Footsteps of Dr. Johnson (Scotland)/Chapter 18
Corrichatachin to Tobermorie (September 25—October 16).
At Sconser our travellers took boat for Strolimus, on their way to the friendly farmhouse at Corrichatachin, where they had been
ON THE ROAD TO SCONSER.
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."
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
SAILING PAST THE ISLE OF RUM.
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.
ARDNAMURCHAN POINT.
"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 McDonald, 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. 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
COL.
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."[1] 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."[2] 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.
COL: THE LAIRD'S HOUSE.
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."[3]
whose Description of the Western Isles was published the year after Sacheverell's book, gives the following acccount 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."[4]
"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.
COLVAY.
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."[5] Mr. Froude mentions the loss of this great Spanish galleon, but did not know the name of the harbour.[6] 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."[7] 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."