Letters From High Latitudes | Page 6

Marquess of Dufferin, The
born to wield, And shake alike the senate
and the field;"
who baffled Walpole in the cabinet, and conquered with Marlborough
at Ramilies, Oudenarde, and Malplaquet;-- and, last,--how at that
present moment, even while we were speaking, the heir to all these
noble reminiscences, the young chief of this princely line, had already
won, at the age of twenty-nine, by the manly vigour of his intellect and
his hereditary independence of character, the confidence of his
fellow-countrymen, and a seat at the council board of his sovereign.
Having thus duly indoctrinated Sigurdr with the Sagas of the family, as
soon as we had crossed the lake I took him up to the Castle, and acted
cicerone to its pictures and heirlooms,--the gleaming stands of muskets,
whose fire wrought such fatal ruin at Culloden;--the portrait of the
beautiful Irish girl, twice a Duchess, whom the cunning artist has
painted with a sunflower that turns FROM the sun to look at
her;--Gillespie Grumach himself, as grim and sinister-looking as in
life.--the trumpets to carry the voice from the hall door to
Dunnaquaich;--the fair beech avenues, planted by the old Marquis, now
looking with their smooth grey boles, and overhanging branches, like
the cloisters of an abbey the vale of Esechasan, to which, on the
evening before his execution, the Earl wrote such touching verses; the
quaint old kitchen-garden; the ruins of the ancient Castle, where worthy
Major Dalgetty is said to have passed such uncom- fortable
moments;--the Celtic cross from lone Iona:--all and everything I
showed off with as much pride and pleasure, I think, as if they had been
my own possessions; and the more so as the Icelander himself
evidently sympathised with such Scald-like gossip.
Having thoroughly overrun the woods and lawns of Inverary, we had a
game of chess, and went to bed pretty well tired.
The next morning, before breakfast, I went off in a boat to Ardkinglass
to see my little cousins; and then returning about twelve, we got a
post-chaise, and crossing the boastful Loch Awe in a ferry-boat,

reached Oban at nightfall. Here I had the satisfaction of finding the
schooner already arrived, and of being joined by the Doctor, just
returned from his fruitless expedition to Holyhead.
LETTER IV.
THROUGH THE SOUNDS--STORNAWAY--THE SETTING UP OF
THE FIGURE-HEAD--FITZ'S FORAY--OH WEEL MAY THE
BOATIE ROW, THAT WINS THE BAIRNS'S BREAD--SIR
PATRICK SPENS JOINS--UP ANCHOR.
Stornaway, Island of Lewis, Hebrides, June 9, 1856.
We reached these Islands of the West the day before yesterday, after a
fine run from Oban.
I had intended taking Staffa and Iona on my way, but it came on so
thick with heavy weather from the south-west, that to have landed on
either island would have been out of the question. So we bore up under
Mull at one in the morning, tore through the Sound at daylight, rounded
Ardnamurchan under a double-reefed mainsail at two P.M., and shot
into the Sound of Skye the same evening, leaving the hills of Moidart
(one of whose "seven naen" was an ancestor of your own), and the jaws
of the hospitable Loch Hourn, reddening in the stormy sunset.
At Kylakin we were obliged to bring up for the night; but getting under
weigh again at daylight, we took a fair wind with us along the east
coast of Skye, passed Raasa and Rona, and so across the Minch to
Stornaway.
Stornaway is a little fishing-town with a beautiful harbour, from out of
which was sailing, as we entered, a fleet of herring-boats, their brown
sails gleaming like gold against the dark angry water as they fluttered
out to sea, unmindful of the leaden clouds banked up along the west,
and all the symptoms of an approaching gale. The next morning it was
upon us; but brought up as we were under the lea of a high rock, the
tempest tore harmlessly over our heads, and left us at liberty to make
the final preparations for departure.

Fitz, whose talents for discerning where the vegetables, fowls, and
pretty ladies of a place were to be found, I had already had occasion to
admire, went ashore to forage; while I remained on board to
superintend the fixing of our sacred figure-head--executed in bronze by
Marochetti-- and brought along with me by rail, still warm from the
furnace.
For the performance of this solemnity I luckily possessed a functionary
equal to the occasion, in the shape of the second cook. Originally a
guardsman, he had beaten his sword into a chisel, and become
carpenter; subsequently conceiving a passion for the sea, he turned his
attention to the mysteries of the kitchen, and now sails with me in the
alternate exercise of his two last professions. This individual, thus
happily combining the chivalry inherent in the profession of arms with
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