The Cruise of the Elena: or, Yachting in the Hebrides

On Sunday morning I wake to find that it has rained steadily all night, and that it is raining still. Mrs. Gamp intimates that life “is a wale o’ tears.” Oban seems to be such emphatically. This is awkward, as I hear the refined and accomplished lady who shares with us the perils and the dangers of the deep intimates that in Scotland people are not expected to laugh on the Sabbath-day. It rains all breakfast; it rains as we descend the Elena’s side, and are rowed ashore; it rains as we make our way to the Established Church, in which that popular minister, the Rev. Mr. Barclay, of Greenock, is to preach. His sermon is on the death of Moses. He glides lightly over the subject, telling us that his text, which is Deut. xxxv. 5, teaches the incompetency of the noblest life, the penal consequences of sin, the mercy mingled with the Divine judgment, and the uniformity of God’s method of dealing. Mr. Barclay is listened to with attention. In his black gown, his tall, dark figure looks well in the pulpit, and there must be some eight or nine hundred people present. There is a collection after, but I see no gold coin in the plate, though the bay is full of yachts, and there must be many wealthy people there. Perhaps, however, they patronise the small Episcopalian church close by. After the sermon, we are rowed back in the heavy rain to the yacht, and “it is regular Highland weather” is all the consolation that I get, as I dry myself in the stoke-hole, while the Doctor philosophically smokes.

In the evening we are rowed again on shore, and seek out the Free Church, where Professor Candlish, the son of the far-famed Doctor of that name, is to preach. He has the reputation of being a remarkably profound divine, and certainly reputation has not done him injustice in this respect. His sermon is a great contrast to that I heard in the morning. It is full fifty minutes long, and is an argumentative defence of the text, “Being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” The preacher proposed to deal with the objection, which he admitted might be fairly made, that if Jesus paid the debt, our salvation was not a matter of grace at all; and for this purpose we had line upon line in thoroughly old Scotch fashion, the hearers all the while looking out the passages of Scripture referred to in their Bibles. The sermon was old-fashioned as to thought, but the language was modern. I was glad I went to hear it. The congregation was not above half the size of that which appeared in the Established Church, and a great deal less fashionable. There you saw a good deal of the tourist element. Here we had the real natives, as it were; and I must own that I saw more men than I should have seen in a congregation of the same size at home. At the church in the morning we had, in addition to the Scotch Psalms, such hymns as “I lay my sins on Jesus,” and “Lord of the worlds above.” In the evening we had no novelties of that kind. Indeed, the whole service was dry and severe to a degenerate Southern. Mr. Barclay quoted a good deal of Mrs. Alexander’s fine poem on the death of Moses. Professor Candlish did nothing of the kind. His sermon was, in fact, quite in accordance with the day and the genius loci. I felt it was such a sermon as I had a right to expect. As I leave the church, I wonder to myself how the tourists manage. It is too wet to walk, and if they do take a walk it is not considered the correct thing in these northern latitudes, where, to make matters worse, the Sunday is nearly an hour longer than it is in London. I am afraid, however, some of the townsfolk find the time hang heavily on their hands. It seemed to me that there was an unusually large number of female faces at the window, and when the boat comes to fetch us on board the Elena all the windows are full of, I fear, frivolous spectators. It is true that I am adorned with a genuine Highland bonnet, and would make my fortune in London as a Guy on the fifth of November; but here Highland bonnets are common. It is true my companion is a great divine from town, and one well known in Exeter Hall; but here you would take him for a skipper, and nautical men are as common as Highland bonnets. I fear it is for very weariness that Oban ladies sit staring out of the windows on the empty streets and silent bay this dull and watery Sabbath night. I can almost fancy I hear them sing —

“I am a-weary, a-weary;Oh! would that I were dead!”

