing together and darkening behind, with the white cliffs coming forward to stare after us, the sea is smooth, and flushed with more varied hues than ever lived on the changing opal--dim azures, tender pinks, sleek emeralds. It is one sheet of mother-of-pearl. The hills are silent. The voice of man has not yet awoke on their heathery slopes. But the sea, literally clad with birds, is vociferous. They make plenty of noise at their work, these fellows. Darkly the cormorant shoots across our track. The air is filled with a confused medley of sweet, melancholy, and querulous notes. As we proceed, a quick head ducks; a troop of birds sinks suddenly to reappear far behind, or perhaps strips off the surface of the water, taking wing with a shrill cry of complaint. Occasionally, too, a porpoise, or "fish that hugest swims the ocean stream," heaves itself slowly out of the element, its wet sides flashing for a moment in the sunlight, and then heeling lazily over, sinks with never a ripple. As we approached the Strathaird coast, M'Ian sat high in the bow smoking, and covering with his gun every now and again some bird which came wheeling near, while the boatmen joked, and sang snatches of many-chorused songs. As the coast behind became gradually indistinct, the coast in front grew bolder and bolder. You let your hand over the side of the boat and play listlessly with the water. You are lapped in a dream of other days. Your heart is chanting ancient verses and sagas. The northern sea wind that filled the sails of the Vikings, and lifted their locks of tarnished gold, is playing in your hair. And when the keel grates on the pebbles at Kilmaree you are brought back to your proper century and self--for by that sign you know that your voyage is over for the present, and that the way to Coruisk is across the steep hill in front.

[Sidenote: Camasunary.]

The boat was moored to a rude pier of stones, very similar to the one from which we started a couple of hours before, the guns were taken out, so was also the basket of provisions, and then the party, in long-drawn straggling procession, began to ascend the hill. The ascent is steep and laborious. At times you wade through heather as high as your knee; at other times you find yourself in a bog, and must jump perforce from solid turf to turf. Progress is necessarily slow; and the sun coming out strongly makes the brows ache with intolerable heat. The hill-top is reached at last, and you behold a magnificent sight. Beneath, a blue Loch flows in, on the margin of which stands the solitary farm-house of Camasunary. Out on the smooth sea sleep the islands of Rum and Canna--Rum towered and mountainous, Canna flat and fertile. On the opposite side of the Loch, and beyond the solitary farm-house, a great hill breaks down into ocean with shelf and precipice. On the right Blaavin towers up into the mists of the morning, and at his base opens the desolate Glen Sligachan, to which Glencoe is Arcady. On the left, the eye travels along the whole south-west side of the island to the Sound of Sleat, to the hills of Knoydart, to the long point of Ardnamurchan, dim on the horizon. In the presence of all this we sink down in heather or on boulder, and wipe our heated foreheads; in the presence of all this M'Ian hands round the flask, which is received with the liveliest gratitude. In a quarter of an hour we begin the descent, and in another quarter of an hour we are in the valley, and approaching the solitary farm-house. While about three hundred yards from the door a man issued therefrom and came towards us. It would have been difficult to divine from dress and appearance what order of man this was. He was evidently not a farmer, he was as evidently not a sportsman. His countenance was grave, his eye was bright, but you could make little out of either; about him there was altogether a listless and a weary look. He seemed to me to have held too constant communion with the ridges of Blaavin and the desolations of Glen Sligachan. He was not a native of these parts, for he spoke with an English accent. [Sidenote: The tobacco-less man.] He addressed us frankly, discussed the weather, told us the family was from home, and would be absent for some weeks yet; that he had seen us coming down the hill, and that, weary of rocks and sheep and sea-birds, he had come out to meet us. He then expressed a wish that we would oblige him with tobacco, that is, if we were in a position to spare any: stating that tobacco he generally procured from Broadford in rolls of a pound weight at a time; that he had finished his last roll some ten days ago, and that till this period, from some unaccountable accident, the roll, which was more than a week due, had never arrived. He feared it had got lost on the way--he feared that the bearer had been tempted to smoke a pipe of it, and had been so charmed with its exquisite flavour that he had been unable to stir from the spot until he had smoked the entire roll out. He rather thought the bearer would be about the end of the roll now, and that, conscious of his atrocious conduct, he would never appear before him, but would fly the country--go to America, or the Long Island, or some other place where he could hold his guilt a secret. He had found the paper in which the last roll had been wrapt, had smoked _that_, and by a strong effort of imagination had contrived to extract from it considerable enjoyment. And so we made a contribution of bird's-eye to the tobacco-less man, for which he returned us politest thanks, and then strolled carelessly toward Glen Sligachan--probably to look out for the messenger who had been so long on the way.

