HERONRY.
Much as he wished to visit it, he was hindered even from seeing it by the stormy weather. We were more fortunate, for though we did not land, yet we saw it from the high ground on the opposite shore. The greater part of the way to this spot a rough road has been made along which we drove, passing a great heronry. It was curious to watch the huge nests and the great birds in the trees. For nearly three miles of country they were the chief inhabitants. Island Isa would certainly have lived in great solitude, for after we had passed the gamekeeper’s cottage close to the castle, we saw no signs of habitation except the herons’ nests, till we reached a farm-house nearly three miles off. Here the road ended. In the little garden stood some large laburnum trees, all drooping with their golden flowers. Our way led across a wide heath to a fine breezy headland. Below us another stretch of heath-land sloped down to the shore of the loch. On the other side of a narrow channel lay Isa, with fine rocky cliffs to the west and the north, but lying open to the south-east. It was Midsummer Day. The sea was calm, a blue haze softened the outline of the neighbouring hills, but let the mountains in the farther Hebrides be but faintly seen. The little isle lay before us with no signs on it of human habitation. Buchanan describes it as “fertilis frugum,”[658] and Martin says that it was “fruitful in corn;”[659] but it must be many a year since the plough turned up its soil. It is a land of pastures. In the hot, drowsy air there was nothing but the song of the lark and the bleating of the lambs “to break the silence of the seas.” Far below us a shepherd with his two dogs was gathering a small flock of sheep. They, and the larks, and the sea-birds were the only things that seemed alive. We had reached, as it were, the antipodes of “that full tide of human existence” in which Johnson delighted. For not a single day would he have endured the lonely dignity of such a domain. The road to the headland had not been quite free from danger, for on our return we found coiled up asleep on the path half hidden in the heather an adder. It was killed by a blow of a stick which I had brought with me from Corsica.
ISLAND ISA. OFFERED TO DR. JOHNSON BY THE LAIRD OF McLEOD.
SACRAMENT SUNDAY.
GATHERING OF THE CONGREGATIONS.
On the Sunday, which we spent at Dunvegan, we chanced to see a sight interesting in itself, but doubly so to anyone who came from the South. The Free Kirk congregations of three parishes met in a field to take the Sacrament. It was one of the three great religious gatherings of the year, and the people flocked in from all the country side. Many came by water from far-off glens that sloped down to the sea. From the windows of our inn we watched the heavy boats fully laden coming round a distant point, and rowing slowly up to a ledge of rocks just below us. In one we counted twenty-one people. Women as well as men tugged at the oars, and when the boat was run aground helped to drag it up the beach. When this was done, they all set about completing their toilettes. The beach served them for their tiring-house, though it was a good deal more open to view than a hawthorn-brake. In one of the boats we had noticed a man distinguished from all the rest by a tall black hat, pietate gravem ac meritis. To him had been entrusted the clean white collars and neckties of the rowers. Many of the men knelt down while their wives fastened them on for them and smoothed their hair. One man even went so far as to put on his shirt in public. The women too, who were almost all in black, had their dresses to arrange, for in the boats they had kept their skirts tucked up. Some of the girls even had to get their bustles adjusted. Carlyle or his wife once made merry over their maid-of-all-work at Chelsea, who with two or three kitchen-dusters made the best substitute she could for that monstrous and most “considerable protuberance.” What would he have said had he seen the lasses in Skye thus making themselves as ridiculous as even the finest lady in town?