Part 8

Next morning, in the soft sky was the wild outline of the Cuchullins, with which we were again to make acquaintance. Somehow these hills never weary, you never become familiar with them, intimacy can no more stale them than it could the beauty of Cleopatra. From the hotel door I regarded them with as much interest as when, from the deck of the steamer off Ardnamurchan ten years ago, I first beheld them with their clouds on the horizon. While at breakfast in the public room, farmer and drover dropped in--the more fiery-throated drinking pale ale instead of tea. After breakfast we were again in the dog-cart driving leisurely toward Sligachan--the wonderful mountains beyond gradually losing tenderness of morning hue and growing worn and hoary, standing with sharper edges against the light, becoming rough with rocky knob and buttress, and grayly wrinkled with ravines. When we reached the inn we found it full of company, bells continually jangling, half a dozen machines at the door, and a party of gentlemen in knickerbockers starting with rods and fishing-baskets. Here we returned the dog-cart to the landlord, and began to address ourselves to the desolate glen stretching between the inn and Camasunary.

[Sidenote: Glen Sligachan.]

In Glen Sligachan, although you lose sight of the Cuchullins proper, you are surrounded by their outlying and far-radiating spurs. The glen is some eight miles in length, and is wild and desolate beyond conception. Walking along, too, the reticulations of the hills are picked out with that pale greenish tint, which I had noted as characteristic of the hills seen from Lord Macdonald's deer forest, and which gives one the idea of the overflow of chemical fluids, of metallic corrosions and discolorations. There is no proper path, and you walk in the loose debris of torrents; and in Glen Sligachan, as in many other parts of Skye, the scenery curiously repels you, and drives you in on yourself. You have a quickened sense of your own individuality. The enormous bulks, their gradual recedings to invisible crests, their utter movelessness, their austere silence, daunt you. You are conscious of their presence, and you hardly care to speak lest you be overheard. You can't laugh. You would not crack a joke for the world. Glen Sligachan would be the place to do a little bit of self-examination in. There you would have a sense of your own meannesses, selfishnesses, paltry evasions of truth and duty, and find out what a shabby fellow you at heart are--and looking up to your silent father-confessors, you would find no mercy in their grim faces. I do not know what effect mountains have on the people who live habitually amongst them, but the stranger they make serious and grave at heart. Through this glen we trudged silently enough, and when two-thirds of the distance had been accomplished, it was with a feeling of relief that a lake was descried ahead. The sight of anything mobile, of an element that could glitter and dimple and dance, took away from the sense of the stony eternities, gray and wrinkled as with the traces of long-forgotten passion, listening for ever, dumb for ever. After rounding the lake, which plashed merrily on its margin, and clambering over a long waste of boulder, we saw as we ascended a low flank of Blaavin, the Bay of Camasunary, the house, and the very boat which M'Ian had borrowed on the day we went to visit Loch Coruisk, below us. The tobacco-less man was nowhere visible, and I marvelled whether his messenger had yet returned from Broadford.

[Sidenote: Kilmaree.]

When we got to the top of the hill we had to descend the slope to Kilmaree; and as on my return from Loch Coruisk I had come down pleasantly under the guidance of M'Ian, I fancied, naturally enough, that I could act as guide on the present occasion. But there is a knack in descending hills as there is in everything else. First of all, I lost the narrow footpath at the top; then as we were bound to reach Loch Eishart, and as Loch Eishart lay below us distinctly visible, I led directly for it; but somehow we were getting continually on the wrong bank of a pestilent stream, which, through chasm and ravine, found its way to the sea by apparently the most circuitous of courses. This stream we forded a dozen times at the least, and sometimes in imminent danger of a ducking. It was now late in the afternoon, and the weather had changed. The tops of the hills began to be lost in mist, and long lines of sea fog to creep along the lower grounds. There was at intervals a slow drizzle of rain. Fetching a cunning circuit, as I supposed, we found the inevitable stream again in our front, and got across it with difficulty--happily for the last time. After we had proceeded about a hundred yards we came upon the lost pathway, and in fifteen minutes thereafter we were standing upon the shore of the Loch watching the flying scud of Atlantic mist, and the green waves rolling underneath with their white caps on.

[Sidenote: The wood-choppers.]

