Chapter 32

But is it our intention to sit scribbling here all day? Our fancy lets our feet enjoy their sinecure, and they stretch themselves out in indolent longitude beneath the Tent-table, while we are settled in spirit, a silent thought, on the battlements of our cloud-castle on the summit of Cruachan. What a prospect! Our cloud-castle rests upon a foundation of granite precipices; and down along their hundred chasms, from which the eye recoils, we look on Loch-Etive bearing on its bosom stationary--so it seems in the sunshine--one snow-white sail! What brings the creature there--and on what errand may she be voyaging up the uninhabited sea-arm that stretches away into the uninhabited mountains? Some poet, perhaps, steers her--sitting at the helm in a dream, and allowing her to dance her own way, at her own will, up and down the green glens and hills of the foam-crested waves--a swell rolling in the beauty of light and music for ever attendant on her, as the Sea-mew--for so we choose to name her--pursues her voyage--now on water, and now, as the breezes drop, in the air--elements at times undistinguishable, as the shadows of the clouds and of the mountains mingle their imagery in the sea. Oh! that our head, like that of a spider, were all studded with eyes--that our imagination, sitting in the "palace of the soul" (a noble expression, borrowed or stolen by Byron from Waller), might see all at once all the sights from centre to circumference, as if all rallying around her for her own delight, and oppressing her with the poetry of nature--a lyrical, an elegiac, an epic, or a tragic strain. Now the bright blue water-gleams enchain her vision, and are felt to constitute the vital, the essential spirit of the whole--Loch Awe land-serpent, large as serpent of the sea, lying asleep in the sun, with his burnished skin all bedropt with scales of silver and of gold--the lands of Lorn, mottled and speckled with innumerous lakelets, where fancy sees millions of water-lilies riding at anchor in bays where the breezes have fallen asleep--Oban, splendid among the splendours of that now almost motionless mediterranean, the mountain-loving Linnhe Loch--Jura, Islay, Colonsay, and nameless other islands, floating far and wide away on--on to Coll and Tiree, drowned beneath the faint horizon. But now all the eyes in our spider-head are lost in one blaze of undistinguishable glory; for the whole Highlands of Scotland are up in their power against us--rivers, lochs, seas, islands, cliffs, clouds, and mountains. The pen drops from our hand, and here we are--not on the battlements of the air-palace on the summit of Cruachan, but sitting on a tripod or three-legged stool at the mouth of our Tent, with our MS. before us, and at our right hand a quaich of Glenlivet, fresh drawn from yonder ten-gallon cask--and here's to the health of "Honest men and bonny lasses" all over the globe.

So much for description--an art in which the Public (God bless her, where is she now--and shall we ever see her more?) has been often pleased to say that we excel. But let us off to the Moor. Piro! Ponto! Basta! to your paws, and O'Bronte, unfurl your tail to heaven. Pointers! ye are a noble trio. White, O Ponto! art thou as the foam of the sea. Piro! thou tan of all tans! red art thou as the dun-deer's hide, and fleet as he while thou rangest the mountain-brow, now hid in heather, and now reappearing over the rocks. Waur hawk, Basta!--for finest-scented though be thy scarlet nostrils, one bad trick alone hast thou; and whenever that grey wing glances from some pillar-stone in the wilderness, headlong goest thou, O lawless negro! But behave thyself to-day, Basta! and let the kestrel unheeded sail or sun herself on the cliff. As for thee, O'Bronte! the sable dog with the star-bright breast, keep thou like a serf at our heels, and when our course lies over the fens and marshes, thou mayest sweep like a hairy hurricane among the flappers, and haply to-day grip the old drake himself, and, with thy fan-like tail proudly spread in the wind, deposit at thy master's feet, with a smile, the monstrous mallard.