CHAPTER IV.

from oban to glencoe

A couple of days’ heavy rain quite exhausted the gaieties of Oban, and it was with no little pleasure that I heard the orders given to weigh the anchor and get up steam. I shed no tears as I saw the last of the long line of monster hotels, which rejoice when the Englishman, who has, perhaps, never been up St. Paul’s, and who certainly has never visited Stratford-on-Avon, makes up his mind to turn his face northwards and do the Western Highlands and Islands of Scotland. I believe the hotels are excellent. I am sure one of them is – that kept by Mr. McArthur, who is an artist, and whose son, a little lad of ten years, paints in a way to remind one of similar achievements by Sir Thomas Lawrence; but it is much to be regretted that so many of the best spots for pleasant views above the town are marked off as private, and so shut out from the tourist altogether. As possibly these brief notes may be read in Oban, I refer to the fact, in order that the authorities of the place, ere it be too late, may be reminded of the impolicy of killing the goose for the sake of the eggs. There ought to be an abundance of pleasant walks and seats around Oban to tempt the tourist to linger there. It is related of Norman Macleod, as he stood on the esplanade, pointing to the town, the bay crowded with yachts, the Kerrera reflected on the sea as in a mirror, with the distant hills of Morven and Mull behind, that he exclaimed, “Where will you find in the whole world a scene so lovely as this?” and this was said after he had visited America, and India, and Palestine, and the whole continent of Europe. I am not prepared exactly to endorse that statement, but the language is natural to a Scotchman, who can see nowhere a land so romantic as his own. Oban, with its fine hotels on the front, with its beautiful bay, with its wooded or bare hills behind, looks well from the water; but nevertheless I had tired of it, after spending a couple of days contemplating its features from the deckhouse of the yacht, bathed as they were in what in London we should call unmitigated rain, but which here poetically is termed Scottish mist.

Well, as I have said, there was a shaking amongst the dry bones when it became known that the morning was bright and fine, or, in other words, that it did not rain. A noble peer, who had been shut up in his yacht two whole days, came up on deck and looked out. A great Birmingham man, anchored on the other side of us, hoisted his sails and cleared off. With the aid of the glass I could see the tourists turn out of the hotels, without mackintoshes and with umbrellas furled. Away flew the Elena past the ancient Castle of Dunollie, the seat in former ages of the powerful Lords of Lorn, and still the property of their lineal descendant, Colonel Macdougall. Rounding Dunollie Point, and passing the Maiden Island, the steamer enters on the broad waters of Loch Linnie, and here a magnificent scene opens on us. To the left are seen the lofty mountains of Mull, the Sound of Mull, the green hills of Morven, the rugged peaks of Kingairloch, and the low island of Lismore, where MacLean of Duart left his wife, a sister of the Earl of Argyll, to perish on a rock, whilst he pretended to solemnise her funeral with a coffin filled with stones. Fortunately, the lady was rescued, and the rest of the story may be read in Joanna Baillie’s “Tragedy of Revenge.” On our right stretches the picturesque coast of the mainland, revealing fresh beauties at every turn, with a splendid back-ground of towering mountains, such as the noble Ben Cruachan, who only a week since had his head covered with snow, and the rugged hills of Glen Etive and Glencreran. Lismore itself is well worthy of a short stay, as one of the earliest spots visited by the missionary, St. Maluag, from Iona, whose chair and well are yet shown. There are also in the island the remains of an ancient Scandinavian fortress, and many other objects of interest. We pass another old castle, that of Stalker, on a small island, a stronghold of the ancient and powerful Stewarts of Appin, who, though now extinct, anciently ruled over this region, and, connected with the royal family of that name, occupied a distinguished place in Scottish story. In the sunlight our trip is immensely enjoyable. The air has healing in its wings. You feel younger and lighter every mile. On the left are the splendid mountains of Kingairloch and Ardour, and on the right those of Appin and Glencoe. The view of the pass is very fine, and to enjoy it more we land at Ballachulish, and take such a drive as I may never hope to enjoy again. Ballachulish itself is an interesting place. Here a son of a King of Denmark was drowned, and at the adjacent slate quarry some six hundred men are employed at wages averaging about three pounds a-week. It is their dinner hour as we pass, and I am struck with the fineness of their physique. Though they speak mostly Gaelic, and are shut out from English literature, they must, from their appearance, be a decent set. In an English mining village of the same size I should see a Wesleyan and a Primitive Methodist Chapel, and a goodly array of public-houses and beer-shops. Here I see neither the one nor the other. At this end of the village is an Episcopalian place of worship, with its graveyard filled with slate stones. At the other end is the Free Church, and then, separated from it by a rocky stream, are the Established Church and the Roman Catholic Chapel. The village street is, I fancy, nearly a mile long, and the cottages, which are well built and whitewashed, seem to me crammed with children and poultry – the former, especially, very fine, with their unclad feet, and with hair streaming like that of Mr. Gray’s bard. How they rush after our carriage like London arabs! I am sorry I don’t carry coppers. Late as the season is, a few women are hay-making. What sunburnt, weather-beaten, wrinkled faces they have! Plump and buxom at eighteen, they are old women when they have reached twice that age.

