Chapter L: M. K. J. M. K (2)

In the present drawing-room a small portrait of Johnson, ascribed to Reynolds, but, as I was told, by Zoffany, hangs in a place of honour. Here, too, is kept his letter of thanks to Macleod, endorsed “Dr. Johnston’s.” He wrote it “on the margin of the sea, waiting for a boat and a wind. Boswell,” he continues “grows impatient; but the kind treatment which I find wherever I go makes me leave with some heaviness of heart an island which I am not very likely to see again.” Among other treasures in the same room is Rorie More’s horn, “a large cow’s horn, with the mouth of it ornamented with silver curiously carved. It holds rather more than a bottle and a half. Every laird of Macleod, it is said, must, as a proof of his manhood, drink it off full of claret without laying it down.” It is curious that Boswell makes no mention of the ancient cup described by Scott in a note to the second canto of _The Lord of the Isles_, or of the fairy flag. “Here,” writes Pennant, “is preserved the _Braolauch shi_, or fairy-flag of the family, bestowed on it by the queen of the fairies. She blessed it with powers of the first importance, which were to be exerted on only three occasions; on the last, after the end was obtained, an invisible being is to carry off standard and standard-bearer, never more to be seen. The flag has been produced thrice. The first time in an engagement against the Clan-Ronald, to whose sight the Macleods were multiplied ten-fold; the second preserved the heir, being then produced to save the longings of the lady; and the third time to save my own; but it was so tattered, that Titania did not seem to think it worth sending for. This was a superstition derived from the Norwegian ancestry of the house.”[652] Sir Walter describes it as “a pennon of silk, with something like round red rowan-berries wrought upon it.”[653] [Sidenote: RORIE MORE’S CLAYMORE.] In the gallery I saw Rorie More’s claymore, “of a prodigious size,” as Boswell called it. He wrote this some years before he heard from old Mr. Edwards that Johnson, when an undergraduate of Oxford, “would not let them say prodigious at college, for even then he was delicate in language.” If it is not prodigious, nevertheless it is a real _claymore_ or _great sword_, for that is what the Gaelic word means. Unfortunately the point is broken off. The sight of it did not console me for my disappointment at finding that Rorie More’s bed is no longer in existence, with the inscription above it, “Sir Roderick M’Leod of Dunvegan, Knight. God send good rest.” I would rather have seen it than a dozen swords, whether great or small.

[Sidenote: THE FAIRY BEDROOM.]

Johnson slept in the Fairy Bedroom in the Fairy Tower. The legend runs that this part of the castle was built 450 years ago by that very uncommon being, a fairy grandmother. Godmothers among the fairies have often been heard of, but grandmothers, we believe, never before or since. Had Puck peeped in and seen Johnson wearing his wig turned inside out and the wrong end in front as a substitute for a night-cap,[654] he might well have exclaimed that his mistress kept a monster, not only near but in “her close and consecrated bower.” From this room a winding stone staircase led up to the battlements, but without mounting so high Johnson commanded a fine view. From his window he could see, far away across the lochs, Macleod’s Tables, two lofty hills with round flat tops, which on all sides form a striking landmark. Much nearer was the Gallows Hill, where in the bad old times many a poor wretch, dragged from his dark and dismal dungeon, caught his last sight of loch and mountain and heath, doomed to death by the laird. Only thirty-three years before our travellers’ visit a man was hanged there by the grandfather of their host. He was a Macdonald who had murdered his father, and escaped into Macleod’s country. But the old tribal feuds were long since over, and he found no safety there. At Macdonald’s request he was at once seized and hanged.[655]

[Sidenote: DUNGEONS AND PIT.]

The dungeons and the pit are not described by either Boswell or Johnson, though the sight of them, we would willingly believe, must have roused their indignation. In these old castles there are few things more shocking than the close neighbourhood of festivity and misery. It shows a callousness to human suffering which almost passes belief. If a prisoner is in a remote part of a great castle, the imagination then must come into play to bring his sufferings before the mind; but when he is close at hand, when his sorrowful sighing is only kept by the thickness of a single wall from mingling with the prattle of children and the merriment of feasters, then the heart must be hard indeed which is not touched. At Dunvegan a door to the left opened into a pleasant sitting-room, and to the right into the chief dungeon. In it there was no window, not even one of those narrow slits by which a few rays can struggle in. But there was something worse even than the dungeon. In the floor there was an opening by which the unhappy prisoner could be lowered into a deep-pit. Here he would dwell in ever-during dark, never cheered by the hurried glimpse of daylight such as broke the long night in the prison above whenever the jailer paid his visit. The door of the other dungeon—for there was yet another—is in the wall of a bedroom, which is furnished in so old a style that it is likely enough that the curious bed and hangings were gazed at by many a prisoner as he was hurried by.

