Footsteps of Dr. Johnson (Scotland)

by George Birkbeck Norman Hill

SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE
& RIVINGTON, LTD, PUBLISHERS, LONDON

IMP. & HÉLIOG. LEMERCIER & C^IE. PARIS.

THE CUCHUILLIN HILLS FROM THE CAVE ON WIA ISLAND SKYE

A GREAT CAVE.

On the afternoon of the following day “an interval of calm sunshine,” writes Johnson, “courted us out to see a cave on the shore famous for its echo. When we went into the boat one of our companions was asked in Erse by the boatmen who they were that came with him. He gave us characters, I suppose, to our advantage, and was asked in the spirit of the Highlands whether I could recite a long series of ancestors. The boatmen said, as I perceived afterwards, that they heard the cry of an English ghost. This, Boswell says, disturbed him. We came to the cave, and clambering up the rocks came to an arch open at one end, one hundred and eighty feet long, thirty broad in the broadest part, and about thirty feet high. There was no echo; such is the fidelity of reports; but I saw what I had never seen before, mussels and whelks in their natural state. There was another arch in the rock open at both ends.” This cave was not on the shore of Skye, as Johnson’s account seems to imply, but in the little island of Wia. From Boswell we learn that it was to an island they were taken. We were fortunate enough on our visit to this wild part of the coast to have as our guide one of Macleod’s gamekeepers. “A man,” to borrow from Johnson the praise which he bestowed on one of his guides, “of great liveliness and activity, civil and ready-handed.”[661] We had passed the night in the lonely little inn at Struan on the shore of an arm of Loch Bracadale, where we had found decent, if homely, lodging. In a fisherman’s boat we rowed down the loch, sometimes in mid-channel and sometimes skirting the cliffs, which rose like a wall of rock to a great height above us. We passed little islets, and the mouths of caverns which filled with clouds of spray as the long rolling waves swept in from the Atlantic. On the ledges of the rocks, hovering over our heads, swimming and diving in the sea, were cormorants, puffins, oyster catchers, gulls, curlews and guillemots. We had none of us looked upon a wilder scene. When we reached our island we were pleased to find that the narrow beach at which we were to land was guarded by a huge headland from the swell of the sea. Whether we visited the cave which our travellers saw I do not feel at all sure, for it does not correspond with their description. My friend, the gamekeeper, was sure that it was the place, and I was willing to advance my faith more than half-way to meet his assertion. We scrambled up the steep beach, and then over rocks covered with grass and ferns, between the sides of a narrow gorge. At the top a still steeper path led downwards to a cave, at the bottom of which we could see a glimmer of light. Scrambling upwards again, we reached a place where we could hear the sea murmuring on the other side. We afterwards climbed to the top of the cliff and sat down on the ground which formed the roof of the cavern. It was covered with heather and ferns, and patches of short grass; a pleasant breeze was blowing, the sea birds were uttering their cries, far beneath us we could hear the beating of the surge. Across the Loch on both sides, the dark cliffs rose to a great height, and in the background stood the mountains of Skye and of the mainland. Had the air been very clear, we might have seen on the north-west the wooded hills of Dunvegan.

PRINCE CHARLIE’S CAVES.

Two or three days later, when I was giving two Highlanders an account of this cavern, one of them asked with a humorous smile: “Did they not tell you it was Prince Charlie’s Cave? He must, I am thinking, have been sleeping everywhere.” His companion laughed and said: “They have lately made a new one near an hotel which they have opened at ——.” The innkeepers should surely show a little originality. Why should they not advertise Dr. Johnson’s Cave, and show the tea-pot out of which he drank his two-and-twenty cups of tea when he picnicked there? They would do well also to discover the great cave in Skye which Martin tells of. “It is supposed,” he writes, “to exceed a mile in length. The natives told me that a piper who was over-curious went in with a design to find out the length of it, and after he entered began to play on his pipe, but never returned to give an account of his progress.”[662]