"Who is our friend?" I asked of my companion. "He seems to talk in a rambling and fanciful manner."

"I have never seen him before," said M'Ian; "but I suspect he is one of those poor fellows who, from extravagance, or devotion to opium or strong waters, have made a mull of life, and who are sent here to end it in a quiet way. We have lots of them everywhere."

"But," said I, "this seems the very worst place you could send such a man to--it's like sending a man into a wilderness with his remorse. It is only in the world, amid its noise, its ambitions, its responsibilities, that men pick themselves up. Sea-birds, and misty mountains, and rain, and silence are the worst companions for such a man."

"But then, you observe, sea-birds, and misty mountains, and rain, and silence hold their tongues, and take no notice of peccadilloes. Whatever may be their faults, they are not scandal-mongers. The doings in Skye do not cause blushes in London. The man dies here as silently as a crow; it is only a black-bordered letter, addressed in a strange hand, that tells the news; and the black-bordered epistle can be thrown into the fire--if the poor mother does not clutch at it and put it away--and no one be a bit the wiser. It is sometimes to the advantage of his friends that a man should go into the other world by the loneliest and most sequestered path."

So talking, we passed the farm-house, which, with the exception of a red-headed damsel, who thrust her head out of a barn to stare, seemed utterly deserted, and bent our steps towards the shore of the Loch. Rough grass bordered a crescent of yellow sand, and on the rough grass a boat lay on its side, its pitchy seams blistering in the early sunshine. Of this boat we immediately took possession, dragged it down to the sea margin, got in our guns and provisions, tumbled in stones for ballast, procured oars, and pushed of. We had to round the great hill which, from the other side of the valley, we had seen breaking down into the sea; and as we sailed and looked up, sheep were feeding on the green shelves, and every now and again a white smoke of sea-birds burst out dangerously from the black precipices. Slowly rounding the rocky buttress, which on stormy days the Atlantic fillips with its spray, another headland, darker still and drearier, drew slowly out to sea, and in a quarter of an hour we had passed from the main ocean into Loch Scavaig, and every pull of the oars revealed another ridge of the Cuchullins. Between these mountain ramparts we sailed, silent as a boatful of souls being conveyed to some Norse hades. [Sidenote: Lock Coruisk.] The Cuchullins were entirely visible now; and the sight midway up Loch Scavaig is more impressive even than when you stand on the ruined shore of Loch Coruisk itself--for the reason, perhaps, that, sailing midway, the mountain forms have a startling unexpectedness, while by the time you have pulled the whole way up, you have had time to master them to some extent, and familiarity has begun to dull the impression. In half an hour or so we disembarked on a rude platform of rock, and stepped out on the very spot on which, according to Sir Walter, the Bruce landed:

"Where a wild stream with headlong shock
Comes brawling down a bed of rock
To mingle with the main."

Picking your steps carefully over huge boulder and slippery stone, you come upon the most savage scene of desolation in Britain. Conceive a large lake filled with dark green water, girt with torn and shattered precipices; the bases of which are strewn with ruin since an earthquake passed that way, and whose summits jag the sky with grisly splinter and peak. There is no motion here save the white vapour steaming from the abyss. The utter silence weighs like a burden upon you: you feel an intruder in the place. The hills seem to possess some secret; to brood over some unutterable idea which you can never know. You cannot feel comfortable at Loch Coruisk, and the discomfort arises in a great degree from the feeling that you are outside of everything--that the thunder-splitten peaks have a life with which you cannot intermeddle. The dumb monsters sadden and perplex. Standing there, you are impressed with the idea that the mountains are silent because they are listening so intently. And the mountains are listening, else why do they echo our voices in such a wonderful way? Shout here like an Achilles in the trenches. Listen! The hill opposite takes up your words, and repeats them one after another, and curiously tries them over with the gravity of a raven. Immediately after, you hear a multitude of skyey voices.

"Methinks that there are spirits among the peaks."

