THE SPAR-CAVE
During my earlier visits to Skye, the Admiralty survey of the surrounding seas and coasts was in progress, under the direction of Captain Wood, R.N. He used to be a welcome guest at Kilbride, and he sometimes took the house party on board his gunboat for a sail down Loch Slapin. On one of these occasions we visited the Spar Cave, and, with the help of the sailors and Bengal lights, we saw that famous cavern more completely than perhaps it had ever been seen before. But its glory was gone. A couple of generations of Sassenach tourists, aided by the hammers, candles, and torches of ignorant Celts, had defaced the place beyond belief, shorn it of the beauty of its white crystalline pillars, and left it mangled and smoke-streaked. In the course of centuries, if left undisturbed, ‘Nature, softening and concealing, and busy with a hand of healing,’ would doubtless repair the damage. But the ruthless iconoclast should in the meantime be debarred access to the grotto, until the ‘sweet benefit of time’ has renewed the former glories of the place.
We went on to Loch Scavaig, landed at the head of that gloomy fjord, and walked over to Coruisk. I have often been there since, but have never a second time witnessed a sight which was provided for us by the tars of the gunboat. As everybody knows, who has been to this most sombre of Scottish lakes, the declivities around the water are dotted over with boulders of all sizes, left there by the glacier which once filled the basin of Loch Coruisk and passed down Loch Scavaig out to sea. Some of these blocks of stone stand perched in the most perilous positions, on steep slopes and on the edge of cliffs, whence from a little distance it seems as if a mere touch would suffice to send them bounding into the lake below. Their number and situation evidently interested the sailors, who, as a change from their usual boating and sounding for the marine survey, dashed off for the nearest hill, along the profile of which the boulders lay in especial abundance. We had not noticed at first in which direction the men moved, when our attention was attracted by a thundering noise from the hill in question, followed by a loud splash in the lake below. The tars had found some of the perched blocks capable of being moved, and no doubt they dislodged as many as they could. But, fortunately for the sake of geologists, they could not succeed with the larger and finer boulders, which still remain where the melting ice allowed them to rest.
NIGHT AT LOCH SCAVAIG
In recent years, while the ‘Aster’ has been cruising along these coasts, it has several times anchored for the night at the head of Loch Scavaig, and a more impressive anchorage can hardly be imagined. The precipices on either side plunge almost perpendicularly into the water, and mount upwards, crag over crag, into the far black, splintered crests and pinnacles that surround Coruisk. The tints of sunset flame along these peaks, while the evening shadows creep slowly upwards, and deepen into such darkness below that one cannot tell where land and water meet. The sea, though tidal, may be motionless as the calmest lake. The stillness is only broken by the hoarse roar of the torrents that tumble in white cascades through rifts in the black rocks. In the long summer nights the northern sky remains full of light, and even at midnight the striking outlines of the surrounding mountains stand out sharp and clear against it. Now and then a sea-gull may circle slowly past and disappear in the gloom, but for the most part there is little sign of life at these hours.
CHAPTER XV.
Influence of Topography on the people of Scotland. Distribution and ancient antagonism of Celt and Saxon. Caithness and its grin. Legends and place-names. Popular explanation of boulders. Cliff-portraits. Fairy-stones and supposed human footprints. Imitative forms of flint. Scottish climate and its influence on the people. Indifference of the Highlander to rain. ‘Dry rain.’ Wind in Scotland. Shakespeare on the climate of Morayland. Influence of environment on the Highlander.
It is impossible to wander with attentive eyes over Scotland without recognising how powerfully the topography of the country has controlled the distribution of the races that have successively peopled it, and how seriously the combined influences of topography and climate have come to affect the national temperament and imagination. As I have elsewhere discussed this subject, I will only refer briefly to it here as an appropriate ending to these chapters of a geologist’s reminiscences.
INFLUENCE OF TOPOGRAPHY