Part 8 (1/2)

”That playfulness of sorrow ne'er beguiles; It smiles in bitterness: but still it smiles, And sometimes with the wisest and the best

Till even the scaffold echoes with their jest”

The feeling, however, though an inharhed in the strea a violent effort, when just on the edge of the rapid, I got into stiller water, and succeeded inmy way to the opposite bank, drenched to the arm-pits It was in nearly the same reach of the Conon that my poor friend the maniac of Ord lost her life a few days after

I foundat an inn a little beyond Contin; but there was no sign of the carter; and ere inforht have to wait for hiht

Click-Clack--a name expressive of the carter's fluency as a talker, by which he was oftener designated than by the one in the parish register-- us at an early hour, but that hen he was sober; and what his intention ht be now, said the innkeeper, when in all probability he was drunk, no living ence to h country before them; and my comrade--a lad a year or two older thanwith Click-Clack, and that his master had secured his services, not frohtlessly become surety for hi left to pay for the ani hi for the carter until the last moment after which it would be possible for us to reach our ultiht; and, taking it for granted that he would not very soon join us, I set out for a neighbouring hill, which commands an extensive view, to take note of thethe two previous years, not a few interesting associations, and to dry my wetted clothes in the breeze and the sun The old tower of Fairburn for objects in the prospect; and the eye expatiated beyond froins, on a tract of broken hill and brownThere are traditions that, in their very peculiarity, and reive evidence of their truth; and I now called up a tradition, which I owed tothe manner in which the Mackenzies of Fairburn and the Chishollass had divided this barren tract between them

It had lain, from the first settlement of the country, an unappropriated waste, and neither proprietor could tell where his own lands ter that the want of a proper line of de in their sureed to have the tract divided The age of land-surveyors had not yet co two old women of seventy-five, they sent the the hills, the one from Fairburn Tower, the other fro the as the point at which to set up the boundary-stone of the two properties The women, attended by a bevy of competent witnesses, journeyed as if for life and death; but the Fairburn woman, as the laird's foster-mother, either more zealous or more active than the Chisholm one, travelled nearly two ht of each other in the waste, it was far froreat distance fro why they should have regarded one another in the light of ene pace quickened into a run, and, ht; but lacking, in their utter exhaustion, strength for fighting and breath for scolding, they could only seat theirn_ at one another across the streae Cruikshank has had at times worse subjects for his pencil It is, I believe, Landor, in one of his ”ihland laird inform Adam Smith that, desirous to ascertain, in soree, the size of his property, he had placed a line of pipers around it, each at such a distance frohbour that he could barely catch the sound of his bagpipe; and that from the number of pipers required he was able to form an approxihland tradition, genuine at least as such, are we introduced to an expedient of the kind scarce less ludicrous or inadequate than that which Landor ined

I returned to the inn at the hour from which, as I have said, it would be possible for us, and not , as I had anticipated, no trace of Click-Clack, we set off without hi moory straths, with here and there a blue lake and birch wood, and here and there a group of dingy cottages and of irregular fields; but the general scenery was that of the prevailing schistose gneiss of the Scotch Highlands, in which rounded confluent hills stand up over long-withdrawing valleys, and i rather froht bold or striking in its features The district had been opened up only a few seasons previous by the Parliamentary road over which we travelled, and was at that time little known to the tourist; and the thirty years which have since passed have in sohlands generally Most of the cottages, when I last journeyed the ere represented by but broken ruins, and the fields by reen aroup of oak-trees, in the last stage of decay, which would have attracted notice froland The largest of the group lay rotting upon the ground--a black, doddered shell, fully six feet in diameter, but hollow as a tar-barrel; while the others, some four or five in nuer boughs, but green with leaves, that, frorerapped the mantles Their period of ”tree-shi+p”--to borrow a phrase frohland history--to a time, I doubt not, when not a few of the adjacent peat hbouring clans--Frasers, Bissets, and Chishol naun to be Ere we reached the solitary inn of Auchen-nasheen--a true Highland clachan of the ancient type, the night had fallen dark and storreythe hills--blotting off their brown suht his pencilled hills with a piece of India rubber, but which, methodical in its encroachments, had preserved in its advances a perfect horizontality of line--had broken into a heavy, continuous rain As, however, the fair weather had lasted us till ithin a mile of our journey's end, ere only partially wet on our arrival, and soon succeeded in drying ourselves in front of a noble turf fire My comrade would fain have solaced hi nice He held that a Highland inn should be able to furnish at least a bit of mutton-ham or a cut of dried salmon, and ordered a few slices, first of ham, and then of salmon; but his orders served merely to perplex the landlord and his wife, whose stores see down in his expectations and dery, and that anything edible would do, we heard the landlady inform, with evident satisfaction, a red-ar, that ”the lads would take porridge” The porridge was accordingly prepared; and, when engaged in discussing this faht--for we had arrived late--a tall Highlander entered the inn, dropping like a es to the landlord, and to two mason lads in the inn, from a forlorn carter hom he had travelled about twenty miles, but who, knocked up by the ”drap drink” and a pair of bad shoes, had been coe about seven e to the landlord was si stolen his horse and cart, he instructed him to detain his property for hi As for his hlander, ”it was no ain; but if we liked to buckle on a' the Gaelic curses to a' the English ones, it would be so by a tre apartment ”It is Click-Clack the carter,” saidinto our clothes in doubly-quick tih the crannies of a deal partition, and saw the carter standing in thefuriously, and the landlord, a s hard to conciliate hi fellow, turned of forty, of about five feet ten, with a black unshaven beard, like a shoe-brush stuck under his nose, which was red as a coal, and attired in a sadly-breached suit of Aberdeen grey, topped by a briing scare-crow

