Johnson's host was Lachlan Mackinnon, and the initials are, I suppose, his and his wife's. It was but a small place to hold the large and festive company that was gathered at the time of our traveller's visit; but, as Boswell says, "it was partly done by separating man and wife, and putting a number of men in one room and of women in another." As I looked up at the windows which still remain, though the floors have fallen in, I wondered which was the room which was Johnson's chamber at night, and the ladies' parlour by day, where Boswell sat among them writing his journal.
At the Hotel at Broadford, I was struck by the change that has come about since Johnson's time "in this verge of European life," to use the term which he applied to Skye. Corrichatachin remains almost as he saw it. A house had fallen in ruins and had been replaced by another, and a small grove of trees had been planted. A garden had been made, and patches of ground which once were pasture had been ploughed up. But the broad face of nature is unchanged. This "region of obscurity," is, however, obscure no longer. Where he was nearly ten weeks without receiving letters, now even the poor, far from their homes, by means of the telegraphic wire can, as it were, "live along the line." A maid-servant who goes to distant services, on her arrival, by means of a telegram, at once frees her mother from her "heart-struck anxious care." The owner of the hotel, from whom I learnt this fact, said that "Rowland Hill had done more for the poor man than all the ministers since, and that many of the Highlanders in gratitude had called their sons after him."
CORRICHATACHIN.