As to Glencoe, what can I say of it that is not already recorded in the guide-books, and familiar to the reader of English history? The road is carried along the edge of Loch Leven, and is really romantic, with the rocks on one side, the winding glen in front, and the loch beneath. It is very narrow, and as we meet two four-horse cars returning with tourists we have scarce room to pass. Another inch would send us howling over into the loch below, but our steeds and our driver are trustworthy, and no such accident is to be feared. In the loch beneath we see St. Mungo’s Isle, marked by the ruins of a chapel, and long used as a burial-place, the Lochaber people at one end, the Glencoe people at the other, as their dust may no more intermingle than may that of Churchmen and Dissenters in some parts of England. A little further on is the gable wall, still standing, of the house of M‘Ian, the unfortunate chief, who was shot down by his own fireside on that memorable morning of February, 1690. Is it for this the Glasgow people erected a statue to William III.? Further on we see the stones still remaining of what were once houses in which lived and loved fair women and brave men. One sickens now as we read the story of that atrocious massacre. A little more on our right is a rocky knoll, from which, it is said, the signal pistol-shot was fired. Happily, such atrocities are now out of date, but the blot remains to sully the fair fame of our great Protestant hero, and to stain to all eternity the memories of such men as Argyll and Stairs. Independently of the massacre, the spot is well worthy of a visit. There is no more rocky and weird a glen in all Scotland, and when the sun is hidden the aspect of the place is sombre in the extreme, and the further you advance the more does it become such. The larch and fir disappear from the sides of the hills, the river Coe dashes angrily and noisily at their feet, and before us is the waterfall which, here they tell us, was Ossian’s shower-bath. Close by, Ossian himself is reported to have been born, and what more natural than that he should thus have utilised the stream? On the south is the mountain of Malmor, and to the north is the celebrated Car Fion, or the hill of Fingal. I gather a thistle as a souvenir of the place. Of course it is a Scotch thistle, therefore to be honoured, but for the credit of my native land, I must say it is a pigmy to such as I have seen within a dozen miles of St. Paul’s. As a Saxon, I am especially interested in the horned sheep in these parts, which at first sight naturally you take for goats; with the Highland cattle, though by no means the fine specimens you see at the Agricultural Hall, and with the exquisite aroma (when taken in moderation) of the Ben Nevis “mountain dew.” Returning, we pass the entrance to the Caledonian Canal – called by the natives the canawl – along which we were to have made our way to Nairn; but the Elena scorns the narrow confines of the canal, and claims to be a free rover of the sea.

CHAPTER V.

