Part 21

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.

[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]

[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]