murchus to beautify the walk for him, he felt hardly fit to get over the first thirteen miles of another such stretch. Nevertheless, pressed to it by Colby, he managed to hold on, and eventually they trudged forty miles that day, reaching their destination – Garviemore, beyond Cluny Castle – by a most circuitous route and climb half an hour before midnight. Day after day were these tremendous marches continued to the highest and ruggedest mountain-tops in this region, Loch Laggan to Fort Augustus, thence to Loch Duich, the majestic Scour Ouran, and elsewhere, the party erecting huge piles of stones on the principal summits visited to serve as future signal-points.
Some of my readers may have, doubtless, at one time or another, set eyes on the dark serrated outline of the Coolin range in the Isle of Skye, – that stupendous mountain-mass of volcanic rock all torn and broken into hummocky pinnacles, gigantic chasms, and profound corries, into which the sun can scarce penetrate. But even on those rare occasions when the mist-shroud is lifted, few, I imagine, have climbed to the summit, and crept, as I have had to do after several hours of hard toil, along the sort of ragged knife-edge it presents to the pedestrian. At intervals your advance changes to a slide among loose crumbling débris, or to a scramble along the side of precipices, affording hardly foothold for a goat, but yet where one must go if progress is to be made: and now and again even this progress is barred by some horrific and impassable gully of awesome depth. Those who have had the experience – and those who have not must supply the gap with the aid of a lively imagination – will comprehend how it was that when Colby and his detachment got to Skye, the Coolins at first baffled them. On the 29th of July they "made an attempt to reach the summit of the Coolin Hills, but were completely foiled in the attempt, and that was probably the only instance in which Captain Colby was ever so foiled." Ultimately, however, they succeeded (on 31st July) in climbing Scour-na-Madaidh (the Dog's Scaur),[1] and built a cairn on it. On the previous day when balked, they had managed to reach a ridge of rock so narrow that they "were obliged to sit astride upon it," and this on the edge of a cliff some 2000 feet sheer drop below them.
From Skye they crossed over to Jeantown on Loch Carron. We have all heard, ad nauseam, the stock anecdote about the Scotch prohibition of "whistlin' on the Sabbath." Dawson vouches for an instance of it at Jeantown on this first August Sunday of 1819. Inadvertently he began "whistling some light air. Captain Colby very properly checked me in so doing, explaining to me the deep sense of veneration with which the people of that country regard the observance of the Sabbath; and the next day I was informed, while on the march, by one of our men, that he had been urged by the landlord to come to me and beg me to cease whistling, dreading lest some judgment should otherwise fall upon his house." And, adds the narrator, with commendable magnanimity, "there can be no doubt that I was wrong and that Captain Colby and the
- ↑ Dawson spells the name "Marich," but "Scour-na-Madaidh" was no doubt meant.