off mull

As I sit musing in the dining-saloon of the Elena, it occurs to me that a Scotchman is bound to be a better educated man than an Englishman; for these simple reasons – in the first place, he does not drink beer – and beer is fatal to the intellect, inasmuch as it magnifies and fattens the body; and secondly, because the climate compels him to lead the life of a student. In the south, we Englishmen have fine weather. In this world everything is comparative. We in Middlesex may not have the warm sunshine and blue skies of France or Italy, but we have weather which admits of garden parties, and country sports, and pastimes; up in this region of mountain, rock, and river, it is perpetually blowing big guns or raining cats and dogs, and the Scotchman, as he can’t go out, must sit at home and improve his mind. In dull weather Oban is not a lively spot, but here at Tobermory dulness fails adequately to express the thorough stagnation of the place. Few of my readers have ever heard of Tobermory; yet Tobermory is the principal town – indeed, the only one that is to be found in all Mull. It rose to its present height of greatness as far back as the year 1788, when it was developed under the auspices of the Society for the Encouragement of British Fisheries. But the place was founded before then, as three or four miles off there are the remains of a monastery, and in a niche in the wall of one of the hotels there was, evidently, a crucifix or an image of the Virgin Mary, whose name seems to be connected with the town. Tobermory means Well of St. Mary, and up at the top of the town there is shown to you the well of that name. The Florida, one of the ships of the Spanish Armada, was sunk off Tobermory, and some of her timbers and her brass and iron guns have occasionally been fished up. The place must be valuable, as the present proprietor gave £90,000 for the estate, which had been bought by the former owner for about a third of that sum. The house and ground are on the left, and his yacht lies in the bay as we enter. By our side are a few trading vessels which have entered the harbour for shelter. On the right, at the entrance of the harbour, is a rock, on which some one has had painted, in large red letters, “God is love.” In rough seas, on this rock-bound coast, where the wind howls like a hurricane as it rushes down the gorges of the hills, and where the Atlantic seems to gather up its strength, here and there, at fitful intervals, ere it becomes still and tame – under the soothing influence of Scotch bag-pipes – it is well to remind the traveller on the deep that He, who holds the waters in the hollow of His hands, is love. Tobermory is, I imagine, a very religious place; on a Sunday night the Sheriff preaches in the Court House, and there, on our left, is a Baptist chapel – where, once upon a time, the Doctor preached, and in his warmth upset the candle over the head and shoulders of his colleague sitting below – and up on the hill is a kirk and a churchyard; the latter, as is the case with all the churchyards in this part of the world, in a truly disgraceful state of neglect, with the graves, which are but a few inches deep, covered with long grass and weeds. At one corner is what evidently was a receptacle for holy water, and all around the place there is an antiquity – in the grass growing in many of the streets, in the deserted walls of houses crumbling to decay, in the weather-beaten, ancient look of the people, certainly by no means suggestive of gaiety or life. Tobermory reminds me, says the Doctor, of what the auld woman said of the sermon – that it was neither amusing nor edifying. The Doctor’s lady, overcome by her feelings, writes verses, which I transcribe for the benefit of my readers who may not enjoy the honour of her acquaintance.

“Off Mull’Tis rather dull.Hope is vain,Down pours the rain;The wind howlsLike groans of ghouls.”

But the subject is too much for her, and we land to have a chat with the natives. A deal we get out of them, as we wander, something like the river of the poet —

“Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow.”

They seem to me suspicious and reserved, as the Irishman when at home. We meet one of the natives – an ancient mariner, with a long, grey beard, and glistening eye. He can tell us all about the legends connected with the Well of St. Mary, we are told.

“You have lived here all your life?

“Oh, yes,” replies he, thoughtfully, picking the lower set of left grinders in his mouth.

“And you know the place well?”

“Oh, yes,” says he, commencing picking on the other side of his mouth.

“And you can tell us all about it?”

“Oh, yes, sure,” says he, as he calmly proceeds to pick the remainder of his teeth individually and collectively.

“What about the well – you know that?”

“Yes, it is up there,” pointing to the spot we had just left.

“What do the people call it?”

“The Well of St. Mary.”

“Can you tell us why?” said we, thinking that at last the secret which had been hidden from the policeman of the district and the inn-keeper (I beg his pardon, in these parts every little cabin in which you can buy whisky or get a crust of bread is an hotel), and every man we met. “Can you tell me why the place is so called?”

“Yes,” says he, “the Well of St. Mary – that is the question.” And then he shut up – the oracle was dumb. I need not describe my feelings of disappointment. I could have punched that man’s head.

