A desire to select the lightest part of the work, however, is not peculiar to the Celtic nature, but comes out, strongly enough, sometimes, in the Lowlands, as was illustrated by the proposal of a quarryman to share the labour with a comrade. ‘If ye ram, Jamie,’ said he, ‘I’ll pech’; that is, if his friend would work the heavy iron sledge-hammer, he himself would give the puff or pant with which the workmen accompany each stroke they make.
The unpunctuality of the railways, the dirtiness of the carriages on branch lines, and the frequent incivility of the officials are only too familiar to all who have to travel much upon the system of at least one of the Scottish companies. A worthy countryman who had come from the north-east side of the kingdom by train to Cowlairs, was told that the next stoppage would be Glasgow. He at once began to get all his little packages ready, and remarked to a fellow-passenger, ‘I’m sailin’ for China this week, but I’m thinkin’ I’m by the warst o’ the journey noo.’
It must be confessed, however, that the railway officials often have their forbearance sorely tested, especially in the large mining districts, where the roughness and violence of the mob of passengers can sometimes hardly be held in check, and where the temptation to retaliate after the same fashion may be difficult to resist. Having also to be on the watch for dishonesty, they are apt to develop a suspiciousness which sometimes, though perhaps needlessly, exasperates the honest traveller. Occasionally their sagacity is scarcely a match for the knavery of a dishonest Scot. Thus, a man, when the ticket collector came round, was fumbling in all his pockets for his ticket, until the official, losing patience, said he would come back for it. When he returned, noticing that the man had the ticket between his lips, he indignantly snatched it away. Whereupon a fellow-passenger remarked, ‘You must be singularly absent-minded not to remember that you had put your ticket in your mouth.’ ‘No sae absent-minded as ye wad think,’ was the answer; ‘I was jist rubbin’ oot the auld date wi’ my tongue.’
STEAMBOATS ON WEST COAST
Perhaps the most striking evidence of the effect of increased facilities for locomotion and traffic upon the habits of the population is presented by the western coast of the country, or the region usually spoken of as the West Highlands and Islands. Few parts of Britain are now more familiar to the summer tourist than the steamboat tracks through that region. Every year thousands of holiday-makers are carried rapidly and comfortably in swift and capacious vessels through that archipelago of mountainous land and blue sea. They have, as it were, a vast panorama unrolled before them, which changes in aspect and interest at every mile of their progress. For the most part, however, they obtain and carry away with them merely a kind of general and superficial impression of the scenery, though the memory of it may remain indelibly fixed among their most delightful experiences of travel. They can have little or no conception of the interior of those islands or of the glens and straths of the mainland, still less of the inhabitants and their ways and customs. Nor, as they are borne pleasantly along past headland and cliff, can they adequately realise what the conditions of travel were before the days of commodious passenger-steamers.
DAVID HUTCHESON’S SERVICES
When Johnson and Boswell landed in Skye in the year 1773, there was not a road in the whole island practicable for a wheeled carriage. Locomotion, when not afoot, was either on horseback or by boat. The inland bridle-tracks lay among loose boulders, over rough, bare rock, or across stretches of soft and sometimes treacherous bog. The boats were often leaky, the oars and rowlocks unsound, the boatmen unskilful; while the weather, even in summer, is often boisterous enough to make the navigation of the sea-lochs and sounds difficult or impossible for small craft. And such continued to be the conditions in which the social life of the West Highlands was carried on long after Johnson’s time. During the first thirty or more years of last century the voyage from the Clyde to Skye was made in sailing packets, and generally took from ten to fifteen days. It was not until steamboats began to ply along the coast that the scattered islands were brought into closer touch with each other and with the Lowlands. To the memory of David Hutcheson, who organised the steamboat service among the Western Highlands and Islands, Scotland owes a debt of gratitude. The development of this service has been the gradual evolution of some seventy years. Half a century ago it was far from having reached its present state of advancement. There were then no steamers up the West Coast to Skye and the Outer Hebrides, save those which carried cargo and came round the Mull of Cantyre. During the herring season, and about the times of the cattle-markets, the irregularities and discomfort of these vessels can hardly be exaggerated. When the decks were already loaded perhaps with odoriferous barrels of herring, and when it seemed impossible that they could hold anything more, the vessel might have to make a long detour to the head of some mountain-girdled sea-loch to fetch away a flock of sheep, or a herd of Highland cattle. At most of the places of call there were no piers. Passengers had accordingly to disembark in small boats, sometimes at a considerable distance from high-water mark, to which, perhaps in the middle of the night, they scrambled across sea-weed and slippery shingle.
As a steamboat called at each place in summer only once, in later years twice, in a week, and in winter only once in a fortnight, the day of its arrival was eagerly looked forward to by the population, in expectation of the supplies of all kinds, as well as the letters and newspapers, which it brought from the south. You never could be sure at what hour of the day or night it might make its appearance, and if you expected friends to arrive by it, or if you proposed yourself to take a passage in it, you needed to be on the watch, perhaps for many weary hours. In fine weather, this detention was endurable enough; but in the frequent storms of wind and rain, much patience and some strength of constitution were needed to withstand the effects of the exposure. The desirability of having waiting-rooms or places of shelter of any kind is even yet not fully realised by the Celtic mind.
‘SOMETIMES SOONER, WHILES EARLIER’
The native islander, however, seemed never to feel, or at least would never acknowledge these various inconveniences. It was so great a boon to have the steamers at all, and he had now got so used to them that he could not imagine a state of things different from that to which he had grown accustomed. Nor would he willingly allow any imperfections in David Hutcheson’s arrangements, on which he depended for all his connection with the outer world. I remember a crofter in the island of Eigg, who, when asked when the steamer would arrive, replied at once, ‘Weel, she’ll be comin’ sometimes sooner, and whiles earlier, and sometimes before that again.’ The idea of lateness was a reproach which he would not acknowledge.