“They were formed out of some independent companies sent over either in the reign of Elizabeth or James VI. At present the common men are but nominally national, for since the scarcity of men occasioned by the late war, Holland is no longer permitted to draw her recruits out of North Britain. But the officers are all Scotch, who are obliged to take oaths to our government, and to qualify in presence of our ambassador at the Hague.”[663]
In the war which broke out between England and Holland in 1781, this curious system, which had survived the great naval battles between the two countries in the seventeenth century, at last came to an end. In the Gentleman’s Magazine for December, 1782, we read, that on the first of that month:
“The Scotch Brigade in the Dutch service renounced their allegiance to their lawful Sovereign, and took a new oath of fidelity to their High Mightinesses. They are for the future to wear the Dutch uniform, and not to carry the arms of the enemy any longer in their colours, nor to beat their march. They are to receive the word of command in Dutch, and their officers are to wear orange-coloured sashes, and the same sort of spontoons as the officers of other Dutch regiments.”[664]
Colonel Macleod, if he was still living, lost, of course, his command. At the time of our travellers’ visit he was on leave of absence, which had been extended for some years, says Johnson, “in this time of universal peace.” The knowledge which he had gained in Holland he turned to good account in Skye. THE GARDEN AT TALISKER. He both drained the land which lay at the foot of the mountains round Talisker, and made a good garden. “He had been,” says Knox, “an observer of Dutch improvements. He carried off in proper channels the waters of two rivers which often deluged the bottom. He divided the whole valley by deep and sometimes wide ditches into a number of square fields and meadows. He now enjoys the fruits of his ingenuity in the quantity of grain and hay raised thereon.” He had made it “the seat of plenty, hospitality, and good nature.”[665] To few places in our islands could Dutch art have been transplanted where it would find nature more kindly. Johnson noticed the prosperous growth of the trees, which, though they were not many years old, were already very high and thick. Could he have seen them at the present day he would have owned that even in the garden of an Oxford College there are few finer. The soil is so good, we were told, “that things have only to be planted and they grow.” So sheltered from all the cold winds is the position, and so great is the warmth diffused by the beneficent Gulf Stream, that the whole year round flowers live out of doors which anywhere but on the southern coasts of Devonshire and Cornwall would be killed by the frosts. The garden is delightfully old-fashioned, entirely free from the dismal formality of ribbon-borders. Fruit trees, flowers, shrubs, and vegetables mingle together. It lies open to the south-west, being enclosed on the other sides with groves of trees. A lawn shaded by a noble sycamore stretches up to the house. Boswell would have been pleased to find that smooth turf now covers the court which in his time was “most injudiciously paved with round blueish-grey pebbles, upon which you walked as if upon cannon-balls driven into the ground.” The house “in its snug corner” has been greatly enlarged, but the old building still remains. Unfortunately no tradition has been preserved of the room occupied by Johnson. Much as he admired this sequestered spot—“a place where the imagination is more amused cannot easily be found,” he said—nevertheless it was here that he quoted to Boswell the lines of the song:
“Every island is a prison
Strongly guarded by the sea;
Kings and princes, for that reason,
Prisoners are as well as we.”
If Talisker is a prison, it is a goodly one. There are few places which linger more pleasantly in my memory. To the beauty of the scenery and the delightfulness of the weather was added the hospitality which we received from our kind hostess, Mrs. Cameron. Time, alas, failed us to climb “the very high rocky hill” at the back of the house, whence Boswell had “a view of Barra, the Long Island, Bernera, the Loch of Dunvegan, part of Rum, part of Raasay, and a vast deal of the Isle of Skye.” According to Pennant, who had made the ascent the year before:
“It has in front a fine series of genuine basaltic columns, resembling the Giant’s Causeway. The ruins of the columns at the base made a grand appearance; they were the ruins of the creation. This is the most northern basalt I am acquainted with; the last of four, all running from south to north—the Giant’s Causeway, Staffa, the rock Humbla, and Briis-mhawl. The depth of ocean in all probability conceals the lost links of this chain.”[666]