As we wandered through these old rooms and staircases and passages, we were told of a poor woman from St. Kilda, who like ourselves was shown over the castle. As she went on she became so bewildered by the number of the rooms, that she begged to be allowed to keep fast hold of the hand of the person who was conducting her, for fear she might get lost and never find her way out. The story called to my mind a man from the same remote island mentioned by Martin. He was taken to Glasgow, and though in those days it was but a small town, nevertheless he was so much scared that in like manner he clung to his guide’s hand as long as he was in the streets.[656] The poor woman must have breathed more freely when she at length reached the court-yard and looked out over the familiar sea. The platform, then, no doubt was rough with stone, but now it is soft with green turf. I looked there for the false stone cannons which Boswell mentions, but I learnt that they had been moved to the top of one of the towers. In their place are some of iron, venerable by their antiquity, but unfit for service. Against one of the low walls which enclose this pleasant court leans a piece of old sculpture, the effigy probably of some lady of the family.

[Sidenote: ISLAND ISA.]

Three or four miles down the loch, and out of sight of the castle, lies the little island of Isa or Issay, “which Macleod said he would give to Dr. Johnson, on condition of his residing on it three months in the year; nay, one month. Dr. Johnson was highly amused with the fancy. He talked a great deal of this island; how he would build a house there—how he would fortify it—how he would have cannon—how he would plant—how he would sally out, and _take_ the Isle of Muck; and then he laughed with uncommon glee, and could hardly leave off. Macleod encouraged the fancy of Dr. Johnson’s becoming owner of an island; told him that it was the practice in that country to name every man by his lands, and begged leave to drink to him in that mode, ‘_Island Isa_, your health.’ Ulinish, Talisker, M’Queen, and I all joined in our different manners, while Dr. Johnson bowed to each with much good humour.” To Mrs. Thrale he wrote: “Macleod has offered me an island; if it were not too far off I should hardly refuse it; my island would be pleasanter than Brighthelmstone if you and my master could come to it; but I cannot think it pleasant to live quite alone,

‘Oblitusque meorum, obliviscendus et illis.’”[657]

Much as he wished to visit it, he was hindered even from seeing it by the stormy weather. We were more fortunate, for though we did not land, yet we saw it from the high ground on the opposite shore. The greater part of the way to this spot a rough road has been made along which we drove, passing a great heronry. It was curious to watch the huge nests and the great birds in the trees. For nearly three miles of country they were the chief inhabitants. _Island Isa_ would certainly have lived in great solitude, for after we had passed the gamekeeper’s cottage close to the castle, we saw no signs of habitation except the herons’ nests, till we reached a farm-house nearly three miles off. Here the road ended. In the little garden stood some large laburnum trees, all drooping with their golden flowers. Our way led across a wide heath to a fine breezy headland. Below us another stretch of heath-land sloped down to the shore of the loch. On the other side of a narrow channel lay Isa, with fine rocky cliffs to the west and the north, but lying open to the south-east. It was Midsummer Day. The sea was calm, a blue haze softened the outline of the neighbouring hills, but let the mountains in the farther Hebrides be but faintly seen. The little isle lay before us with no signs on it of human habitation. Buchanan describes it as “fertilis frugum,”[658] and Martin says that it was “fruitful in corn;”[659] but it must be many a year since the plough turned up its soil. It is a land of pastures. In the hot, drowsy air there was nothing but the song of the lark and the bleating of the lambs “to break the silence of the seas.” Far below us a shepherd with his two dogs was gathering a small flock of sheep. They, and the larks, and the sea-birds were the only things that seemed alive. We had reached, as it were, the antipodes of “that full tide of human existence” in which Johnson delighted. For not a single day would he have endured the lonely dignity of such a domain. The road to the headland had not been quite free from danger, for on our return we found coiled up asleep on the path half hidden in the heather an adder. It was killed by a blow of a stick which I had brought with me from Corsica.