But in what direction shall we go, callants--towards what airt shall we turn our faces? Over yonder cliffs shall we ascend, and descend into Glen-Creran, where the stony regions that the ptarmigan loves melt away into miles of the grousey heather, which, ere we near the salmon-haunted Loch so beautiful, loses itself in woods that mellow all the heights of Glen Ure and Fasnacloigh with sylvan shades, wherein the cushat coos, and the roe glides through the secret covert? Or shall we away up by Kinloch-Etive, and Melnatorran, and Mealgayre, into the Solitude of Streams, that from all their lofty sources down to the far-distant Loch have never yet brooked, nor will they ever brook, the bondage of bridges, save of some huge stone flung across some chasm, or trunk of a tree--none but trunks of trees there, and all dead for centuries--that had sunk down where it grew, and spanned the flood that eddies round it with a louder music? Wild region! yet not barren; for there are cattle on a thousand hills, that, wild as the very red-deer, toss their heads as they snuff the feet of rarest stranger, and form round him in a half-alarmed and half-threatening crescent. There flocks of goats--outliers from Dalness--may be seen as if following one another on the very air, along the lichen-stained cliffs that frown down unfathomed abysses--and there is frequent heard the whirring of the gorcock's wing, and his gobble gathering together his brood, scattered by the lightning that in its season volleys through the silence, else far deeper than that of death;--for the silence of death--that is, of a churchyard filled with tombs--is nothing to the austerity of the noiselessness that prevails under the shadow of Unimore and Attchorachan, with their cliffs on which the storms have engraven strange hieroglyphical inscriptions, which, could but we read them wisely, would record the successive ages of the Earth, from the hour when fire or flood first moulded the mountains, down to the very moment that we are speaking, and with small steel-hammer roughening the edges of our flints that they may fail not to murder. Or shall we away down by Armaddy, where the Fox-Hunter dwells--and through the woods of Inverkinglass and Achran, "double, double, toil and trouble" overcome the braes of Benanea and Mealcopucaich, and drop down like two unwearied eagles into Glen-Scrae, with a peep in the distance of the young tower of Dalmally, and the old turrets of Kilchurn? Rich and rare is the shooting-ground, Hamish, which by that route lies between this our Tent and the many tarns that freshen the wildernesses of Lochanancrioch. Say the word--tip the wink--tongue on your cheek--up with your forefinger--and we shall go; for hark, Hamish, our chronometer chimes eight--a long day is yet before us--and what if we be benighted? We have a full moon and plenty of stars.

All these are splendid schemes--but what say you, Hamish, to one less ambitious, and better adapted to Old Kit? Let us beat all the best bits down by Armaddy--the Forge--Gleno, and Inveraw. We may do that well in some six or seven hours--and then let us try that famous salmon-cast nearest the mansion--(you have the rods?)--and if time permit, an hour's trolling in Loch Awe, below the Pass of the Brander, for one of those giants that have immortalised the names of a Maule, a Goldie, and a Wilson. Mercy on us, Shelty, what a beard! You cannot have been shaved since Whitsunday--and never saw we such lengthy love-locks as those dangling at your heels. But let us mount, old Surefoot--mulish in nought but an inveterate aversion to all stumbling. And now for the heather! But are you sure, gents, _that we are on_?

And has it come to this! Where is the grandson of the desert-born?

Thirty years ago, and thou Filho da Puta wert a flyer! A fencer beyond compare! Dost thou remember how, for a cool five hundred, thou clearedst yon canal in a style that rivalled that of the red-deer across the chasms of Cairngorm? All we had to do was to hold hard and not ride over the hounds, when running breast-high on the rear of Reynard the savage pack wakened the welkin with the tumultuous hubbub of their death-cry, and whipper-in and huntsman were flogging on their faltering flight in vain through fields and forests flying behind thy heels that glanced and glittered in the frosty sunshine. What steed like thee in all Britain at a steeple-chase? Thy hoofs scorned the strong stubble, and skimmed the deep fallows, in which all other horses--heavy there as dragoons--seemed fetlock-bound, or laboured on in staggerings, soil-sunk to the knees. Ditches dwindled beneath thy bounds, and rivulets were as rills; or if in flood they rudely overran their banks, into the spate plunged thy sixteen hands and a-half height, like a Polar monster leaping from an iceberg into the sea, and then lifting up thy small head and fine neck and high shoulder, like a Draco from the weltering waters, with a few proud pawings to which the recovered greensward rang, thy whole bold, bright-brown bulk reappeared on the bank, crested by old Christopher, and after one short snorting pause, over the miry meadows--tantivy!--tantivy!--away! away! away!

