While yet at early morn I rise—
And rest at day's decline—
Would that the Sun that formèd thine,
His bright rays beamed on me,
That I, wise for the final day,
Might measure time, like thee!
These were happy evenings—all the more happy from the circumstance that I was still in heart and appetite a boy, and could relish as much as ever, when their season came on, the wild raspberries of the Conon woods—a very abundant fruit in that part of the country—and climb as lightly as ever, to strip the guean-trees of their wild cherries. When the river was low, I used to wade into its fords in quest of its pearl muscles (Unio Margaritiferus); and, though not very successful in my pearl-fishing, it was at least something to see how thickly the individuals of this greatest of British fresh-water molluscs lay scattered among the pebbles of the fords, or to mark them creeping slowly along the bottom—when, in consequence of prolonged droughts, the current had so moderated that they were in no danger of being swept away—each on its large white foot, with its valves elevated over its back, like the carpace of some tall tortoise. I found occasion at this time to conclude, that the Unio of our river-fords secretes pearls so much more frequently than the Unionidæ and Anadonta of our still pools and lakes, not from any specific peculiarity in the constitution of the creature, but from the effects of the habitat which it is its nature to choose. It receives in the fords and shallows of a rapid river many a rough blow from sticks and pebbles carried down in times of flood, and occasionally from the feet of the men and animals that cross the stream during droughts; and the blows induce the morbid secretions of which pearls are the result. There seems to exist no inherent cause why Anadon Cygnea, with its beautiful silvery nacre—as bright often, and always more delicate than that of Unio Margaritiferus—should not be equally productive of pearls; but, secure from violence in its still pools and lakes, and unexposed to the circumstances that provoke abnormal secretions, it does not produce a single pearl for every hundred that are ripened into value and beauty by the exposed current-tossed Unionidæ of our rapid mountain rivers. Would that hardship and suffering bore always in a creature of a greatly higher family similar results, and that the hard buffets dealt him by fortune in the rough stream of life could be transmuted, by some blessed internal predisposition of his nature, into pearls of great price.
It formed one of my standing enjoyments at this time to bathe, as the sun was sinking behind the woods, in the deeper pools of the Conon—a pleasure which, like all the more exciting pleasures of youth, bordered on terror. Like that of the poet, when he "wantoned with the breakers," and the "freshening sea made them a terror," "'twas a pleasing fear." But it was not current nor freshening eddy that rendered it such: I had acquired, long before, a complete mastery over all my motions in the water, and, setting out from the shores of the Bay of Cromarty, have swam round vessels in the roadstead, when, among the many boys of a seaport town, not more than one or two would venture to accompany me; but the poetic age is ever a credulous one, as certainly in individuals as in nations: the old fears of the supernatural may be modified and etherealized, but they continue to influence it; and at this period the Conon still took its place among the haunted streams of Scotland. There was not a river in the Highlands that used, ere the erection of the stately bridge in our neighbourhood, to sport more wantonly with human life—an evidence, the ethnographer might perhaps say, of its purely Celtic origin; and as Superstition has her figures as certainly as Poesy, the perils of a wild mountain-born stream, flowing between thinly-inhabited banks, were personified in the beliefs of the people by a frightful goblin, that took a malignant delight in luring into its pools, or overpowering in its fords, the benighted traveller. Its goblin, the "water-wraith," used to appear as a tall woman dressed in green, but distinguished chiefly by her withered, meagre countenance, ever distorted by a malignant scowl. I knew all the various fords—always dangerous ones—where of old she used to start, it was said, out of the river, before the terrified traveller, to point at him, as in derision, with her skinny finger, or to beckon him invitingly on; and I was shown the very tree to which a poor Highlander had clung, when, in crossing the river by night, he was seized by the goblin, and from which, despite of his utmost exertions, though assisted by a young lad, his companion, he was dragged into the middle of the current, where he perished. And when, in swimming at sunset over some dark pool, where the eye failed to mark or the foot to sound the distant bottom, the twig of some sunken bush or tree has struck against me as I passed, I have felt, with sudden start, as if touched by the cold, bloodless fingers of the goblin.