How strangely the clear strong tones are repeated by these granite precipices! Who could conceive that Horror had so sweet a voice! Fainter and more musical they grow; fainter, sweeter, and more remote, until at last they come on your ear as if from the blank of the sky itself. M'Ian fired his gun, and it reverberated into a whole battle of Waterloo. We kept the hills busy with shouts and the firing of guns, and then M'Ian led us to a convenient place for lunching. As we trudge along something lifts itself off a rock--'tis an eagle. See how grandly the noble creature soars away. What sweep of wings! What a lord of the air! And if you cast up your eyes you will see his brother hanging like a speck beneath the sun. Under M'Ian's guidance, we reached the lunching-place, unpacked our basket, devoured our bread and cold mutton, drank our bottled beer, and then lighted our pipes and smoked--in the strangest presence. Thereafter we bundled up our things, shouldered our guns, and marched in the track of ancient Earthquake towards our boat. Embarked once again, and sailing between the rocky portals of Loch Scavaig, I said, "I would not spend a day in that solitude for the world. I should go mad before evening."

"Nonsense," said M'Ian. "Sportsmen erect tents at Coruisk, and stay there by the week--capital trout, too, are to be had in the Loch. The photographer, with his camera and chemicals, is almost always here, and the hills sit steadily for their portraits. It's as well you have seen Coruisk before its glory has departed. Your friend, the Landlord, talks of mooring a floating hotel at the head of Loch Scavaig full of sleeping apartments, the best of meats and drinks, and a brass band to perform the newest operatic tunes on the summer evenings. At the clangour of the brass band the last eagle will take his flight for Harris."

"The Tourist comes, and poetry flies before him as the red man flies before the white. His Tweeds will make the secret top of Sinai commonplace some day."

In due time we reached Camasunary, and drew the boat up on the rough grass beyond the yellow sand. The house looked deserted as we passed. Our friend of the morning we saw seated on a rock, smoking, and gazing up Glen Sligachan, still looking out for the appearance of his messenger from Broadford. At our shout he turned his head and waved his hand. We then climbed the hill and descended on Kilmaree. It was evening now, and as we pulled homewards across the rosy frith, I sat in the bow and watched the monstrous bulk of Blaavin, and the wild fringe of the Cuchullins bronzed by sunset. M'Ian steered, and the rowers, as they bent to their work, sang melancholy Gaelic songs. It was eleven at night by the time we got across, and the hills we had left were yet cutting, with dull purple, a pale yellow sky; for in summer in these northern latitudes there is no proper night, only a mysterious twilight of an hour and a sparkle of short-lived stars.

[Sidenote: Broadford Fair.]

Broadford Fair is a great event in the island. The little town lies on the margin of a curving bay, and under the shadow of a somewhat celebrated hill. On the crest of the hill is a cairn of stones, the burying-place of a Scandinavian woman, tradition informs me, whose wish it was to be laid high up there, that she might sleep right in the pathway of the Norway wind. In a green glen at its base stands the house of Corachatachin, breathing reminiscences of Johnson and Boswell. Broadford is a post town, containing a lime kiln, an inn, and perhaps three dozen houses in all. It is a place of great importance. If Portree is the London of Skye, Broadford is its Manchester. The markets, held four times a year, take place on a patch of moorland, about a mile from the village. Not only are cattle sold, and cash exchanged for the same, but there the Skye farmer meets his relations, from the brother of his blood to his cousin forty times removed. To these meetings he is drawn, not only by his love of coin, but by his love of kindred, and--the _Broadford Mail_ and the _Portree Advertiser_ lying yet in the womb of time--by his love of gossip also. The market is the Skye-man's exchange, his family gathering, and his newspaper. From the deep sea of his solitude he comes up to breathe there, and, refreshed, sinks again. This fair at Broadford I resolved to see. The day before the market the younger M'Ian had driven some forty stirks from the hill, and these, under the charge of John Kelly and his dog, started early in the afternoon that they might be present at the rendezvous about eight o'clock on the following morning, at which hour business generally began. I saw the picturesque troop go past--wildly-beautiful brutes of all colours,--black, red, cream-coloured, dun and tan; all of a height, too, and so finely bred that, but for difference of colour, you could hardly distinguish the one from the other. What a lowing they made! how they tossed their slavering muzzles! how the breaths of each individual brute rose in a separate wreath! how John Kelly shouted and objurgated, and how his dog scoured about! At last the bellowings of the animals--the horde chanting after that fashion their obscure "_Lochaber no more_"--grew fainter and fainter up the glen, and finally on everything the wonted silence settled down. [Sidenote: On the way to the fair.] Next morning before sunrise M'Ian and I followed in a dog-cart. We went along the glen down which Fellowes and I had come; and in the meadows over which, on that occasion, we observed a troop of horses galloping through the mist of evening, I noticed, in the beamless light that preceded sunrise, hay coops by the river side, and an empty cart standing with its scarlet poles in the air. In a field nearer, a couple of male blackcocks with a loud _whirr-rr_ were knocking their pugnacious heads together. Suddenly, above the hill in front the sun showed his radiant face, the chill atmosphere was pierced and brightened by his fires, the dewy birch-trees twinkled, and there were golden flickerings on the pools of the mountain stream along whose margin our road ascended. We passed the lake near which the peat-girls had laughed at us; I took note of the very spot on which we had given Bare-legs a shilling, and related the whole story of our evening walk to my companion as we tooled along.