[Sidenote: GATHERING OF THE CONGREGATIONS.]

On the Sunday, which we spent at Dunvegan, we chanced to see a sight interesting in itself, but doubly so to anyone who came from the South. The Free Kirk congregations of three parishes met in a field to take the Sacrament. It was one of the three great religious gatherings of the year, and the people flocked in from all the country side. Many came by water from far-off glens that sloped down to the sea. From the windows of our inn we watched the heavy boats fully laden coming round a distant point, and rowing slowly up to a ledge of rocks just below us. In one we counted twenty-one people. Women as well as men tugged at the oars, and when the boat was run aground helped to drag it up the beach. When this was done, they all set about completing their toilettes. The beach served them for their tiring-house, though it was a good deal more open to view than a hawthorn-brake. In one of the boats we had noticed a man distinguished from all the rest by a tall black hat, _pietate gravem ac meritis_. To him had been entrusted the clean white collars and neckties of the rowers. Many of the men knelt down while their wives fastened them on for them and smoothed their hair. One man even went so far as to put on his shirt in public. The women too, who were almost all in black, had their dresses to arrange, for in the boats they had kept their skirts tucked up. Some of the girls even had to get their bustles adjusted. Carlyle or his wife once made merry over their maid-of-all-work at Chelsea, who with two or three kitchen-dusters made the best substitute she could for that monstrous and most “considerable protuberance.” What would he have said had he seen the lasses in Skye thus making themselves as ridiculous as even the finest lady in town?

[Sidenote: A FIELD CONVENTICLE.]

When at length every one was ready, the whole party moved slowly along the road towards the church. Others came driving up in light and heavy carts, while across the moors we could see single wayfarers, or more often three or four together, coming in by different paths. There was greeting of old friends and shaking of hands. The church stood on the road-side, a plain building with the manse close by. In it was gathered that part of the congregation which spoke English. On the other side of the road the ground fell away to a little brook which had eaten its way through the dark-coloured peat, and here made a sudden bend. On the other side of the water, within the bend, there was a grassy slope ending in a low ridge, and dotted with little hillocks. Here the people sat down on the ground, facing an erection which looked like a large sentry-box. It was occupied by the minister, who addressed the people in Gaelic, speaking in a kind of musical recitative which carried the voice far, and must have made every syllable distinct. It often had a very pleading and plaintive sound. Below him stood two long rows of tables, and a cross table, all covered with white cloths. On the other side of the stream by the roadside twenty carts or more were standing, while the horses were quietly grazing on the moor tethered each to an iron peg. One horse nibbled through the cord, and came up to the outskirts of the meeting, but a lad left his seat and caught it. In the background the dreary moorland sloped upwards, blackened here and there with heaps of peat drying in the sun and wind. I thought how in the old days watchers would have been posted on the most distant ridges to give warning of the approach of the persecutors. How many people were gathered together I do not know—certainly many hundreds, perhaps a thousand. [Sidenote: NATIONAL COSTUMES.] All were decently, though some poorly dressed. Almost all had good warm clothing, with strong boots and shoes, none of them in holes. Very many of the women had tartan shawls, and one or two boys wore the kilt. One man I saw with tartan stockings, but the dress of all the rest differed in no respect from that worn in England. In costumes an act of uniformity seems to have been passed not only for the British Isles, but also for Western Europe in general. Travelling is losing part of its interest by the great sameness in clothing everywhere met with. There will soon, I fear, be no country left which can boast of a national dress. Though the meeting was out of doors, yet all were decent and sober in their behaviour. There was no talking or giggling, no fringe of rude lads and silly girls. Where the little moorland path ended that led from the church a table was set, on which stood a large metal basin to receive the offerings. Every one seemed to put in something, even the poorest, but in the great pile of pence and half-pence I saw but one piece of silver. When the service in the church was over, the minister and people joined those on the moor, for it was there that the Sacrament was taken by both congregations together. The service began between eleven and twelve o’clock. Soon after four we saw the people come trooping down to the shore. The boats were launched, sails were set, and with a gentle breeze they were slowly carried down the loch and round the headland out of our sight.