Oh! son of a Rep! were not those glorious days? But Time has laid his finger on us both, Filho; and never more must we two be seen by the edge of the cover,

"When first the hunter's startling horn is heard Upon the golden hills."

'Tis the last learned and highest lesson of Wisdom, Filho, in man's studious obedience to Nature's laws--_to know when to stop in his career_. Pride, Passion, Pleasure, all urge him on; while Prudence, Propriety, Peace, cry halt! halt! halt! That mandate we have timeously obeyed; and having, unblamed we hope, and blameless, carried on the pastimes of youth into manhood, and even through the prime of manhood to the verge of age--on that verge, after some few farewell vagaries up and down the debatable land, we had the resolution to drop our bridle-hand, to unloosen the spurs from our heels, and to dismount from the stateliest and swiftest steed, Filho, that ever wafted mortal man over moor and mountain like a storm-driven cloud.

You are sure _we are on_, Hamish? And that he will not run away? Come, come, Surefoot, none of your funking! A better mane for holding on by we could not imagine. Pure Shelty you say, Hamish? From his ears we should have suspected his grandfather of having been at least a Zebra.

THE MOORS.

FLIGHT SECOND--THE COVES OF CRUACHAN.

Comma--semicolon--colon--full-point! All three scent-struck into attitude steady as stones. That is beautiful. Ponto straight as a rod--Piro in a slight curve--and Basta a perfect semicircle. O'Bronte! down on your marrowbones. But there is no need, Hamish, either for hurry or haste. On such ground, and on such a day, the birds will lie as if they were asleep. Hamish, the flask!--not the powder-flask, you dotterel--but the Glenlivet. 'Tis thus we always love to steady our hand for the first shot. It gives a fine feeling to the forefinger.

Ha! the heads of the old cock and hen, like snakes, above the heather--motionless, but with glancing eyes--and preparing for the spring. Whirr--whirr--whirr--bang--bang--tapsilleery--tapsalteery--thud-- thud--thud! Old cock and old hen both down, Hamish. No mean omen, no awkward augury, of the day's sport. Now for the orphan family--marked ye them round

"The swelling instep of the mountain's foot?"

"Faith and she's the teevil's nainsel--that is she--at the shutin'; for may I tine ma mull, and never pree sneeshin' mair, if she haena richt and left murdered fowre o' the creturs!"--"Four!--why, we only covered the old people; but if younkers will cross, 'tis their own fault that they bite the heather."--"They're a' fowre spewin', sir, except ane--and her head's aff--and she's jumpin' about waur nor ony o' them, wi' her bluidy neck. I wuss she mayna tak to her wings again, and owre the knowe. But ca' in that great toozy outlandish dowg, sir, for he's devourin' them--see hoo he's flingin' them, first ane and then anither, outowre his shouther, and keppin' them afore they touch the grun' in his mouth, like a mountebank wi' a shour o' oranges!"--"Hamish, are they bagged?"--"Ou ay."--"Then away to windward, ye sons of bitches--Heavens, how they do their work!"

Up to the time of our grand climacteric we loved a wide range--and thought nothing of describing and discussing a circle of ten miles diameter in a day, up to our hips in heather. But for these dozen or twenty years bypast we have preferred a narrow beat, snugly seated on a shelty, and pad the hoof on the hill no more. Yonder is the kind of ground we now love--for why should an old man make a toil of a pleasure? 'Tis one of the many small coves belonging to Glen-Etive, and looks down from no very great elevation upon the Loch. Its bottom, and sides nearly half-way up, are green pastures, sheep-nibbled as smooth as a lawn--and a rill, dropping in diamonds from the cliffs at its upper end, betrays itself, where the water is invisible, by a line of still livelier verdure. An old dilapidated sheepfold is the only building, and seems to make the scene still more solitary. Above the green pastures are the richest beds and bosoms of heather ever bees murmured on--and above them nothing but bare cliffs. A stiff breeze is now blowing into this cove from the sea-loch; and we shall slaughter the orphan family at our leisure. 'Tis probable they have dropped--single bird after single bird--or in twos and threes--all along the first line of heather that met their flight; and if so, we shall pop them like partridges in turnips. Three points in the game! Each dog, it is manifest, stands to a different lot of feathers; and we shall slaughter them, without dismounting, _seriatim_. No, Hamish--we must dismount--give us your shoulder--that will do. The Crutch--now we are on our pins. Take a lesson. Whirr! Bang! Bag number one, Hamish. Ay, that is right, Ponto--back Basta. Ditto, ditto. Now Ponto and Basta both back Piro--right and left this time--and not one of the brood will be left to cheep of Christopher. Be ready--attend us with the other double-barrel. Whirr! Bang--bang--bang--bang! What think you of that, you son of the mist? There is a shower of feathers! They are all at sixes and sevens upon the greensward at the edge of the heather. Seven birds at four shots! The whole family is now disposed of--father, mother, and eleven children. If such fire still be in the dry wood, what must it have been in the green? Let us lie down in the sheltered shade of the mossy walls of the sheepfold--take a drop of Glenlivet--and philosophise.