A mile or two after we had passed the little fishing village with which I had formerly made acquaintance, we entered on a very dismal district of country. It was precisely to the eye what the croak of the raven is to the ear. It was an utter desolation in which nature seemed deteriorated, and at her worst. Winter could not possibly sadden the region; no spring could quicken it into flowers. The hills wore but for ornament the white streak of the torrent; the rocky soil clothed itself in heather to which the purple never came. Even man, the miracle-worker, who transforms everything he touches, who has rescued a fertile Holland from the waves, who has reared a marble Venice out of salt lagoon and marsh, was defeated there. Labour was resultless--it went no further than itself--it was like a song without an echo. A turf-hut with smoke issuing from the roof, and a patch of green round about, which reminded you of the smile of an ailing child, and which would probably ripen, so far as it was capable of ripening, by November, was all that man could wrest from nature. [Sidenote: Broadford Fair.] Gradually, however, as we proceeded, the aspect of the country changed, it began to exhibit traces of cultivation; and before long, the red hill with the Norwegian woman's cairn atop, rose before us, suggesting Broadford, and the close of the journey. In a little while the road was filled with cattle, driven forward with oath and shout. Every now and then a dog-cart came skirring along, and infinite was the confusion, and dire the clangour of tongues, when it plunged into a herd of sheep or skittish "three-year-olds." At the entrance to the fair, the horses were taken out of the vehicles, and left, with a leathern thong fastened round their fore-legs, to limp about in search of breakfast. On either side of the road stood hordes of cattle, the wildest-looking creatures, with fells of hair hanging over their eyes, and tossing horns of preposterous dimensions. On knolls, a little apart, women with white caps and wrapped in scarlet tartan plaids, sat beside a staked cow or pony, or perhaps a dozen sheep, patiently waiting the advances of customers. Troops of horses neighed from stakes. Sheep were there, too, in restless throngs and masses, continually changing their shapes, scattering hither and thither like quicksilver, insane dogs and men flying along their edges. What a hubbub of sound! what lowing and neighing! what bleating and barking! Down in the hollow ground tents had been knocked up since dawn; there potatoes were being cooked for drovers who had been travelling all night; there also liquor could be had. To these places, I observed, contracting parties invariably repaired to solemnise a bargain. At last we reached the centre of the fair, and there stood John Kelly and his animals, a number of drovers moving around them and examining their points. By these men my friend was immediately surrounded, and much chaffering and bargain-making ensued; visits to one of the aforesaid tents being made at intervals. It was a strange sight that rude primeval traffic. John Kelly kept a sharp eye on his beasts. Lachlan Roy passed by, and low was his salute, and broad the smile on his good-natured countenance. I wandered about aimlessly for a time, and began to weary of the noise and tumult. M'Ian had told me that he would not be able to return before noonday at earliest, and that all the while he would be engaged in bargain-making on his own account, or on the account of others, and that during those hours I must amuse myself as best I could. As the novelty of the scene wore off, I began to fear that amusement would not be possible. Suddenly lifting my eyes out of the noise and confusion, there were the solitary mountain tops, and the clear mirror of Broadford Bay, the opposite coast sleeping green in it with all its woods; and lo! the steamer from the south sliding in with her red funnel, and breaking the reflection with a track of foam, and disturbing the far-off morning silence with the thunders of her paddles. That sight solved my difficulty for me in a moment. I thought of Dr Johnson and Boswell. "I shall go," I said, "and look at the ruins of the House of Corachatachin, that lies in the green glen beneath the red hill, on the top of which the Norse woman is buried;" and so saying I went.