ULINISH AND TALISKER (SEPTEMBER 21-25).

[Sidenote: DR. JOHNSON’S CUPS OF TEA.]

On the morning of Tuesday, September 21, our travellers took advantage of a break in the stormy weather to continue their journey to Ulinish, a farm-house on Loch Bracadale, occupied by “a plain honest gentleman,” the Sheriff-substitute of the island. Here they passed the night, and here, if we may trust report, Johnson’s powers as a drinker of tea were exerted to their utmost pitch. “Mrs. Macleod of Ulinish,” writes Knox, “has not forgotten the quantity of tea which she filled out to Dr. Johnson, amounting to twenty-two dishes.”[660] Surely for this outrageous statement some of those excuses are needed “by which,” according to Boswell, “the exaggeration of Highland narratives is palliated.” From an old tower near the house a fine view was had of the Cuillin, or Cuchullin Hills, “a prodigious range of mountains, capped with rocky pinnacles in a strange variety of shapes,” which with good reason reminded Boswell of the mountains he had seen near Corte in Corsica.

SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE & RIVINGTON, LTD, PUBLISHERS, LONDON. IMP. & HÉLIOG. LEMERCIER & C^{IE.} PARIS.]

[Sidenote: A GREAT CAVE.]

On the afternoon of the following day “an interval of calm sunshine,” writes Johnson, “courted us out to see a cave on the shore famous for its echo. When we went into the boat one of our companions was asked in Erse by the boatmen who they were that came with him. He gave us characters, I suppose, to our advantage, and was asked in the spirit of the Highlands whether I could recite a long series of ancestors. The boatmen said, as I perceived afterwards, that they heard the cry of an English ghost. This, Boswell says, disturbed him. We came to the cave, and clambering up the rocks came to an arch open at one end, one hundred and eighty feet long, thirty broad in the broadest part, and about thirty feet high. There was no echo; such is the fidelity of reports; but I saw what I had never seen before, mussels and whelks in their natural state. There was another arch in the rock open at both ends.” This cave was not on the shore of Skye, as Johnson’s account seems to imply, but in the little island of Wia. From Boswell we learn that it was to an island they were taken. We were fortunate enough on our visit to this wild part of the coast to have as our guide one of Macleod’s gamekeepers. “A man,” to borrow from Johnson the praise which he bestowed on one of his guides, “of great liveliness and activity, civil and ready-handed.”[661] We had passed the night in the lonely little inn at Struan on the shore of an arm of Loch Bracadale, where we had found decent, if homely, lodging. In a fisherman’s boat we rowed down the loch, sometimes in mid-channel and sometimes skirting the cliffs, which rose like a wall of rock to a great height above us. We passed little islets, and the mouths of caverns which filled with clouds of spray as the long rolling waves swept in from the Atlantic. On the ledges of the rocks, hovering over our heads, swimming and diving in the sea, were cormorants, puffins, oyster catchers, gulls, curlews and guillemots. We had none of us looked upon a wilder scene. When we reached our island we were pleased to find that the narrow beach at which we were to land was guarded by a huge headland from the swell of the sea. Whether we visited the cave which our travellers saw I do not feel at all sure, for it does not correspond with their description. My friend, the gamekeeper, was sure that it was the place, and I was willing to advance my faith more than half-way to meet his assertion. We scrambled up the steep beach, and then over rocks covered with grass and ferns, between the sides of a narrow gorge. At the top a still steeper path led downwards to a cave, at the bottom of which we could see a glimmer of light. Scrambling upwards again, we reached a place where we could hear the sea murmuring on the other side. We afterwards climbed to the top of the cliff and sat down on the ground which formed the roof of the cavern. It was covered with heather and ferns, and patches of short grass; a pleasant breeze was blowing, the sea birds were uttering their cries, far beneath us we could hear the beating of the surge. Across the Loch on both sides, the dark cliffs rose to a great height, and in the background stood the mountains of Skye and of the mainland. Had the air been very clear, we might have seen on the north-west the wooded hills of Dunvegan.

[Sidenote: PRINCE CHARLIE’S CAVES.]

