SANDILAND.
The shells, perhaps, he kept to add to the collection of Mrs. Thrale’s eldest daughter. “I have been able,” he wrote later on, “to collect very little for Queeney’s cabinet.” The name which our boatman gave to the island was, so far as I could catch it, not Sandiland, but Sameilan. At the time of our visit it had for inhabitants four sheep, and flocks of sea-birds who made it their breeding ground. They flew circling and screaming over our heads, while a mother bird led off a late brood of little ones into the sea. Before each of the burrows in which they made their nests was a litter of tiny shells thrown up like sand before a rabbit-warren. The sun shone brightly, the little waves beat on the shore, while all around us there were mountains, islands, and lochs. As I picked up a few shells, I thought that on this lonely rock, perhaps, none had been gathered since the day when they caught Johnson’s eye by their glossy beauty. In sailing back to the mainland of Mull we saw four seals popping up their heads in the water near the shore.
MACKINNON’S CAVE.
So pleasant did Johnson find the life in Inchkenneth that he remained a day longer than he had intended. “We could have been easily persuaded,” he writes, “to a longer stay, but life will not be all passed in delight. The session at Edinburgh was approaching from which Mr. Boswell could not be absent.” On the morning of Tuesday, October 19, they started for Iona in a good strong boat, with four stout rowers under the guidance of the chief of the Macleanes. On the shore they took their last farewell of poor Col, “who,” wrote Johnson, “had treated us with so much kindness, and concluded his favours by consigning us to Sir Allan.” MACKINNON’S CAVE. On the way they visited Mackinnon’s Cave, on the opposite coast of Mull, “the greatest natural curiosity,” said Johnson, “he had ever seen.” He thus describes it in a letter to Mrs. Thrale.
“We had some difficulty to make our way over the vast masses of broken rocks that lie before the entrance, and at the mouth were embarrassed with stones, which the sea had accumulated as at Brighthelmstone; but as we advanced we reached a floor of soft sand, and as we left the light behind us walked along a very spacious cavity vaulted overhead with an arch almost regular, by which a mountain was sustained, at least, a very lofty rock. From this magnificent cavern went a narrow passage to the right-hand, which we entered with a candle, and though it was obstructed with great stones, clambered over them to a second expansion of the cave, in which there lies a great square stone, which might serve as a table. The cave goes onward to an unknown extent, but we were now one hundred and sixty yards under ground; we had but one candle, and had never heard of any that went further and came back; we therefore thought it prudent to return.”
“Tradition,” according to Boswell, “says that a piper and twelve men once advanced into this cave, nobody can tell how far; and never returned.” It is indeed a wonderful place. As we sat on the rocks near the entrance, with the huge cliffs rising sheer above us, and the waves breaking at our feet, we could see in the distance Iona, with its beach of white sand, Staffa with its lofty masses of dark rock, Little Colonsay with the waves dashing in foam upon it, and on the horizon a coast which we took to be the island of Col. Vast masses of rock lay along the beach in huge and wild disorder. Beyond the cavern they came to an end; for there the cliff rose from the sea steep as the wall of a house. The cascade near the cave, which Boswell mentions, was falling in a very slender stream. Hard by a huge crag was covered almost to the top by the fresh young leaves of a great ivy-tree. It called up to my memory the ivy-mantled ruins of Kenilworth Castle.
Our travellers, taking boat again, continued their voyage along the shore of Mull. “The island of Staffa,” writes Boswell, “we saw at no very great distance, but could not land upon it, the surge was so high on its rocky coast.” It is strange that Sir James Mackintosh, with this passage before him, should have accused Johnson of having visited Iona, “without looking at Staffa, which lay in sight, with that indifference to natural objects, either of taste or scientific curiosity, which characterised him.”[678] As they sailed along, “Sir Allan, anxious for the honour of Mull, was still talking of its woods, and pointing them out to Dr. Johnson, as appearing at a distance on the skirts of that island. ‘Sir,’ he answered, ‘I saw at Tobermory what they called a wood, which I unluckily took for heath. If you show me what I shall take for furze, it will be something.’”