To me, I confess, of all Hebridean associations, Dr Johnson's visit is the pleasantest. How the doctor ever got there is a matter for perpetual wonder. He liked books, good cheer, club-life, the roar of Fleet Street, good talk, witty companions. One cannot imagine what attractions the rainy and surge-beaten islands possessed for the author of the "Vanity of Human Wishes." Wordsworth had not yet made fashionable a love for mountain and lake, and the shapes of changing cloud. Scott had not yet thrown the glamour of romance over the northern land, from the Sark to the Fitful Head. Sidenote: Dr Johnson in Skye.] For fine scenery Johnson did not care one rush. When Boswell in the fulness of his delight pointed out "an immense mountain," the doctor sincerely sneered, "an immense protuberance." He only cared for mountains in books, and even in books he did not care for them much. The rain-cloud, which would put Mr Ruskin into ecstasies, could only suggest to the moralist the urgent necessity of an umbrella or a coach. Johnson loved his ease; and a visit to the Western island, was in his day a serious matter--about as serious as a visit to Kamtschatka would be in ours. In his wanderings he was exposed to rain and wind, indifferent cookery, tempestuous seas, and the conversation of persons who were neither witty nor learned--who were neither polished like Beauclerk, nor amusing like Goldsmith--and who laughed at epigram as Leviathan laughs at the shaking of the spear. I protest, when I think of the burly doctor travelling in these regions, voluntarily resigning for a while all London delights, I admire him as a very hero. Boswell commemorates certain outbreaks of petulance and spleen; but, on the whole, the great man seems to have been pleased with his adventure. Johnson found in his wanderings beautiful and high-bred women, well-mannered and cultivated men--and it is more than probable that, if he were returning to the islands to-day, he would not find those admirable human qualities in greater abundance. What puzzles me most is the courage with which the philosopher encountered the sea. I have, in a considerable steamer more than once, shivered at the heavy surge breaking on Ardnamurchan; and yet the doctor passed the place in an open boat on his way to Mull, "lying down below in philosophical tranquillity, with a greyhound at his back to keep him warm," while poor Bozzy remained in the rain above, clinging for dear life to a rope which, a sailor gave him to hold, quieting his insurgent stomach as best he could with pious considerations, and sadly disturbed when a bigger wave than usual came shouldering onward, making the boat reel, with the objections which had been taken to a particular providence--objections which Dr Hawkesworth had lately revived in his preface to "Voyages to the South Seas." Boswell's journal of the tour is delicious reading; full of amusing egotism; unconsciously comic when he speaks for himself, and at the same time valuable, memorable, wonderfully vivid and dramatic in presentment when the "Majestic Teacher of Moral and Religious Wisdom" appears. What a singular capacity the man had to exhibit his hero as he lived, and at the same time to write himself complacently down an ass! It needed a certain versatility to accomplish the feat, one would think. In both ways the most eminent success attends him. And yet the absurdity of Boswell has all the effect of the nicest art. Johnson floats, a vast galleon, in the sea of Boswell's vanity; and in contrast with the levity of the element in which it lives, its bulk and height appear all the more impressive. In Skye one is every now and again coming on the tract of the distinguished travellers. They had been at Broadford--and that morning I resolved I should go to Broadford also.

[Sidenote: Corachatachin.]