Imyself his match, even unassisted by my comrade, on whose discretion I could calculate with more certainty than on his valour, I entered the apartross dereliction of duty He had left us to drive his horse and cart for a whole day, and had broken, for the sake of his wretched indulgence in the public-house, his engagement with our master; and I would report him to a certainty The carter turned uponhis eye, as I would that of a maniac, I set my face very near his, and he cal late, he said: he had reached the inn at Contin not an hour after we had left it; and it was really very hard to have to travel a long day's journey in such bad shoes We accepted his apology; and, ordering the landlord to bring in half a , like the previous night, had been thick and rainy; but it gradually cleared up as the day rose; and after breakfast we set out together along a broken footpath, never before traversed by horse and cart We passed a solitary lake, on whose shores the only hu, at which, however, Click-Clack ascertained there hisky to be sold; and then entered upon a tract of scenery wholly different in its coh which our journey had previously lain

There runs along the west coast of Scotland, frohbourhood of Cape Wrath, a forical Map of the Kingdom, as Old Red Sandstone, but which underlies formations deemed primary--two of these of quartz rock, and a third of that unfossiliferous lie Cave of S The system, which, taken as a whole--quartz-rock, lime, and sandstone--corresponds bed for bed with the Lower Old Red of the east coast, and is probably a highly reat deposit, exhibits its fullest development in assynt, where all its four component beds are present In the tract on whichentered, it presents only two of these--the lower quartz-rock, and the underlying red sandstone; but wherever any of its members appear, they present unique features--marks of enorether its own; and, in now entering upon it for the first time, I was much impressed by its extraordinary character Loch Maree, one of the wildest of our Highland lakes, and at this time scarce at all known to the tourist, owes to it all that is peculiar in its appearance--its tall pyramidal quartz h as naked as the old Pyrahts on which at leam white in streaks and patches; and a picturesque sandstone tract of precipitous hills, which flanks its western shore, and bore at this period the reneissthe eastern side of the lake, sinks sheer into its brown depths, save at one point, where a level tract, half-encircled by precipices, is occupied by fields and copsewood, and bears in the reatly broadens in its lower reaches; and a group of partially subed hillocks, that resemble the forest-covered ones on its western shores, but are of lower altitude, rise over its waters, and forrey with lichened stone, and bosky with birch and hazel Finding at the head of the loch that no horse and cart had ever forced their way along its sides, we had to hire a boat for the transport of at least cart and baggage; and when the boate, which ith the characteristic dilatoriness of the district, a work of hours, we baited at the clachan of _Kinlochewe_--a huht The na the _head_ or upper end of Loch Maree--has a rey: it means simply the head of _Loch Ewe_--the salt-water loch into which the waters of Loch Maree eth, and whose present _head_ is some sixteen or twenty miles distant from the farm which bears its name Ere that last elevation of the land, however, to which our country owes the level inal strip that stretches between the present coast-line and the ancient one, the sea must have found its way to the old farm Loch Maree (Mary's Loch), a nain, would then have existed as a prolongation of the marine Loch Ewe, and _Kinlocheould have actually been what the conify--the head of Loch Ewe

There see that, ere the latest elevation of the land took place in our island, it had received its first hues, who employed tools and weapons of stone, and fashi+oned canoes out of single logs of wood Are we to accept etyies such as the instanced one--and there are several such in the Highlands--as good, in evidence that these aboriginal savages were of the Celtic race, and that Gaelic was spoken in Scotland at a tirassy links, and the sites of h, and Cromarty, existed as oozy sea-beaches, covered twice every day by the waters of the ocean?

