Letters From High Latitudes | Page 6

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 the skill of the craftsman and the refinement of the artist--to whose person, moreover, a paper cap, white vestments, and the sacrificial knife at his girdle, gave something of a sacerdotal character--I did not consider unfit to raise the ship's guardian image to its appointed place; and after two hours' reverential handiwork, I had the satisfaction of seeing the well-known lovely face, with its golden hair, and smile that might charm all malice from the elements, beaming like a happy omen above our bows.
Shortly afterwards Fitz came alongside, after a most successful foray among the fish-wives. He was sitting in the stern-sheets, up to his knees in vegetables, with seven elderly hens beside him, and a dissipated-looking cock under his arm, with regard to whose qualifications its late