Two or three days later, when I was giving two Highlanders an account of this cavern, one of them asked with a humorous smile: “Did they not tell you it was Prince Charlie’s Cave? He must, I am thinking, have been sleeping everywhere.” His companion laughed and said: “They have lately made a new one near an hotel which they have opened at ——.” The innkeepers should surely show a little originality. Why should they not advertise Dr. Johnson’s Cave, and show the tea-pot out of which he drank his two-and-twenty cups of tea when he picnicked there? They would do well also to discover the great cave in Skye which Martin tells of. “It is supposed,” he writes, “to exceed a mile in length. The natives told me that a piper who was over-curious went in with a design to find out the length of it, and after he entered began to play on his pipe, but never returned to give an account of his progress.”[662]

SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE & RIVINGTON, LTD, PUBLISHERS, LONDON. IMP. & HÉLIOG. LEMERCIER & C^{IE.} PARIS.]

[Sidenote: THE SAIL TO TALISKER.]

From Ulinish our travellers sailed up Loch Bracadale on their way to Talisker. “We had,” says Boswell, “good weather and a fine sail. The shore was varied with hills, and rocks, and corn-fields, and bushes, which are here dignified with the name of natural _wood_.” They landed at Ferneley, a farm-house about three miles from Talisker, whither they made their way over the hills, Johnson on horseback, the rest on foot. The weather, no doubt, had been too uncertain for them to venture into the open sea round the great headland at the entrance of the loch. Skirting the stern and rock-bound coast, a few miles’ sail would have brought them to Talisker Bay, within sight of Colonel Macleod’s house. Yet, had the wind risen, or had there been a swell from the Atlantic, they would have been forced to keep out to sea. Boswell describes “the prodigious force and noise with which the billows break on the shore.” “It is,” says Johnson, “a coast where no vessel lands but when it is driven by a tempest on the rocks.” Only two nights before his arrival two boats had been wrecked there in a storm. “The crews crept to Talisker almost lifeless with wet, cold, fatigue, and terror.” What could not be safely done near the end of September, might, we thought, be hazarded in June. As the day was fine and we had a good sea-boat, an old fisherman to manage it, our trusty gamekeeper to help in rowing, and an accomplished yachtsman in our artist, we boldly sailed forth into the Atlantic. We passed in sight of Macleod’s Maidens, beneath rocks such as Mr. Brett and Mr. Graham delight to paint. In one spot we were shown where, a few years before, a huge mass had come tumbling down. At the entrance to the Bay we passed through a narrow channel in the rocks with the waves foaming on each side. [Sidenote: TALISKER BAY.] Even our stout-hearted gamekeeper for a moment looked uneasy, but with a few strong strokes of the oars the worst was past, and we were out of the broken waters, and in full sight of the little bay with its beach of great black stones, its rugged and steep headlands, and its needle rocks, with one of the sunniest of valleys for its background. Johnson thought it “the place, beyond all he had seen, from which the gay and the jovial seem utterly excluded; and where the hermit might grow old in meditation without possibility of disturbance or interruption.” To us on that fine June day, with the haze lying on the hills, it was as if

“We came unto a land
In which it seemed always afternoon.”

One sight, to which I had long looked forward, I missed. It was no longer “a land of streams.” There was no spot where

“The slender stream
Along the cliff to fall and pause and fall did seem.”

Boswell had counted “fifteen different waterfalls near the house in the space of about a quarter of a mile.” “They succeeded one another so fast,” said Johnson, “that as one ceased to be heard another began.” This one thing was wanting on that beautiful afternoon which we spent in this delightful spot. The voice of the cascades was still. There were no waterfalls streaming down the lofty hills. One indeed we found by following the course of a river up a fine glen, but owing to the long drought its roar had sunk into a murmur.

[Sidenote: COLONEL MACLEOD OF TALISKER.]

Johnson’s host, Colonel Macleod, was the good kinsman who had befriended the young Laird in the troubles which he encountered on his succession to the property.

“He had,” writes Boswell, “been bred to physic, had a tincture
of scholarship in his conversation, which pleased Dr. Johnson,
and he had some very good books; and being a colonel in the
Dutch service, he and his lady, in consequence of having lived
abroad, had introduced the ease and politeness of the continent
into this rude region.”