It was a delightful evening--still, breathless, clear--as ept slowly across the broad breast of Loch Maree; and the red light of the sinking sun fell on many a sild recess, a by the birch and lades of the ancient forest; or lighted up into a blush the pale stony faces of the tall pyra the lake to the white house on the opposite side, and a piper stationed in the boas discoursing sweet ht up by the echoes of the rocks, resepipe before

Even the boath of Gaelic to know that they were re how very beautiful it was ”I wish,”

said reat many curious stories about the loch, that I ae island? It is Island-Maree There is, they tell round on it, in which the Danes used to bury long ages ago, and whose ancient tomb-stones no man can read And yon other island beside it is faood_ people meet every year to make submission to their queen There is, they say, a little loch in the island, and another little island in the loch; and it is under a tree on that inner island that the queen sits and gathers kain for the Evil One

They tell me that, for certain, the fairies have not left this part of the country yet” We landed, a little after sunset, at the point from which our road led across the hills to the sea-side, but found that the carter had not yet co of his appearance, and unable to carry off his cart and the luggage with us, as we had succeeded in bringing off cart, horse, and luggage on the previous day, ere preparing to take up our night's lodging under the shelter of an overhanging crag, e heard hih the wood, in a manner worthy of his name, as if he were not one, but twenty carters ”What a perfect shame of a country!” he exclaimed--”perfect shame! Road for a horse, forsooth!--more like a turnpike stair And not a feed of corn for the poor beast; and not a public-house atween this and Kinlochewe; and not a drop of whisky: perfect, perfect sha up in apparently very bad humour, we found him disposed to transfer the shame of the country to our shoulders What sort of people e, he asked, to travel in such a land without whisky! Whisky, however, there was none to produce: there was no whisky nearer, we told him, than the public-house at the sea-side, where we proposed spending the night; and, of course, the sooner we got there the better And after assisting hiht, aed with flags, and liht as we passed; but ere we reached the inn of Flowerdale in Gairloch, every object stood out clear, though cold, in the increscent light of ht streaks of cloud, poised in the east over the unrisen sun, were gradually exchanging their glealed blood and fire

After the refreshment of a few hours' sleep and a tolerable breakfast, we set out for the scene of our labours, which lay on the sea-shore, about two miles further to the north and west; and were shown an out-house--one of a square of dilapidated offices--which wehad been originally what is known on the north-western coast of Scotland, with its ever-weeping climate, as a hay-barn; but it was now nant water, about three-quarters of a foot in depth, which had oozed through the walls froed pond in the adjacent court, that in a tract of recent rains had overflowed its banks, and not yet subsided Our new house did look exceedingly like a beaver-daeous difference, that no expedient of diving could bring us to better cha hi out in sailor style, ”three feet water in the hold” Click-Clack broke into a rage: ”That a dwelling for human creatures!” he said ”If I was to put my horse intil't, poor beast! the very hoofs would rot off him in less than a week Are we eels or puddocks, that we are sent to live in a loch?”

Marking, however, a narrow portion of the ridge which da pool whence our domicile derived its supply, I set myself to cut it across, and had soon the satisfaction of seeing the general surface lowered fully a foot, and the floor of our future dwelling laid bare Click-Clack, gathering courage as he saw the waters ebbing away, seized a shovel, and soon showed us the value of his many years' practice in the labours of the stable; and then, despatching him for a few cart-loads of a dry shell-sand from the shore, which I hadwith our lireen water a fine white floor ”Man wants but little here below,” especially in a s in the apartlass; but the one we filled up with stone, and an old unglazed frame, which, with the assistance of a base and border of turf, I succeeded in fitting into the other, gave at least an air of respectability to the place Boulder stones, capped with pieces of mossy turf, served us for seats; and we had soon a coable; but ere still sadly in want of a bed: the funda on the sand; and it would be neither corass and blankets over _it_ My comrade went out to see whether the place did not furnish h of any kind toafter hi corner beside the fire, with of course the teeth doards A good Catholic, prepared to win heaven for hiht have preferred having thehtened Protestant; and besides, like Goldsmith's sailor, he loved to lie soft The second piece of luck wasunclaiale had blown fro it above the harrows, and driving a row of stakes around it into the floor, to keep the outer sleeper fro off--for the wall served to secure the position of the inner one--we succeeded in constructing, by our joint efforts, a luxurious bed There was but one serious drawback on its comforts: the roof overhead was bad, and there was an obstinate drop, that used, during every shohich fell in the season of sleep, to make a dead set at my face, and try me at times with the water torture of the old story, ht

