So exactly do the Faroe Islands reproduce the scenery of the Inner Hebrides that it is difficult at first to believe that we are not somehow back again under the cliffs of Skye or Mull. Green declivities descend from the interior of these islands to the edge of the cliffs, which then plunge sheer down into the sea. The precipices are built up of nearly level sheets of brown basalt, edged with narrow strips of grassy herbage, cleft into chasms, and eaten out into tunnels and caves by the restless surge. From the horizontal bars of the great cliffs, the eye ranges upward to the brightly verdant slopes above, and marks dark-brown ribs of rock running parallel with these bars in a series of terraces away up to the crests of the ridges and hills. Only in the little bays, which here and there indent the ranges of formidable precipice, does one catch sight of evidence of human occupation.
But, while the topography is so similar, the population presents a singular contrast to that of the Western Isles of Scotland. Everywhere it gives proofs of energy, industry, comfort, cleanliness, and civilisation. Each little community at the head of its cliff-girt inlet has built a hamlet of neat wooden houses, which, with their painted doors, trim windows, and clean white curtains, show that the inhabitants are well-to-do, and not without some of the luxuries of life. Fishing is the main industry, and all the inhabitants are more or less engaged in it—men, women, and children. The men go to sea and bring back the fish. The women look after it as it lies drying in the sun, cover it with tarpaulin if rain comes, and stack it up ready for export. There is usually a chief man or merchant who takes general charge of the trade, and arranges for the steamboats to come and carry off the piles of fish.
FAROES AND WESTERN ISLES
To return from such a scene to the west of Skye cannot but fill the heart with sadness as one passes inlet after inlet, either with no inhabitants or with only a handful of them, housed in squalid, miserable, dirty huts, too poor to provide themselves with good seagoing boats, too timid or too lazy and unenterprising to gather the harvest of the sea, as the men do in Faroe, but content to live as their fathers have done, save that now they have become possessed by a greed for more land, which, when they get it, they will doubtless cultivate in the same unskilful and slovenly fashion. In the herring fishing, which is the chief industry among the Western Isles, the boats come largely from the east side of Scotland, and are manned by the stalwart and active seamen of the shores of the Moray Firth and other parts of the coast.
The subject of fish and fishing recalls some recollections of angling experiences on the mainland. In boyhood I used sometimes to assist at a ‘burning o’ the water,’ when all the shepherds, poachers, and idlers of the district assembled to take part in the fun and excitement of spearing salmon or grilse. The Gala Water on these nights presented a singularly picturesque sight—the lurid glare and smoke of the torches, the cautious movements of the men in the river, the shouts of those on the bank as a successful ‘leister,’ that had transfixed a fish, was handed over to them, and the chorus of shepherds’ dogs that were among the most active and excited of the spectators. The account of the night exploits at Charlie’s Hope in Guy Mannering is as truthful as it is graphic.
Among the lakes of Sutherland there is one not far from Beinn Griam which, an enthusiastic angler assured me, consists of ‘three parts of fish and one water.’ Another sporting friend, not to be outdone, lauded the extraordinary abundance of game in his native island. ‘There is a stream there,’ he would say, ‘once so stocked with trout that I never failed to fill a big basket. But now the feathered game has become so abundant that though the fish are as plentiful as ever, I can hardly get any, for almost every time I cast my line I hook a grouse in the air.’
A former well-known witty editor of an Edinburgh newspaper was fond of escaping to the banks of the Yarrow or the Ettrick for a few days’ fishing. One Monday morning he was accosted by the clergyman who had been preaching the day before, and who, though a stranger to him, asked a number of questions about his sport. The editor replied civilly to the battery of queries, and at last began to catechise in his turn.
A FISHER OF MEN
‘And are you too a fisher?’ he asked.
‘Oh no, I have no time for angling. You see I am a fisher of men.’