Pennant, writing in the year 1774, thus describes these Scotch regiments in the Dutch service:

“They were formed out of some independent companies sent over
either in the reign of Elizabeth or James VI. At present the
common men are but nominally national, for since the scarcity
of men occasioned by the late war, Holland is no longer
permitted to draw her recruits out of North Britain. But the
officers are all Scotch, who are obliged to take oaths to our
government, and to qualify in presence of our ambassador at the
Hague.”[663]

In the war which broke out between England and Holland in 1781, this curious system, which had survived the great naval battles between the two countries in the seventeenth century, at last came to an end. In the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ for December, 1782, we read, that on the first of that month:

“The Scotch Brigade in the Dutch service renounced their
allegiance to their lawful Sovereign, and took a new oath of
fidelity to their High Mightinesses. They are for the future to
wear the Dutch uniform, and not to carry the arms of the enemy
any longer in their colours, nor to beat their march. They are
to receive the word of command in Dutch, and their officers are
to wear orange-coloured sashes, and the same sort of spontoons
as the officers of other Dutch regiments.”[664]

Colonel Macleod, if he was still living, lost, of course, his command. At the time of our travellers’ visit he was on leave of absence, which had been extended for some years, says Johnson, “in this time of universal peace.” The knowledge which he had gained in Holland he turned to good account in Skye. [Sidenote: THE GARDEN AT TALISKER.] He both drained the land which lay at the foot of the mountains round Talisker, and made a good garden. “He had been,” says Knox, “an observer of Dutch improvements. He carried off in proper channels the waters of two rivers which often deluged the bottom. He divided the whole valley by deep and sometimes wide ditches into a number of square fields and meadows. He now enjoys the fruits of his ingenuity in the quantity of grain and hay raised thereon.” He had made it “the seat of plenty, hospitality, and good nature.”[665] To few places in our islands could Dutch art have been transplanted where it would find nature more kindly. Johnson noticed the prosperous growth of the trees, which, though they were not many years old, were already very high and thick. Could he have seen them at the present day he would have owned that even in the garden of an Oxford College there are few finer. The soil is so good, we were told, “that things have only to be planted and they grow.” So sheltered from all the cold winds is the position, and so great is the warmth diffused by the beneficent Gulf Stream, that the whole year round flowers live out of doors which anywhere but on the southern coasts of Devonshire and Cornwall would be killed by the frosts. The garden is delightfully old-fashioned, entirely free from the dismal formality of ribbon-borders. Fruit trees, flowers, shrubs, and vegetables mingle together. It lies open to the south-west, being enclosed on the other sides with groves of trees. A lawn shaded by a noble sycamore stretches up to the house. Boswell would have been pleased to find that smooth turf now covers the court which in his time was “most injudiciously paved with round blueish-grey pebbles, upon which you walked as if upon cannon-balls driven into the ground.” The house “in its snug corner” has been greatly enlarged, but the old building still remains. Unfortunately no tradition has been preserved of the room occupied by Johnson. Much as he admired this sequestered spot—“a place where the imagination is more amused cannot easily be found,” he said—nevertheless it was here that he quoted to Boswell the lines of the song:

“Every island is a prison
Strongly guarded by the sea;
Kings and princes, for that reason,
Prisoners are as well as we.”

If Talisker is a prison, it is a goodly one. There are few places which linger more pleasantly in my memory. To the beauty of the scenery and the delightfulness of the weather was added the hospitality which we received from our kind hostess, Mrs. Cameron. Time, alas, failed us to climb “the very high rocky hill” at the back of the house, whence Boswell had “a view of Barra, the Long Island, Bernera, the Loch of Dunvegan, part of Rum, part of Raasay, and a vast deal of the Isle of Skye.” According to Pennant, who had made the ascent the year before:

“It has in front a fine series of genuine basaltic columns,
resembling the Giant’s Causeway. The ruins of the columns at
the base made a grand appearance; they were the ruins of the
creation. This is the most northern basalt I am acquainted
with; the last of four, all running from south to north—the
Giant’s Causeway, Staffa, the rock Humbla, and Briis-mhawl. The
depth of ocean in all probability conceals the lost links of
this chain.”[666]

This mountain, which he calls Briis-mhawl, in Boswell’s narrative appears as Prieshwell.

SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE & RIVINGTON, LTD, PUBLISHERS, LONDON. IMP. & HÉLIOG. LEMERCIER & C^{IE.} PARIS.]

[Sidenote: A RIDE ACROSS SKYE.]

At Talisker Johnson made the acquaintance of young Macleane of Col, that amiable man whose death by drowning the following year he so much lamented. Under his guidance, taking leave of their kind hosts, they rode across the island to Sconser, on the coast opposite to Raasay. Of this part of their journey they tell us next to nothing, though they passed through the wildest scenery. For the first two or three miles their path wound up a valley that is not unworthy of the most delightful parts of Cumberland. It is altogether free from the utter desolation which casts a gloom over so much of Skye. The sloping sides of the hills are covered with short grass and fragrant herbs. All about in summer time are dotted the sheep and lambs, answering each other with their bleats. When we travelled along this way we passed a band of five-and-twenty shearers who had been hard at work for many days. The farm of Talisker keeps a winter stock of between five and six thousand Cheviot sheep, and the clipping takes a long time. Dropping into the valley on the other side of the hills the road leads beyond the head of Loch Harport across the island to Sligachan, where amidst gloomy waste now stands a comfortable hotel. In the little garden which surrounds it is the only trace of cultivation to be anywhere seen. It would have seemed impossible to add anything to the dreariness of the scenery; nevertheless something has been added by the long line of gaunt telegraph posts which stretches across the moor. Perhaps at this spot stood the little hut where our travellers made a short halt, as they watched an old woman grinding at the _quern_. With one hand she rapidly turned round the uppermost of two mill-stones, while with the other she poured in the corn through a hole pierced through it. A ride of a few more miles brought the party, through the gloom of evening, to Sconser, where they dined at the little inn.

CORRICHATACHIN TO TOBERMORIE (SEPTEMBER 25-OCTOBER 16).

[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.”

[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.”

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.’”

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.’”

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]

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]

“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.”

ULVA’S ISLE (OCTOBER 16-17).

On Saturday, October 16, the weather changed for the better, owing to a new moon, as Boswell thought. A long day’s journey lay before them, for they hoped to reach Inchkenneth, a little island which lies at the mouth of Loch Na Keal, close to the western coast of Mull. Here they were to be the guest of Sir Allan Macleane.

[Sidenote: A DOLOROUS COUNTRY.]

“We set out [writes Boswell] mounted on little Mull horses. Dr.
Johnson was not in very good humour. He said, it was a dreary
country, much worse than Skye. I differed from him. ‘O, Sir,’
said he, ‘a most dolorous country!’ We had a very hard journey.
I had no bridle for my sheltie, but only a halter; and Joseph
rode without a saddle. At one place, a loch having swelled over
the road, we were obliged to plunge through pretty deep water.
Dr. Johnson observed, how helpless a man would be, were he
travelling here alone, and should meet with any accident; and
said, ‘he longed to get to a _country of saddles and bridles_.’”

When he called the country “most dolorous” he had no doubt in mind the lines which describe the march of “the adventurous bands” in _Paradise Lost_:

“Through many a dark and dreary vale
They passed and many a region dolorous.”

[Sidenote: A WEARY RIDE.]

Writing to Mrs. Thrale he speaks of this day’s journey “as difficult and tedious over rocks naked and valleys untracked through a country of barrenness and solitude. We came almost in the dark to the sea side, weary and dejected, having met with nothing but water falling from the mountains that could raise any image of delight.” Sacheverell had found the same ride no less gloomy.

