#.»•> X 0>vi. i.d>o. (Alkidi h A SUMMER IN SKYE IN TWO VOLUMES / (^ A SUMMER IN SKYE By ALEXANDER SMITH AUTHOR np "a life DRAMA, ETC. VOLUME I. AT,EXANDER STRAHAN, PUBLISHER 148 STRAND, LONDON 1865 CONTENTS OF VOL. I. EDINBURGH, I STIRLING AND THE NORTH, .... 49 OBAN, 77 SKYE AT LAST, ....... 83 AT MR M'IAN'S, .118 A BASKET OF FRAGMENTS, . 191 THE SECOND SIGHT, . .... 260 IN A SKYE BOTHY, 283 A SUMMER IN SKYE. EDINBURGH. QUMMER has leaped suddenly on Edinburgh like a tiger. The air is still and hot above the houses ; but every now and then a breath of east wind startles you through the warm sun- shine— like a sudden sarcasm felt through a strain of flattery—and passes on detested of every organ- ism. But, with this exception, the atmosphere is so close, so laden with a body of heat, that a thunderstorm would be almost welcomed as a re- lief. Edinburgh, on her crags, held high towards the sun —too distant the sea to send cool breezes to street and square— is at this moment an un- comfortable dwelling-place. Beautiful as ever, of course—for nothing can be finer than the ridge /^OL. I. A —; A SUMMER IN SKYE. of the Old Town etched on hot summer azure but close, breathless, suffocating. Great volumes of white smoke surge out of the railway station ; great choking puffs of dust issue from the houses and shops that are being gutted in Princes Street. The Castle rock is gray ; the trees are of a dingy " olive ; languid swells," arm-in-arm, promenade uneasily the heated pavement ; water-carts every- where dispense their treasures ; and the only human being really to be envied in the city is the small boy who, with trousers tucked up, and un- heeding of maternal vengeance, marches coolly in the fringe of the ambulating shower-bath. Oh for one hour of heavy rain ! Thereafter would the heavens wear a clear and tender, instead of a dim and sultry hue. Then would the Castle rock brighten in colour, and the trees and grassy slopes doff their dingy olives for the emeralds of April. Then would the streets be cooled, and the dust be allayed. Then would the belts of city verdure, refreshed, pour forth gratitude in balmy smells and Fife —low-lying across the Forth—break from its hot neutral tint into the greens, purples, and yellows that of right belong to it. But rain won't JOY OF VACATION. come ; and for weeks, perhaps, there will be nothing but hot sun above, and hot street beneath; and for the respiration of poor human lungs an atmosphere of heated dust, tempered with east wind. Moreover, one is tired and jaded. The whole man, body and soul, like sweet bells jangled, out of tune, and harsh, is fagged with work, eaten up of impatience, and haunted with visions of vacation. One " babbles o' green fields," like a very Fal- staff ; and the poor tired ears hum with sea-music like a couple of sea-shells. At last it comes, the 1st of August, and then—like an arrow from a Tartar's bow, like a bird from its cage, like a lover to his mistress—one is off; and before the wild scar- lets of sunset die on the northern sea, one is in the silence of the hills, those eternal sun-dials that tell the hours to the shepherd, and in one's nostrils is the smell of peat-reek, and in one's throat the flavour of usquebaugh. Then come long floating summer days, so silent the wilderness, that one can hear one's heart beat ; then come long silent nights, the waves heard upon the shore, although tJiat is a mile away, in which one snatches the " fearful joy" A SUMMER IN SKYE. of a ghost stor}^, told by shepherd or fisher, who beheves in it as in his own existence. Then one beholds sunset, not through the smoked glass of towns, but gloriously through the clearness of en- kindled air. Then one makes acquaintance with sunrise, which to the dweller in a city, who con- forms to the usual proprieties, is about the rarest of this world's sights. Mr De Quincey maintains, in one of his essays, that dinner—dinner about seven in the evening, for which one dresses, which creeps on with multitudinous courses and entrees, which, so far from being a gross satisfaction of appetite, is a feast noble, graceful, adorned with the pre- sence and smile of beauty, and which, from the very stateliness of its progress, gives op- portunities for conversation and the encounter of polished minds—saves over-wrought London from insanity. This is no mere humorous exag- geration, but a very truth ; and what dinner is to the day the Highlands are to the year. Away in the north, amid its green or stony silences, jaded hand and brain find repose—repose, the depth and intensity of which the idler can IDLENESS IN THE NORTH. 