I learn that Mull is a cheap place – as it ought to be – to live in. In Tobermory, butter – beautiful in its way – is eighteenpence a-pound; mutton, tenpence; eggs, eightpence a dozen; and, says my informant, things are now very dear. The people are agricultural, and each one cultivates his little crop. The women are fearfully and wonderfully made; they seem born for hard work, and a large number of the young ones leave yearly for Glasgow, where, as maids-of-all-work, they are much in request. In the mud and rain, children, barefooted, come out to stare. The girls have no bonnets on, the boys mostly wear kilts, but they have all the advantages of a school, and the steamers from Oban now and then bring batches of the Glasgow papers. One of the things that most strikes a stranger in these Western isles is the astonishing number of sweetshops. Every one is born, it is said, with a sweet tooth in his head, but here every islander must have a dozen at least. Tobermory is no exception to the general rule. The lower part of the town, at the far end of the bay, is chiefly devoted to trade, and at every other shop I see sweets exposed for sale. It is the same at Portree, the capital of Skye, and it is the same at the still more important town of Stornoway, in the island of Lewis. At Tobermory, one sees in the shop windows, besides ship stores, mutton – you never see beef either in the Inner or Outer Hebrides; articles symptomatic of feminine love for fashion – actually a skating-rink hat being one of the attractions at one of the leading shops, though I can’t hear of a skating-rink on this side of the world at all. In the interior of the island are farmers and farmers’ wives, who evidently have cash to spare. As we skirt along the coast we see here and there a grey castle in ruins, telling of a time and manners and customs long since passed away. At one castle – that of Moy, for instance – the laird was a real knight and chief, and behaved as such. One part of the castle was built over a precipice, and in the wall was a niche in which a man could just stand, and barely that; a man or woman charged with a crime was placed in that niche; after a certain time the door was opened, and if he or she was still standing the result was a verdict of “Not guilty.” Had strength or nerve failed, the unhappy individual was considered guilty and had received the punishment due to his or her crime. It was rather hard, this, for weak brethren, and perhaps it is as well that the system is in existence no longer. There was a good deal of the right that is born of might in Scotland then; it is to be hoped that the land is happier now with its castles in ruins, and its sons and daughters wanderers on the face of the earth, farming in Canada, climbing to wealth and power in the United States, governing in India, growing wool in Natal, coming to the front with true Scotch tenacity and instinct everywhere. At the same time, when we need men for our armies and our fleets, and remember that the flower of them come from such islands as Mull, one may regret the forced exile of these hardy sons of the Celt or the Norseman.

CHAPTER VI.

fast day at portree

In rough weather it requires no little courage to make one’s way in a steamer from Tobermory to Portree, the capital of the Isle of Skye. Our noble-hearted owner is very careful on this point. The Elena is a beautiful yacht, and he treats her tenderly. It is true, off Ardanamurchan Point we tumble about on the troubled waves of the Atlantic, and are glad to shelter in the quiet harbour of Oronsay, where we pass the night, after the Doctor’s lady has gone on shore in search of milk, whilst the Doctor smokes his cigar on the top of the highest spot he can find, and I interview the one policeman of the district, who is unable to put on his official costume, as he tells me it rained heavily yesterday, and his clothes are hung by the fire to dry. At Oronsay there are some six houses, including what is called an hotel. Here and there are some old tubs about us which would cause Mr. Plimsoll’s hair to stand on an end, and which seek in this stagnant spot shelter from the gale. Next morning we resume our voyage, leaving Oronsay with a very light heart – to quote a celebrated phrase – and in a few hours are at Portree, after passing the residence of the Macdonald who is a descendant of the Lord of the Isles, and such islands as Rum and Muck, and others with names equally unpoetical in English ears. From afar we watch the giant hills of the Isle of Skye, their summits wreathed in clouds. Mr. Black and Mr. Smith have between them much to answer for. They write of fine weather when the sun shines, when you may see ocean and heaven and earth all alike, serene and beautiful, when the novelty and the beauty of the scene excite wonder and praise and joy. It is then people are glad to come to the Isle of Skye, and find a charm in its lonely and rustic life, in its tranquil lochs and its purple hills; but I fancy in Skye it is as often wet as not; and when we were there the rain was in the ascendant, and one would, except for the name of the thing, have been often just as soon at home. Mr. Spurgeon once said to a Scotchman, as he was pointing out the grandeur of a Highland scene, that it seemed as if God, after He had finished making the world, got together all the spare rubbish, and shot it down there. Apparently something similar has been done with regard to Skye. You are bewildered with their number and variety – rocks to the right, rocks to the left, rocks before, rocks behind, rocks rising steep out of the sea with all sorts of rugged outlines, rocks sloping away into wide moors where no life is to be seen, or into lochs where the fish have it almost all to themselves. It is as well that it should be so. The land does not flow with milk and honey. The hut of a Skye peasant, with its turf walls, its bare and filthy floor, not the sweeter for the fact that the cow – if the owner is rich enough to have one – sleeps behind, its peat fire, with no chimney for the escape of smoke, its bare-legged boys and girls, its sombre men, its gaunt women, seemed to me the climax of human wretchedness.