Picking my steps carefully through the fair--avoiding a flock of sheep on the one side, and a column of big-horned black cattle on the other, with some difficulty getting out of the way of an infuriated bull that came charging up the road, scattering everything right and left, a dozen blown drovers panting at its heels--I soon got quit of the turmoil, and in half an hour passed the lime-kiln, the dozen houses, the ten shops, the inn, and the church, which constitute Broadford, and was pacing along the green glen which ran in the direction of the red hills. At last I came to a confused pile of stones, near which grew a solitary tree whose back the burden of the blast had bent, and which, although not a breath of wind was stirring, could no more regain an upright position than can a round-shouldered labourer on a holiday. That confused pile of stones was all that remained of the old house of Corachatachin. I wandered around it more reverently than if it had been the cairn of a chief. It is haunted by no ghost. So far as my knowledge extends, no combat ever took place on the spot. But there Boswell, after Dr Johnson had retired to rest, in company with some young Highland bloods--ah, me! their very grandchildren must be dead or gray by this!--brewed and quaffed five gigantic bowls of punch, with what wild talk we can fancy; and the friend of the "Majestic Teacher of Moral and Religious Wisdom" went to bed at five in the morning, and awoke with the headache of the reprobate. At noon the doctor burst in with the exclamation, "What, drunk yet?" "His tone of voice was not that of severe upbraiding," writes the penitent Bozzy, "so I was relieved a little." Did they fancy, these young men, as they sat that night and drank, that a hundred years after people would write of their doings?--that the odour of their punch-bowls would outlive themselves? No man knows what part of his life will be remembered, what forgotten. A single tear, hurriedly brushed away mayhap, is the best thing we know of Xerxes. Picking one's steps around the ruin, one thought curiously of the flushed faces which death has cooled for so long.

[Sidenote: The Fair at Broadford.]

When I got back to the fair about noon, it was evident that a considerable stroke of business had been done. Hordes of bellowing cattle were being driven towards Broadford, and drovers were rushing about in a wonderful manner, armed with tar-pot and stick, and smearing their peculiar mark on the shaggy hides of their purchases. Rough-looking customers enough these fellows, yet they want not means. Some of them came here this morning with £500 in their pocket-books, and have spent every paper of it, and this day three months they will return with as large a sum. As I advanced, the booths ranged along the side of the road--empty when I passed them several hours before--were plentifully furnished with confections, ribbons, and cheap jewellery, and around these fair-headed and scarlet-plaided girls swarmed thickly as bees round summer flowers.

The fair was running its full career of bargain-making, and consequent dram-drinking, rude flirtation, and meeting of friend with friend; when up the middle of the road, hustling the passengers, terrifying the cattle, came three misguided young gentlemen--medical students, I opined, engaged in botanical researches in these regions. But too plainly they had been dwellers in tents. One of them, gifted with a comic genius--his companions were desperately solemn--at one point of the road threw back the collar of his coat, after the fashion of Sambo when he brings down the applauses of the threepenny gallery, and executed a shuffle in front of a bewildered cow. Crummie backed and shied, bent on retreat. He, agile as a cork, bobbed up and down in her front, turn whither she would, with shouts and hideous grimaces, his companions standing by the while like mutes at a funeral. The feat accomplished, the trio staggered on, amid the scornful laughter and derision of the Gael. In a little while I encountered M'Ian, who had finished his business and was anxious to be gone. "We must harness the horse ourselves," he said, "for that rascal, John Kelly, has gone off somewhere. He has been in and out of tents ever since the cattle were sold, and I trust he won't come to grief. He has a standing quarrel with the Kyle men, and may get a broken head." [Sidenote: Lachlan Roy.] Elbowing our way through the crowd, we reached the dog-cart, got the horse harnessed, and were just about to start, when Lachlan Roy, his bonnet off, his countenance inflamed, came flying up. "Maister Alic, Maister Alic, is my face red yet?" cried he, as he laid his hand on the vehicle. "Red enough, Lachlan; you had better come with us, you may lose your money if you don't." "Aw, Maister Alic dear, don't say my face is red--it's no red, Maister Alic--it's no vera red," pled the poor fellow. "Will you come with us, or will you not?" said M'Ian, as he gathered up the reins in his hand and seized the whip. At this moment three or four drovers issued from a tent in the neighbourhood, and Lachlan heard his name shouted. "I maun go back for my bonnet. It wouldna do to ride with gentlemen without a bonnet;" and he withdrew his hand. The drovers shouted again, and that second shout drew Lachlan towards it as the flame draws the moth. "His face will be red enough before evening," said M'Ian, as we drove away.