5 never know. In that blessed idleness you become in a strange way acquainted with yourself; for in the world you are too constantly occupied to spend much time in your own company. You live abroad all day, as it were, and only come home to sleep. Away in the north you have nothing else to do, and cannot quite help yourself; and conscience, who has kept open a watchful eye, although her lips have been sealed these many months, gets disagreeably communicative, and tells her mind pretty freely about certain little shabby selfish- nesses and unmanly violences of temper, which you had quietly consigned — like a document which you were for ever done with — to the waste-basket of forgetfulness. And the quiet, the silence, the rest, is not only good for the soul, it is good for the body too. You flourish like a flower in the open air ; the hurried pulse beats a wholesome measure; evil dreams roll off your slumbers ; indigestion dies. During your two months' vacation, you amass a fund of superfluous health, and can draw on it during the ten months that succeed. And in going to the north, and wandering about the north, it is best to take every- A SUMMER IN SKYE. thing quietly and in moderation. It is better to read one good book leisurely, lingering over the finer passages, returning frequently on an exquisite sentence, closing the volume, now and then, to run down in your own mind a new thought started by its perusal, than to rush in a swift perfunctory manner through half a library. It is better to sit down to dinner in a moderate frame of mind, to please the palate as well as satisfy the appetite, to educe the sweet juices of meats by sufficient mas- tication, to make your glass of port " a linked sweetness long drawn out," than to bolt everything like a leathern-faced Yankee for whom the cars are waiting, and who fears that before he has had his money's worth, he will be summoned by the railway bell. And shall one, who wishes to extract from the world as much enjoyment as his nature will allow him, treat the Highlands less respect- fully than he will his dinner .'' So at least will not I. My bourne is the island of which Douglas dreamed on the morning of Otterburn ; but even to it I will not unnecessarily hurry, but will look on many places on my way. You have to go to Lon- don ; but unless your business is urgent, you are a ! PREPARATIONS FOR HIGHLAND TRAVEL. 7 fool to go thither like a parcel in the night train and miss York and Peterborough. It is very fine to arrive at majority, and the management of your fortune which has been all the while accumulat- ing for years ; but you do not wish to do so at a sudden leap—to miss the April eyes and April heart of seventeen The Highlands can be enjoyed in the utmost simplicity ; and the best preparations are—money to a moderate extent in one's pocket, a knapsack containing a spare shirt and a toothbrush, and a courage that does not fear to breast the steep of the hill, and to encounter the pelting of a High- land shower. No man knows a country till he has walked through it ; he then tastes the sweets and the bitters of it. He beholds its grand and important points, and all the subtler and concealed beauties that lie out of the beaten track. Then, O reader, in the most glorious of the months, the very crown and summit of the fruitful year, hang- ing in equal poise between summer and autumn, leave London or Edinburgh, or whatever city your lot may happen to be cast in, and accom- pany me on my wanderings. Our course will ! A SUMMER IN SKYE. lead us by ancient battle-fields, by castles stand- ing in hearing of the surge ; by the bases of mighty mountains, along the wanderings of hol- low glens ; and if the weather holds, we may see the keen ridges, of Blaavin and the Cuchullin hills ; listen to a legend old as Ossian, while sit- ting on the broken stair of the castle of Duntulm, beaten for centuries by the salt flake and the wind ; and in the pauses of ghostly talk in the long autumn nights, when the rain is on the hills, we may hear—more wonderful than any legend, carrying you away to misty regions and half-for- gotten times—the music which haunted the Berser- kers of old, the thunder of the northern sea A perfect library of books has been written about Edinburgh.