Our barrack fairly fitted up, I set out with e of Gaelic enabled hies, to secure a labourer for the work of theto darken; but there was still light enough to show h on my way resembled very much those of Liliput, as described by Gulliver They were, however, though equally sular, and had peculiarities, too, altogether their own The land had originally been stony; and as it showed, according to the Highland phrase, its ”bare bones through its skin”--large bosses of the rock beneath coathered the stones in great pyramidal heaps on the bare bosses; and so very numerous were these in sonant sorcerer had, in the time of harvest, converted all their shocks into stone On approaching the cottage of our future labourer, I was attracted by a door of very peculiar construction that lay against the wall It had been brought from the ancient pine forest on the western bank of Loch Maree, and was formed of the roots of trees so curiously interlaced by nature, that when cut out of the soil, which it had covered over like a piece of network, it reether, and now forht in vain atte doards two feet or so, found ourselves upon the dunghill of the establishment, which in this part of the country usually occupied at the time an ante-chamber which corresponded to that occupied by the cattle a few years earlier, in thein this foul outer cha atmosphere of smoke, we came to an inner door raised to the level of the soil outside, through which a red u into the inner apartment, we found ourselves in the presence of the ine of my Sutherlandshi+re relative, was placed in the middle of the floor: the hlander, of the e, with his son, a boy of twelve, sat on the one side; his wife, who, though notcheeks, hollow eyes, and pale, sallow coe, sat on the other We broke our business to the Highlander through ht up at school by the boy, there was no English in the household--and found hie pot of potatoes hung suspended over the fire, under a dense ceiling of smoke; and he hospitably invited us to wait supper, which, as our dinner had consisted of but a piece of dry oaten cake, illingly did As the conversation went on, I became conscious that it turned upon myself, and that I was an object of profound coe ”What,” I inquired ofme so very much for?” ”For your want of Gaelic, to be sure How can a et on in the world that wants Gaelic?” ”But do not they thelish?” ”O yes,”

he said, ”but what does that signify? What is the use of English in Gairloch?” The potatoes, with a little ground salt, and er as sauce, ate reretted that he had no fish to offer us; but a tract of rough weather had kept him from sea, and he had just exhausted his previous supply; and as for bread, he had used up the last of his grain crop a little after Christ, with his faet them, ever since

Thirty years have now passed since I shared in the Highlander's eveningthe first twenty of these, the use of the potatoe--unknown in the Highlands a century before--greatly increased I have been told by randfather, that about the year 1740, when he was a boy of about eight or nine years of age, the head-gardener at Balnagown Castle used, in his occasional visits to Croreat rarities, some three or four potatoes; and that it was not until some fifteen or twenty years after this time that he saw potatoes reared in fields in any part of the Northern Highlands

But, once fairly ereater breadth of thehlands, in especial, the use of these roots increased from the year 1801 to the year 1846 nearly a hundredfold, and cath to form, as in Ireland, not merely the staple, but in some localities almost the only food of the people; and when destroyed by disease in the latter year, fahlands A writer in the _Witness_, whose letter had the effect of bringing that respectable paper under the eye of Mr Punch, represented the Irish fament on the Maynooth Endowment; while another writer, a member of the Peace association--whose letter did not find its way into the _Witness_, though it reached the editor--challenged the decision on the ground that the Scotch Highlanders, ere greatly opposed to Maynooth, suffered from the infliction nearly as much as the Irish themselves, and that the offence punished hlanders and Irish had been guilty in common _He_, however, had found out, he said, what the crihland fareat homicidal efficiency as soldiers in the wars of the empire--an efficiency which, as he truly remarked, was almost equally characteristic of both nations For my own part, I have been unable hitherto to see the steps which conduct to such profound conclusions; and a Providence who co nature, does occasionally get angry with hi his faculties, he sinks to a level lower than his own, and becomes content, like sole root

There are two periods favourable to observation--an early and a late one A fresh eye detects external traits and peculiarities a a people, seen for the first time, which disappear as they become familiar; but it is not until after repeated opportunities of study, and a prolonged acquaintanceshi+p, that internal characteristics and conditions begin to be rightly known During the first fortnight of my residence in this ree by certain peculiarities of manner and appearance in the inhabitants Dr Johnson re the people of the Hebrides than in England: I was now struck by a sihlanders of Western Ross; five-sixths of the grown e between five feet seven and five feet nine inches in height, and either tall or short hlanders of the eastern coast were, on the contrary, at that period, ly diht be seen in the congregations of the parish churches removed by but a few miles, there were marked differences in this respect between the people of contiguous districts--certain tracts of plain or valley producing larger races than others I was inclined to believe at the tihlanders of the west coast were a less hlanders of the east: I at least found corresponding inequalities ahland faies, blended the Norman and Saxon with the Celtic blood; and as the unequally-sized Highland race bordered on that Scandinavian one which fringes the greater part of the eastern coast of Scotland, I inferred that there had been a si _theraphic Map of the British Islands, the difference which I at this time but inferred, indicated by a different shade of colour, and a different nahlanders of the east coast Kombst terms ”Scandinavian-Gaelic;” those of the west, ”Gaelic-Scandinavian-Gaelic,”--names indicative, of course, of the proportions in which he holds that they possess the Celtic blood