The question now arose--By what means could we reach Mr M'Ian? There was no ferry at Kilmaree, but sundry boats were drawn up on the shore, and a couple were bobbing on the restless water at the stony pier. There were the boats certainly enough, but where were the boatmen? In the neighbourhood men could surely be obtained who, for a consideration, would take us across. We directed our steps to the lodge at Kilmaree, which seemed untenanted, and after some little trouble penetrated into the region of the offices and outhouses. Here we found a couple of men chopping sticks, and to them my companion--who as a man of business and learned in the law was the spokesman on such occasions--addressed himself. "You want to go over to Mr M'Ian's to-night?" said the elder, desisting from his task, and standing up with his axe in his hand. "Yes, we are particularly anxious to get across. Can you take us?" "I don't know; you see we are no ferrymen, an' if we take you across we must leave our work." "Of course you must; but we'll pay you for your trouble." Here the two men exchanged a sentence or two of Gaelic, and then the elder wood-chopper asked, "Do you know Mr M'Ian?" "Oh, yes, we know him very well." "Does he expect you this night?" "No; but we are anxious to see him, and he will be glad to see us." "I'm no sure we can take you across," said the man hesitatingly; "you see the master is from home, an' the wind is rising, an' we're no ferrymen, an' we'll need to borrow a boat, an'"--here he hesitated still more--"it would cost you something." "Of course it will. What will you expect." "Wad you think ten shillings too much?" "No, we'll give you ten shillings," said Fellowes, clinching the bargain. "And," said I, coming in like a swift charge of lancers on a half-disorganised battalion, and making victory complete, "we'll give you a glass of spirits at the house, too, when you get across." The men then threw down their axes, put on their jackets, which hung on nails on the walls, and talking busily in Gaelic, led the way to the little stony pier where the boats were moored.

[Sidenote: On Loch Eishart.]

"There's a gale rising," said one of the men, as he pulled in a boat to the pier by a rope, "an' it'll no be easy taking you across, and still harder to get back ourselves." As, however, to this expression of opinion we made no response, the men busied themselves with getting the boat to rights, testing the rollock pins, rolling in stones for ballast, examining the sail and ropes, and such like matters. In a short time we took our seats, and then the men pulled slowly out to sea in the opposite direction from Mr M'Ian's house, in order to catch the wind, which was blowing freshly inland. The course of the boat was then changed, the oars shipped, the sail shaken out, and away we went through the green seas with long lurches, the foam gathering up high at the bows, hissing along the sides, and forming a long white wake behind. The elder man sat with the rope of the sail in his hand, and taking a shrewd squint at the weather at intervals. When not so engaged, he was disposed to be talkative. "He's a fine gentleman, Mr M'Ian, a vera fine gentleman; an' vera good to the poor." "I understand," I said, "that he is the most generous of mankind." "He is that; he never lets a poor man go past his door without a meal. Maybe, sir, ye'll be a friend o' his?" "Yes, both of us are friends of his, and friends of his son's too." "Maybe ye'll be a relation of his?--he has many relations in the south country." "No," I said, "no relation, only a friend. Do you smoke?" "Oh, yes, but I have forgot my spleuchan." "I can provide you with tobacco," I said, and so when his pipe was lighted he became silent.

[Sidenote: Mr M'Ian and the boatmen.]

We were now two-thirds across, and the white watery mists hung low on the familiar coast as we approached. Gradually the well-known objects became defined in the evening light--the clumps of birch-wood, the huts seated on the shore, the house, the cliffs behind on which the clouds lay half-way down. When we drew near the stony quay we noticed that we were the subjects of considerable speculation. It was but seldom that a boat stood across from the Strathaird coast, and by our glass we could see a group of the men-servants standing at the corner of the black kitchen watching our movements, and Mr M'Ian himself coming out with his telescope. When the keel grated on the pebbles we got out. "Now, my men," said Fellowes, "come up to the house and have your promised glass of spirits!" To our astonishment the men declined; they could not wait, they were going back immediately. "But you must come," said my companion, who acted as purser, "for before I can pay you I must get Mr M'Ian to change me a sovereign. Come along." We climbed up to the house, and were welcomed by Mr M'Ian, father and son, in the ivy-covered porch. "By the way," said Fellowes, "I wish you to change me a sovereign, as we have ten shillings to pay these men." "Did the scoundrels charge that sum for bringing you over? It's extortion; five shillings is quite enough. Let me go and speak to them." "But," remonstrated Fellowes, "we don't consider the charge immoderate: we made the bargain with them: and so anxious were we to be here that we would willingly have paid them double." "Don't talk to me," cried M'Ian, as he put on his hat and seized his stick. "Why, you rascals, did you charge these gentlemen ten shillings for taking them across the Loch? You know you are well enough paid if you get half." "Sir," said the elder man respectfully, while both touched their bonnets, "we'll just take what you please; just anything you like, Mr M'Ian." "Don't you see the mischief you do and the discredit you bring on the country by this kind of thing? Every summer the big lying blackguard _Times_ is crammed with complaints of tourists who have been cheated by you and the like of you--although I don't believe half the stories. These fools"--here the old gentleman made reference to us by a rapid backward chuck of his thumb--"may go home to the south and write to the newspapers about you." "The bargain the gentlemen made was ten shillings," said the man, "but if you think we have asked too much we'll take six. But it's for your sake we'll take it, not for theirs." "They're honest fellows these," cried the old gentleman, as he poured the coins into the palm of the elder man; "Alick, bring them out a dram." The dram, prefaced by a word or two of Gaelic, to which Mr M'Ian nodded, was duly swallowed, and the men, touching their bonnets, descended to their boat. The old gentleman led the way into the house, and we had no sooner reached the porch than my companion remembered that he had left something, and ran down to fetch it. He returned in a little while, and in the course of the evening he gave me to understand that he had seen the boatmen, and fully implemented his promise.