“We proceeded on our journey [he writes] over a country broken,
rocky, boggy, barren, and almost wholly unarable. Wet and weary
at last we came to a Change-House (so they call a house of
entertainment); if a place that had neither bed, victuals, or
drink may be allowed that name. Our servants cut us green fern,
wet as it was, for bedding. We set forward early next morning.
If I thought the first day’s journey hard and unequal, this
was much worse; high and craggy mountains, horrid rocks and
dreadful precipices; Pelion upon Ossa are trifling and little
if compared to them.”[674]

Our travellers made their way so slowly over this rough country that though they started at eleven, they did not reach the coast till seven at night. Yet they had been told that the distance was but eight miles. To add to the gloom, it was here that Johnson discovered that he had lost that famous piece of timber, his huge oak-stick. [Sidenote: THE CHIEF OF ULVA’S ISLE.] Seeing how late it was, Col, who throughout had been their guide, “determined that they should pass the night at Macquarrie’s, in the Island of Ulva, which lies between Mull and Inchkenneth.” The ferry-boat unfortunately was on the other side of the narrow channel. The wind was so high that their shouts could not be heard, and the darkness was too great for their signals to be seen. They might have been forced to spend the night on the shore had there not chanced to be lying in the little Sound of Ulva a ship from Londonderry. In its long-boat they were ferried over. In this same Sound less than a year later, on the night of September 25, 1774, poor Col lost his life. “His boat,” says Sir Walter Scott, “was swamped by the intoxication of the sailors, who had partaken too largely of Macquarrie’s wonted hospitality.” Here, perhaps, the Macleanes will some day set up a memorial to the unhappy youth. “Col does every thing for us,” said Johnson: “We will erect a statue to Col. He is a noble animal. He is as complete an islander as the mind can figure. He is a farmer, a sailor, a hunter, a fisher; he will run you down a dog; if any man has a tail, it is Col. He is hospitable; and he has an intrepidity of talk whether he understands the subject or not.” His untimely end was regretted by those who only knew “this amiable man” by the reports of our two travellers. “At the death of Col,” said Boswell, “my wife wept much.”[675] “There is great lamentation here,” wrote Johnson from Lichfield, “for the death of Col. Lucy is of opinion that he was wonderfully handsome.” Though they were in the land of second-sight there was no shadow thrown by coming events on the very liberal entertainment provided by their host. Nevertheless the Chief of Ulva’s Isle had a sea of troubles of his own to oppose. He was almost overwhelmed with the stormy waters, not of Loch Gyle, but of debt. “His ancestors,” wrote Johnson to Mrs. Thrale, “had reigned in Ulva beyond memory, but he has reduced himself by his negligence and folly to the necessity of selling this venerable patrimony.” His house was a strange mixture of luxury and squalor. The room in which Johnson slept was unboarded, and through a broken window the rain had driven in and turned the floor to mud. He thus describes his night’s lodging:—“The house and the furniture are not always nicely suited. We were driven once, by missing a passage, to the hut of a gentleman where, after a very liberal supper, when I was conducted to my chamber, I found an elegant bed of Indian cotton, spread with fine sheets. The accommodation was flattering; I undressed myself, and felt my feet in the mire. The bed stood upon the bare earth which a long course of rain had softened to a puddle.”

INCHKENNETH, MACKINNON’S CAVE, AND IONA (OCTOBER 17-20).

[Sidenote: INCHKENNETH.]

Our travellers having stayed but one night at Ulva, on the morning of Sunday, October 17, took boat and rowed to Inchkenneth, “an island about a mile long, and perhaps half a mile broad, remarkable for pleasantness and fertility. It is verdant and grassy, and fit both for pasture and tillage; but it has no trees.” The only inhabitants were “the chief of the ancient and numerous clan of Macleane, his daughter and their servants.” [Sidenote: SIR ALLAN MACLEANE.] In a letter to Mrs. Thrale Johnson says: “Sir Allan, a chieftain, a baronet, and a soldier, inhabits in this insulated desert a thatched hut with no chambers. He received us with the soldier’s frankness and the gentleman’s elegance, and introduced us to his daughters, two young ladies who have not wanted education suitable to their birth, and who in their cottage neither forgot their dignity nor affected to remember it. His affairs are in disorder by the fault of his ancestors, and while he forms some scheme for retrieving them, he has retreated hither.” By _chambers_, Johnson seems to mean rooms on an upper floor. Boswell describes the habitation as commodious, “though it consisted but of a few small buildings only one story high.” In two of these huts were the servants’ rooms and the kitchen. “The dinner was plentiful and delicate. Neither the comforts nor the elegancies of life were wanting. There were several dishes and variety of liquors.” Sir Walter Scott many years later visited the island in company with a Gloucestershire baronet, Sir George Onesiphorus Paul: