SKYE,
one morning while the day was still young. The shores were circled about with patches of grain and potatoes and many cottages; and Skye, as we first saw it, seemed fair and fertile after the rocks of Harris. Its people are little better off, however. It was here, about Uig, on the estates of Captain Fraser, that crofters rebelled in 1884 as those of Lewis are rebelling to-day. Their rents in many cases have been reduced, their arrears cancelled. But landlords as they exist, or crofters, must go before there can be more than negative improvement in the islands.
DOING SKYE.
When we were rowed to the shore the landlord of the Uig Inn stood posing as modern warden of the brand-new round tower on the hill-top. He took our knapsacks, and set us on the way to the Quiraing.
A steep climb up a wooded corrie brought us to the moors, the long purple distances unbroken save for the black lines marking where the peat had been cut, and the black mounds where the cuttings had been piled at intervals along the road. Once we passed men and women loading a cart with them. Once we saw a rude shepherd's hut, on a little hillock, surrounded by sheep. And in the long walk, that was all! When we started across the moorland the sun shone and the morning was hot. When suddenly the moorland came to an end and gave way to the tall jagged rocks of the Quiraing, the sky was all gray and the mist fell fast behind us. We left the road for a foot-path, and at once lost our way. We scrambled over rocks, slipped up and down soft spongy hills, jumped streams, and skirted lochs, J—— stopping in the most impossible places to make notes. We were now ankle-deep in mud, now knee-high in wet grass and heather. The guide-book says the Quiraing cannot be described; I am sure I cannot describe it, for the simple reason that I did not see it. At first I was too much taken up in trying not to kill myself; when the climbing was a little less dangerous and I looked about me, there was nothing to be seen. The mist had hidden the top of the rocks and was rolling down fast towards us. J—— was very anxiously looking at the guide-book and at the sea. Suddenly he seized me and pulled me, panting, behind him, over bowlders, through bracken, down a hill as steep as a house, in our hurry starting avalanches of stones. Then he jumped into the bed of a stream, down which we rushed, up to our knees in water, to the loch at the bottom. It was a mad flight. But by this time we could not see our hands before us.
"I am half dead," said I.
"If you don't come on we'll both be dead," said J——.
And just then, more by good luck than good management, we found ourselves on a road.
J—— had studied the lay of the land before our start. He knew this must be the road by the coast, twice as long on its way to Uig as that over which we had come; but there was no finding our way back in the mist. It fell from above, it rose from the ground, it closed about us on all sides. In a few minutes cloaks and hoods were soaked. We tried to be as indifferent as the Highlomaniac who pretends he likes this sort of thing. We sat on a stone by the way-side to eat the few sandwiches we had brought with us, and declared it an excellent joke. We walked across a dripping field as calmly as if it had been dry land, so that we might not come face to face with a monstrous bull which kept our path. And when the road came out close to the sea, and the mist turned into a driving rain, J—— even pulled out his guide-book and on its back made mysterious scrawls, which he said represented Duntulm Castle, a gray ruin on a high cliff, looking seaward.
There were by the road many groups of huts black, soaked, chimneyless; always near them a large manse and sometimes a larger school-house, which the people must maintain if they starve for it. Women with hunger on their faces looked after us. Children with old brown bags tied about their waists for all clothing stood at the doors to watch, but not one smiled at the sight. And yet we must have been funny! And the villages were silent as the moorland. There was not a voice to be heard. The women to whom we spoke shook their heads; "No English," was their only answer. The one person we found who could talk it was a man, and he had so many gutturals we could scarce understand him.
Near Duntulm Castle was a shooting-lodge; on the water a steam-yacht lay at anchor. The slave-driver is found for at least six weeks in the midst of his slaves.
We arrived at the inn about three in the afternoon, drenched and weary. A room was ready for us, a bright fire burning on the hearth. They always expected people to come home wet, the landlord's daughter said. She carried off our wet clothes; she lent me a dress; she brought us hot whiskey and water. One must be thoroughly tired to know what comfort means.
We had our tea with two English maiden ladies of the species one meets in Swiss and Italian pensions. We sat in a well-warmed room at a well-spread table. In the black, smoky huts half-starved men, women, and children were eating dry oatmeal; a few, perhaps, drinking tea with it. This is the extravagance with which the crofters have been reproached. They buy, or rather go into debt for, tea and sugar as well as meal, and therefore their landlords think them prosperous. They have never been so well off before, the Commissioners were told; once they lived on shell-fish throughout the summer. Yes, it was true, a minister of Snizort admitted, they did drink tea. But the people have no milk, now pasture-land has been taken from them. The landlord needed it for his large sheep farms and deer forests. I suppose they should go back to the shell-fish as of old. If they have food to eat, why complain of its quality? If this be so, if crofters of to-day, compared to their ancestors, live in luxury, then has the time indeed come when something should be done for them. Who will call them lazy or indifferent who has considered what the life of the Islander has been for generations? The wonder is that he has energy enough to keep on living.
We went the next day to