[Sidenote: Lamb-branding.]

The wind had changed during the night, and next morning broke forth gloriously--not a speck of vapour on the Cuchullins; the long stretch of Strathaird wonderfully distinct; the Loch bright in sunlight. When we got down to breakfast we found Mr M'Ian alone. His son, he said, had been on the hill since four o'clock in the morning gathering the lambs together, and that about noon he and his assistants would be branding them at the fank. When breakfast was over,--Fellowes, having letters to write, remained in-doors,--I and the old gentleman went out. We went up the glen, and as we drew near the fank we saw a number of men standing about, their plaids thrown on the turfen walls, with sheep-dogs couched thereupon; a thick column of peat-smoke rising up, smelt easily at the distance of half a mile; no sheep were visible, but the air was filled with bleatings,--undulating with the clear plaintive trebles of innumerable ewes, and the hoarser _baa_ of tups. When we arrived we found the narrow chambers and compartments at one end of the fank crowded with lambs, so closely wedged together that they could hardly move, and between these chambers and compartments temporary barriers erected, so that no animal could pass from one to the other. The shepherds must have had severe work of it that morning. It was as yet only eleven o'clock, and since early dawn they and their dogs had coursed over an area of ten miles, sweeping every hill face, visiting every glen, and driving down rills of sheep toward this central spot. Having got the animals down, the business of assortment began. The most perfect ewes--destined to be the mothers of the next brood of lambs on the farm--were placed in one chamber; the second best, whose fate it was to be sold at Inverness, were placed in a congeries of compartments, the one opening into the other; the inferior qualities--_shots_, as they are technically called--occupied a place by themselves: these also to be sold at Inverness, but at lower prices than the others. The fank is a large square enclosure; the compartments into which the bleating flocks were huddled occupied about one half of the walled-in space, the remainder being perfectly vacant. One of the compartments opened into this space, but a temporary barrier prevented all egress. Just at the mouth of this barrier we could see the white ashes and the dull orange glow of the peat-fire in which some half-dozen branding irons were heating. When everything was prepared two or three men entered into this open space. One took his seat on a large smooth stone by the side of the peat-fire, a second vaulted into the struggling mass of heads and fleeces, a third opened the barrier slightly, lugged out a struggling lamb by the horns, and consigned it to the care of the man seated on the smooth stone. This worthy got the animal dexterously between his legs, so that it was unable to struggle, laid its head down on his thigh, seized from the orange glow of the smouldering peat-fire one of the red-hot heating irons, and with a hiss, and a slight curl of smoke, drew it in a diagonal direction across its nose. Before the animal was sufficiently branded the iron had to be applied twice or thrice. It was then released, and trotted bleating into the open space, perhaps making a curious bound on the way as if in bravado, or shaking its head hurriedly as if snuff had been thrown into its eyes. All day this branding goes on. The peat-fire is replenished when needed; another man takes his seat on the smooth stone; by two o'clock a string of women bring up dinner from the house, and all the while, young M'Ian sits on the turfen wall, note-book in hand, setting down the number of the lambs and their respective qualities. Every farmer has his own peculiar brand, and by it he can identify a member of his stock if it should go astray. The brand is to the farmer what a trade mark is to a manufacturer. These brands are familiar to the drovers even as the brands of wine and cigars are familiar to the connoisseurs in these articles. The operation looks a cruel one, but it is not perfectly clear that the sheep suffer much under it. While under the iron they are perfectly quiet,--they neither bleat nor struggle, and when they get off they make no sign of discomfort save the high bound or the restless shake of the head already mentioned--if indeed these are signs of discomfort--a conclusion which no sheep farmer will in anywise allow. In a minute or so they are cropping herbage in the open space of the fank, or if the day is warm, lying down in the cool shadows of the walls as composedly as if nothing had happened.