After we had driven about a quarter of an hour, and got entirely free of the fair, M'Ian, shading his eyes from the sun with a curved palm, suddenly exclaimed, "There's a red dog sitting by the road-side a little forward. It looks like John Kelly's." When we got up, the dog wagged its tail and whined, but retained its recumbent position. "Come out," said M'Ian. "The dog is acting the part of a sentinel, and I daresay we shall find its master about." We got out accordingly, and soon found John stretched on the heather, snoring stertorously, his neck-tie unloosened, his bonnet gone, the sun shining full on the rocky countenance of him. " [Sidenote: John Kelly.] He's as drunk as the Baltic," said M'Ian; "but we must get him out of this. Get up, John." But John made no response. We pinched, pulled, and thumped, but John was immovable. I proposed that some water should be poured on his face, and did procure some from a wet ditch near, with which his countenance was splashed copiously--not to its special adornment. The muddy water only produced a grunt of dissatisfaction. "We must take him on his fighting side," said M'Ian, and then he knelt down and shouted in John's ear, "Here's a man from Kyle says he's a better man than you." John grunted inarticulate defiance. "He says he'll fight you any day you like." "Tell him to strike me, then," said John, struggling with his stupor. "He says he'll kick you." Under the insult John visibly writhed. "Kick him," whispered M'Ian, "as hard as you can. It's our only chance." I kicked, and John was erect as a dart, striking blindly out, and when he became aware against whom he was making such hostile demonstrations his hands dropped, and he stood as if he had seen a ghost. "Catch him," said M'Ian, "his rage has sobered him, he'll be drunk next moment; get him into the dog-cart at once." So the lucid moment was taken advantage of, he was hoisted into the back seat of the vehicle, his bonnet was procured--he had fallen asleep upon it--and placed on the wild head of him; we took our places, and away we started, with the red dog trotting behind. John rolled off once or twice, but there was no great harm done, and we easily got him in again. As we drove down the glen toward the house we set him down, and advised him to dip his wildly-tangled head in the stream before he went home.

During the last few weeks I have had opportunity of witnessing something of life as it passes in the Skye wildernesses, and have been struck with its self-containedness, not less than with its remoteness. A Skye family has everything within itself. The bare mountains yield mutton, which possesses a flavour and delicacy unknown in the south. The copses swarm with rabbits; and if a net is set over-night at the Black Island, there is abundance of fish to breakfast. The farmer grows his own corn, barley, and potatoes, digs his own peats, makes his own candles; he tans leather, spins cloth shaggy as a terrier's pile, and a hunchbacked artist in the place transforms the raw materials into boots or shepherd garments. Twice every year a huge hamper arrives from Glasgow, stuffed with all the little luxuries of housekeeping--tea, sugar, coffee, and the like. At more frequent intervals comes a ten-gallon cask from Greenock, whose contents can cunningly draw the icy fangs of a north-easter, or take the chill out of the clammy mists.

"What want they that a king should have?"

And once a week the _Inverness Courier_, like a window suddenly opened on the roaring sea, brings a murmur of the outer world, its politics, its business, its crimes, its literature, its whole multitudinous and unsleeping life, making the stillness yet more still. [Sidenote: The islesman's year.] To the Islesman the dial face of the year is not artificially divided, as in cities, by parliamentary session and recess, college terms, vacations short and long, by the rising and sitting of courts of justice; nor yet, as in more fortunate soils, by imperceptible gradations of coloured light--the green flowery year deepening into the sunset of the October hollyhock; the slow reddening of burdened orchards; the slow yellowing of wheaten plains. Not by any of these, but by the higher and more affecting element of animal life, with its passions and instincts, its gladness and suffering; existence like our own, although in a lower key, and untouched by solemn issues; the same music and wail, although struck on rude and uncertain chords. To the Islesman the year rises into interest when the hills, yet wet with melted snows, are pathetic with newly-yeaned lambs, and it completes itself through the successive steps of weaning, fleecing, sorting, fattening, sale, final departure, and cash in pocket. The shepherd life is more interesting than the agricultural, inasmuch as it deals with a higher order of being; for I suppose--apart from considerations of profit--a couchant ewe, with her young one at her side, or a ram, "with wreathed horns superb," cropping the herbage, is a more pleasing object to the æsthetic sense than a field of mangel-wurzel, flourishing ever so gloriously. The shepherd inhabits a mountain country, lives more completely in the open air, and is acquainted with all the phenomena of storm and calm, the thunder-smoke coiling in the wind, the hawk hanging stationary in the breathless blue. He knows the faces of the hills, recognises the voices of the torrents as if they were children of his own, can unknit their intricate melody as he lies with his dog beside him on the warm slope at noon, separating tone from tone, and giving this to rude crag, that to pebbly bottom. From long intercourse, every member of his flock wears to his eye its special individuality, and he recognises the countenance of a "wether" as he would the countenance of a human acquaintance. Sheep-farming is a picturesque occupation: and I think a multitude of sheep descending a hill-side, now outspreading in bleating leisure, now huddling together in the haste of fear--the dogs, urged more by sagacity than by the shepherd's voice, flying along the edges, turning, guiding, changing the shape of the mass--one of the prettiest sights in the world.