Hollo! Hamish, who are these strange, suspicious-looking strangers thitherwards-bound, as hallan-shaker a set as may be seen on an August day? Ay, ay, we ken the clan. A week's residence to a man of gumption gives an insight into a neighbourhood. Unerring physiognomists and phrenologists are we, and what with instinctive, and what with intuitive knowledge, we keek in a moment through all disguise. He in the centre of the group is the stickit minister--on his right stands the drunken dominie--on his left the captain, who in that raised look retains token of _delirium tremens_--the land-louper behind him is the land-measurer, who would be well to do in the world were he "monarch of all he surveyed,"--but has been long out at elbows, and his society not much courted since he was rude to the auld wife at the time the gudeman was at the peats. That fine tall youth, the widow's son in Gleno, and his friend the Sketcher, with his portfolio under his arm, are in indifferent company, Hamish; but who, pray, may be the phenomenon in plush, with bow and arrow, and tasseled horn, bonnet jauntily screwed to the sinister, glass stuck in socket, and precisely in the middle of his puckered mouth a cigar. You do not say so--a grocer's apprentice from the Gorbals!

No need of confabulating there, gemmen, on the knowe--come forward and confront Christopher North. We find we have been too severe in our strictures. After all, they are not a bad set of fellows, as the world goes--imprudence must not be too harshly condemned--Shakespeare taught us to see the soul of good in things evil--these two are excellent lads; and, as for impertinence, it often proceeds from _mauvais honte_, and with a glance we shall replace the archer behind his counter.

How goes it, Cappy? Rather stiff in the back, minister, with the mouth of the fowling-piece peeping out between the tails of your long coat, and the butt at the back of your head, by way of bolster? You will find it more comfortable to have her in hand. That bamboo, dominie, is well known to be an air-gun. Have you your horse-pistol with you to-day, surveyor? Sagittarius, think you, you could hit, at twoscore, a haystack flying? Sit down, gentlemen, and let's have a crack.

So ho! so ho! so ho! We see her black eyes beneath a primrose tuft on the brae. In spring all one bank of blossoms; but 'tis barish now and sheep-nibbled, though few eyes but our own could have thus detected there the brown back of Maukin. Dominie, your bamboo. Shoot her sitting? Fie fie--no, no. Kick her up, Hamish. There she goes. We are out of practice at single ball--but whizz! she has it between the shoulders. Head-over-heels she has started another--why, that's funny--give us your bow and arrow, you green grocer--twang! within an inch of her fud. Gentlemen, suppose we tip you a song. Join all in the chorus.

THE POWCHER'S SONG.

When I was boon apprentice In vamous Zoomerzet Shere, Lauks! I zerved my meester truly Vor neerly zeven yeer, _U_ntil I took to _Pow_ching, Az you zhall quickly heer. CHO. Ou! 'twas ma delyght in a shiny night, In the zeazon of the year: Ou! 'twas ma delyght in a shiny night, In the zeazon of the year.

Az me and ma coomerades Were zetting on a snere, Lauks! the Geamkeepoors caem oop to uz; Vor them we did na kere, 'Case we could fight or wrestle, lads, Jump over ony wheere. CHO. Ou! 'twas ma delyght in a shiny night, In the zeazon of the year: Ou! 'twas ma delyght in a shiny night, In the zeazon of the year.