Leaning against the fank walls we looked on for about an hour, by which time a couple of hundred lambs had been branded, and then we went up the glen to inspect a mare and foal of which Mr M'Ian was specially proud. Returning in the direction of the house, the old gentleman pointed out what trenching had been done, what walls had been built in my absence, and showed me on the other side of the stream what brushwood he meant to clear next spring for potatoes, what fields he would give to the people for their crops, what fields he would reserve for his own use. Flowing on in this way with scheme and petty detail of farm work, he suddenly turned round on me with a queer look in his face. "Isn't it odd that a fellow like me, standing on the brink of the grave, should go pottering about day after day thinking of turnips and oats, tups and ewes, cows and foals? The chances are that the oats I sow I shall never live to reap--that I shall be gone before the blossom comes on my potatoes."

[Sidenote: Mr M'Ian on death.]

The strangeness of it had often struck me before, but I said nothing.

"I suppose it is best that I should take an interest in these things," went on the old gentleman. "Death is so near me that I can hear him as if it were through a crazy partition. I know he is there. I can hear him moving about continually. My interest in the farm is the partition that divides us. If it were away I should be with him face to face."

Mr M'Ian was perhaps the oldest man in the island, and he did not dislike talking about his advanced age. A man at fifty-five, perhaps, wishes to be considered younger than he really is. The man above ninety has outlived that vanity. He is usually as proud of the years he has numbered as the commander of the battles he has won, or the millionaire of the wealth he has acquired. In respect of his great age, such a one is singular amongst his fellows. After a little pause Mr M'Ian flowed on:

"I remember very well the night the century came in. My regiment was then lying in the town of Galway in Ireland. We were all at supper that evening at the quarters of Major M'Manus, our commanding officer. Very merry we were, singing songs and toasting the belles we knew. Well, when twelve o'clock struck the major rose and proposed in a flowing bowl the health of the stranger--the nineteenth century--coupled with the hope that it would be a better century than the other. I'm not sure that it has been a whit better, so far at least as it has gone. For thirty years I have been the sole survivor of that merry table."

"Sixty-five years is a long time to look back, Mr M'Ian."

The old gentleman walked on laughing to himself. "What fools men are--doctors especially! I was very ill shortly after with a liver complaint, and was sent to Edinburgh to consult the great doctors and professors there. They told me I was dying; that I had not many months to live. The fools! they are dead, their sons are dead, and here I am, able to go about yet. I suppose they thought that I would take their stuffs."

By this time we had reached the house. Mr M'Ian left his white hat and staff in the porch: he then went to the cupboard and took out a small spirit case in which he kept bitters cunningly compounded. He gave Fellowes and myself--Fellowes had finished his letters by this time--a tiny glassful, took the same amount himself. We then all went out and sat down on a rocky knoll near the house which looked seaward, and talked about Sir John Moore and Wellington till dinner time.

[Sidenote: Departure from Mr M'Ian's.]

We stayed with the M'Ians for a couple of days, and on the third we drove over to Ardvasar to catch the steamer there that afternoon on its way to Portree.

As we drove slowly up the glen, my companion said, "That old gentleman is to my mind worth Blaavin, Coruisk, Glen Sligachan, and all the rest of it. In his own way he is just as picturesque and strange as they are. When he goes, the island will have lost one of its peculiar charms."

"He is a thorough Islesman," said I; "and for him Blaavin forms as appropriate a background as the desert for the Arab, or the prairie for the Pawnee Indian. When he dies it will be like the dying of the last eagle. He is about the end of the old stock. The younger generation of Skyemen will never be like their fathers. They have more general information than their elders, they have fewer prejudices, they are more amenable to advice, much less stubborn and self-willed--but they are by comparison characterless. In a few years, when they will have the island in their own hands, better sheep will be produced I have no doubt, finer qualities of wool will be sent south, grand hotels will be erected here and there--but for all that Skye will have become tame: it will have lost that unpurchaseable something--human character; and will resemble Blaavin shorn of its mist-wreaths."

[Sidenote: Armadale Castle.]