[Sidenote: The fold.]

The milking of the cows is worth going a considerable distance to see. The cows browse about on the hills all day, and at sunset they are driven into a sort of green oasis, amid the surrounding birch-wood. The rampart of rock above is dressed in evening colours, the grass is golden green; everything--animals, herds, and milkmaids are throwing long shadows. All about, the cows stand lowing in picturesque groups. The milkmaid approaches one, caresses it for a moment, draws in her stool, and in an instant the rich milk is hissing in the pail. All at once there arises a tremendous noise, and pushing through the clumps of birch-wood down towards a shallow rivulet which skirts the oasis, breaks a troop of wild-looking calves, attended by a troop of wilder-looking urchins armed with sticks and the branches of trees. The cows low more than ever, and turn their wistful eyes; the bellowing calves are halted on the further side of the rivulet, and the urchins stand in the water to keep them back. An ardent calf, however, breaks through the cordon of urchins, tumbles one into the streamlet, climbs the bank amid much Gaelic exclamation, and ambles awkwardly toward his dam. Reaching her, he makes a wild push at the swollen udder, drinks, his tail shaking with delight; while she, turning her head round, licks his shaggy hide with fond maternal tongue. In about five minutes he is forced to desist, and with a branch-bearing urchin on each side of him, is marched across the rivulet again. One by one the calves are allowed to cross, each makes the same wild push at the udder, each drinks, the tail ecstatically quivering; and on each the dam fixes her great patient eyes, and turning licks the hide whether it be red, black, brindled, dun, or cream-coloured. When the calves have been across the rivulet and back again, and the cows are being driven away to their accustomed pasturage, a milk-maid approaches with her pail, and holding it up, gives you to drink, as long ago Rebecca gave to drink the servant of Abraham. By this time the grass is no longer golden green; the red light has gone off the rocky ramparts, and the summer twilight is growing in the hollows, and in amongst the clumps of birchwood. Afar you hear the noise of retiring calves and urchins. The milk-maids start off in long procession with their pails and stools. A rabbit starts out from a bush at your feet, and scurries away down the dim field. And when, following, you descend the hill-side toward the bridge you see the solemn purple of the Cuchullins cutting the yellow pallor of evening sky--perhaps with a feeling of deeper satisfaction you notice that a light is burning in the porch of Mr M'Ian's house. [Sidenote: Lamb-weaning.] "The fold," as the milking of the cows is called, is pretty enough; but the most affecting incident of shepherd life is the weaning of the lambs--affecting, because it reveals passions in the fleecy flocks, the manifestation of which we are accustomed to consider ornamental in ourselves. From all the hills men and dogs drive the flocks down into a fold, or _fank_, as it is called here, consisting of several chambers or compartments. Into these compartments the sheep are huddled, and then the separation takes place. The ewes are returned to the mountains, the lambs are driven away to some spot where the pasture is rich, and where they are watched day and night. Midnight comes with dews and stars; the lambs are peacefully couched. Suddenly they are restless, ill at ease, goaded by some sore unknown want, and seem disposed to scatter wildly in every direction; but the shepherds are wary, the dogs swift and sure, and after a little while the perturbation is allayed, and they are quiet again. Walk up now to the fank. The full moon is riding between the hills, filling the glens with lustres and floating mysterious glooms. Listen! you hear it on every side of you, till it dies away in the silence of distance--the fleecy Rachel weeping for her children! The turf walls of the fank are in shadow, but something seems to be moving there. As you approach, it disappears with a quick short bleat, and a hurry of tiny hooves. Wonderful mystery of instinct! Affection all the more affecting that it is so wrapt in darkness, hardly knowing its own meaning. For nights and nights the creatures will be found haunting; about those turfen walls seeking the young that have been taken away.

[Sidenote: Mr M'Ian.]