Az we went oot wan morning Atwixt your vive and zeex, We cautcht a here alive, ma lads, We found un in a deetch; We popt un in a bag, ma lads, We yoiten off vor town,

We took un to a neeghboor's hoose, And we zold un vor a crown. We zold un vor a crown, ma lads, But a wont tell ye wheere. CHO. Ou! 'twas ma delyght in a shiny night, In the zeazon of the year: Ou! 'twas ma delyght in a shiny night, In the zeazon of the year.

Then here's success to Powching, Vor A doos think it feere, And here's look to ere a gentleman Az wants to buy a heere, And here's to ere a geamkeepoor, Az woona zell it deere. CHO. Ou! 'twas ma delyght in a shiny night, In the zeazon of the year: Ou! 'twas ma delyght in a shiny night, In the zeazon of the year.

The Presbytery might have overlooked your fault, Mac, for the case was not a flagrant one, and you were willing, we understand, to make her an honest woman. Do you think you could recollect one of your sermons? In action and in unction you had not your superior in the Synod. Do give us a screed about Nimrod or Nebuchadnezzar. No desecration in a sermon--better omitted, we grant, prayer and psalm. Should you be unable to reproduce an entire discourse, yet by dove-tailing--that is, a bit from one and a bit from another--surely you can be at no loss for half an hour's miscellaneous matter--heads and tails. Or suppose we let you off with a View of the Church Question. You look glum and shake your head. Can you, Mac, how can you resist that Pulpit?

Behold in that semicircular low-browed cliff, backed by a range of bonny green braes dipping down from the hills that do themselves come shelving from the mountains, what appears at first sight to be a cave, but is merely a blind window, as it were, a few feet deep, arched and faced like a beautiful work of masonry, though chisel never touched it, nor man's hand dropped the line along the living stone thus wrought by nature's self, who often shows us, in her mysterious processes, resemblances of effects produced by us her children on the same materials by our more most elaborate art. It is a very pulpit, and that projecting slab is the sounding-board. That upright stone in front of it, without the aid of fancy, may well be thought the desk. To us sitting here, this spot of greensward is the floor; the sky that hangs low, as if it loved it, the roof of the sanctuary; nor is there any harm in saying, that we, if we choose to think so, are sitting in a kirk.

Shall we mount the pulpit by that natural flight of steps, and, like a Sedgwick or a Buckland, with a specimen in one hand, and before our eyes mountains whose faces the scars of thunder have intrenched, tell you how the globe, after formation on formation, became fit residence for new-created man, and habitable no more to flying dragons? Or shall we, rather, taking the globe as we find it, speculate on the changes wrought on its surface by us, whom God gave feet to tread the earth, and faces to behold the heavens, and souls to soar into the heaven of heavens, on the wings of hope, aspiring through temporal shades to eternal light?

Brethren!--The primary physical wants of the human being are food, clothing, shelter, and defence. To supply these he has invented all his arts. Hunger and Thirst cultivate the earth. Fear builds castles and embattles cities. The animal is clothed by nature against cold and storm, and shelters himself in his den. Man builds his habitation, and weaves his clothing. With horns, or teeth, or claws, the strong and deadly weapons with which nature has furnished them, the animal kinds wage their war; he forges swords and spears, and constructs implements of destruction that will send death almost as far as his eye can mark his foe, and sweep down thousands together. The animal that goes in quest of his food, that pursues or flies from his enemy, has feet, or wings, or fins; but man bids the horse, the camel, the elephant, bear him, and yokes them to his chariot. If the strong animal would cross the river, he swims. Man spans it with a bridge. But the most powerful of them all stands on the beach and gazes on the ocean. Man constructs a ship, and encircles the globe. Other creatures must traverse the element nature has assigned, with means she has furnished. He chooses his element, and makes his means. Can the fish traverse the waters? So can he. Can the bird fly the air? So can he. Can the camel speed over the desert? He shall bear man as his rider.

"That's beautifu'!" "Tuts, haud your tongue, and tak a chow. There's some shag." "Is he gaun to be lang, Hamish?" "Wheesht! you micht as weel be speakin in the kirk."