The old chapel among the woods formed the scene, says tradition, of an incident similar to that which Sir Walter Scott relates in his "Heart of Mid-Lothian," when borrowing, as the motto of the chapter in which he describes the preparations for the execution of Porteous, from an author rarely quoted—the Kelpie. "The hour's come," so runs the extract, "but not the man;"—nearly the same words which the same author employs in his "Guy Mannering," in the cave scene between Meg Merrilies and Dirk Hatteraick. "There is a tradition," he adds in the accompanying note, "that while a little stream was swollen into a torrent by recent showers, the discontented voice of the water-spirit was heard to pronounce these words. At the same moment, a man urged on by his fate, or, in Scottish language, fey, arrived at a gallop, and prepared to cross the water. No remonstrance from the bystanders was of power to stop him: he plunged into the stream, and perished." So far Sir Walter. The Ross-shire story is fuller, and somewhat different in its details. On a field in the near neighbourhood of the chapel, now laid out into the gardens of Conon House, there was a party of Highlanders engaged in an autumnal day at noon, some two or three centuries ago, in cutting down their corn, when the boding voice of the wraith was heard rising from the Conon beneath—"The hour's come, but not the man." Immediately after, a courier on horseback was seen spurring down the hill in hot haste, making directly for what is known as a "fause ford," that lies across the stream just opposite the old building, in the form of a rippling bar, which, indicating apparently, though very falsely, little depth of water, is flanked by a deep black pool above and below. The Highlanders sprang forward to warn him of his danger, and keep him back; but he was unbelieving and in haste, and rode express, he said, on business that would brook no delay; and as for the "fause ford," if it could not be ridden, it could be swam; and, whether by riding or swimming, he was resolved on getting across. Determined, however, on saving him in his own despite, the Highlanders forced him from his horse, and, thrusting him into the little chapel, locked him in; and then, throwing open the door when the fatal hour had passed, they called to him that he might now pursue his journey. But there was no reply, and no one came forth; and on going in they found him lying cold and stiff, with his face buried in the water of a small stone font. He had fallen, apparently, in a fit, athwart the wall; and his predestined hour having come, he was suffocated by the few pints of water in the projecting font. At this time the stone font of the tradition—a rude trough, little more than a foot in diameter either way—was still to be seen among the ruins; and, like the veritable cannon in the Castle of Udolpho, beside which, according to Annette, the ghost used to take its stand, it imparted by its solid reality a degree of authenticity to the story in this part of the country, which, if unfurnished with a "local habitation," as in Sir Walter's note, it would have wanted. Such was one of the many stories of the Conon with which I became acquainted at a time when the beliefs they exemplified were by no means quite dead, and of which I could think as tolerably serious realities, when, lying a-bed all alone at midnight, the solitary inmate of a dreary barrack, listening to the roar of the Conon.
Besides the long evenings, we had an hour to breakfast, and another to dinner. Much of the breakfast hour was spent in cooking our food; but as a bit of oaten cake and a draught of milk usually served us for the mid-day meal, the greater part of the hour assigned to it was available for purposes of rest or amusement. And when the day was fine, I used to spend it by the side of a mossy stream, within a few minutes' walk of the work-shed, or in a neighbouring planting, beside a little irregular lochan, fringed round with flags and rushes. The mossy stream, black in its deeper pools, as if it were a rivulet of tar, contained a good many trout, which had acquired a hue nearly as deep as its own, and formed the very negroes of their race. They were usually of small size—for the stream itself was small; and, though little countries sometimes produce great men, little streams rarely produce great fish. But on one occasion, towards the close of autumn, when a party of the younger workmen set themselves, in a frolic, to sweep it with torch and spear, they succeeded in capturing, in a dark alder-o'ershaded pool, a monstrous individual, nearly three feet in length, and proportionally bulky, with a snout bent over the lower jaw at its symphysis, like the beak of a hawk, and as deeply tinged (though with more of brown in its complexion) as the blackest coal-fish I ever saw. It must have been a bull-trout, a visitor from the neighbouring river; but we all concluded at the time, from the extreme dinginess of its coat, that it had lived for years in its dark pool, a hermit apart from its fellows. I am not now, however, altogether certain that the inference was a sound one. Some fishes, like some men, have a wonderful ability of assuming the colours that best suit their interests for the time. I have been unable to determine whether the trout be one of these conformists; but it used to strike me at this period as at least curious, that the fishes in even the lower reaches of the dark little rivulet should differ so entirely in hue from those of the greatly clearer Conon, into which its peaty waters fall, and whose scaly denizens are of silvery brightness. No fish seems to possess a more complete power over its dingy coat than a very abundant one in the estuary of the Conon—the common flounder. Standing on the bank, I have startled these creatures from off the patch of bottom on which they lay—visible to only a very sharp eye—by pitching a very small pebble right over them. Was the patch a pale one—for a minute or so they carried its pale colour along with them into some darker tract, where they remained distinctly visible from the contrast, until, gradually acquiring the deeper hue, they again became inconspicuous. But if startled back to the same pale patch from which they had set out, I have then seen them visible for a minute or so, from their over-dark tint, until, gradually losing it in turn, they paled down, as at first, to the colour of the lighter ground. An old Highlander, whose suit of tartan conformed to the general hue of the heather, was invisible at a little distance, when traversing a moor, but came full into view in crossing a green field or meadow: the suit given by nature to the flounder, tinted apparently on the same principle of concealment, exhibits a degree of adaptation to its varying circumstances, which the tartan wanted. And it is certainly curious enough to find, in one of our commonest fishes, a property which used to be regarded as one of the standing marvels of the zoology of those remote countries of which the chameleon is a native.