Something for Non-geologists—Man Destructive—A Better and Last Creation coming—A Rainy Sabbath—The Meeting House—The Congregation—The Sermon in Gaelic—The Old Wondrous Story—The Drunken Minister of Eigg—Presbyterianism without Life—Dr. Johnson's Account of the Conversion of the People of Rum—Romanism at Eigg—The Two Boys—The Freebooter of Eigg—Voyage Resumed—The Homeless Minister—Harbor of Isle Ornsay—Interesting Gneiss Deposit—A Norwegian Keep—Gneiss at Knock—Curious Chemistry—Sea-cliffs beyond Portsea—The Goblin Luidag—Scenery of Skye.
I reckon among my readers a class of non-geologists, who think my geological chapters would be less dull if I left out the geology; and another class of semi-geologists, who say there was decidedly too much geology in my last. With the present chapter, as there threatens to be an utter lack of science in the earlier half of it, and very little, if any, in the latter half, I trust both classes may be in some degree satisfied. It will bear reference to but the existing system of things,—assuredly not the last of the consecutive creations,—and to a species of animal that, save in the celebrated Guadaloupe specimens, has not yet been found locked up in stone. There have been much of violence and suffering in the old immature stages of being,—much, from the era of the Holoptychius, with its sharp murderous teeth and strong armor of bone, down to that of the cannibal Ichthyosaurus, that bears the broken remains of its own kind in its bowels,—much, again, from the times of the crocodile of the Oölite, down to the times of the fossil hyena and gigantic shark of the Tertiary. Nor, I fear, have matters greatly improved in that latest-born creation in the series, that recognizes as its delegated lord the first tenant of earth accountable to his Maker. But there is a better and a last creation coming, in which man shall re-appear, not to oppress and devour his fellow-men, and in which there shall be no such wrongs perpetrated as it is my present purpose to record,—"new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness." Well sung the Ayrshire ploughman, when musing on the great truth that the present scene of being "is surely not the last,"—a truth corroborated since his day by the analogies of a new science,—
"The poor, oppressed, honest man,
Had never sure been born,
Had not there been some recompense
To comfort those that mourn."
It was Sabbath, but the morning rose like a hypochondriac wrapped up in his night-clothes,—gray in fog, and sad with rain. The higher grounds of the island lay hid in clouds, far below the level of the central hollow; and our whole prospect from the deck was limited to the nearer slopes, dank, brown, and uninhabited, and to the rough black crags that frown like sentinels over the beach. Now the rime thickened as the rain pattered more loudly on the deck; and even the nearer stacks and precipices showed as unsolid and spectral in the cloud as moonlight shadows thrown on a ground of vapor; anon it cleared up for a few hundred yards, as the shower lightened; and then there came in view, partially at least, two objects that spoke of man,—a deserted boat harbor, formed of loosely piled stone, at the upper extremity of a sandy bay; and a roofless dwelling beside it, with two ruinous gables rising over the broken walls. The entire scene suggested the idea of a land with which man had done for ever;—the vapor-enveloped rocks,—the waste of ebb-uncovered sand,—the deserted harbor,—the ruinous house,—the melancholy rain-fretted tides eddying along the strip of brown tangle in the foreground,—and, dim over all, the thick, slant lines of the beating shower!—I know not that of themselves they would have furnished materials enough for a finished picture in the style of Hogarth's "End of all Things;" but right sure am I that in the hands of Bewick they would have been grouped into a tasteful and poetic vignette. We set out for church a little after eleven,—the minister encased in his ample-skirted storm-jacket of oiled canvas, and protected atop by a genuine sou-wester, of which the broad posterior rim eloped half a yard down his back; and I closely wrapped up in my gray maud, which proved, however, a rather indifferent protection against the penetrating powers of a true Hebridean drizzle. The building in which the congregation meets is a low dingy cottage of turf and stone, situated nearly opposite to the manse windows. It had been built by my friend, previous to the Disruption, at his own expense, for a Gaelic school, and it now serves as a place of worship for the people.
We found the congregation already gathered, and that the very bad morning had failed to lessen their numbers. There were a few of the male parishioners keeping watch at the door, looking wistfully out through the fog and rain for their minister; and at his approach nearly twenty more came issuing from the place,—like carder bees from their nest of dried grass and moss,—to gather round him, and shake him by the hand. The islanders of Eigg are an active, middle-sized race, with well-developed heads, acute intellects, and singularly warm feelings. And on this occasion at least there could be no possibility of mistake respecting the feelings with which they regarded their minister. Rarely have I seen human countenances so eloquently vocal with veneration and love. The gospel message, which my friend had been the first effectually to bring home to their hearts,—the palpable fact of his sacrifice for the sake of the high principles which he has taught,—his own kindly disposition,—the many services which he has rendered them, for not only has he been the minister, but also the sole medical man, of the Small Isles, and the benefit of his practice they have enjoyed, in every instance, without fee or reward,—his new life of hardship and danger, maintained for their sakes amid sinking health and great privation,—their frequent fears for his safety when stormy nights close over the sea,—and they have seen his little vessel driven from her anchorage, just as the evening has fallen,—all these are circumstances that have concurred in giving him a strong hold on their affections.
The rude turf-building we found full from end to end, and all a-steam with a particularly wet congregation, some of whom, neither very robust nor young, had travelled in the soaking drizzle from the farther extremities of the island. And, judging from the serious attention with which they listened to the discourse, they must have deemed it full value for all it cost them. I have never yet seen a congregation more deeply impressed, or that seemed to follow the preacher more intelligently; and I was quite sure, though ignorant of the language in which my friend addressed them, that he preached to them neither heresy nor nonsense. There was as little of the reverence of externals in the place as can well be imagined: an uneven earthen floor,—turf-walls on every side, and a turf-roof above,—two little windows of four panes a-piece, adown which the rain-drops were coursing thick and fast,—a pulpit grotesquely rude, that had never employed the bred carpenter,—and a few ranges of seats of undressed deal, such were the mere materialisms of this lowly church of the people; and yet here, notwithstanding, was the living soul of a Christian community,—understandings convinced of the truth of the gospel, and hearts softened and impressed by its power.
My friend, at the conclusion of his discourse, gave a brief digest of its contents in English, for the benefit of his one Saxon auditor; and I found, as I had anticipated, that what had so moved the simple islanders was just the old wondrous story, which, though repeated and re-repeated times beyond number, from the days of the apostles till now, continues to be as full of novelty and interest as ever,—"God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." The great truths which had affected many of these poor people to tears, were exactly those which, during the last eighteen hundred years, have been active in effecting so many moral revolutions in the world, and which must ultimately triumph over all error and all oppression. On this occasion, as on many others, I had to regret my want of Gaelic. It was my misfortune to miss being born to this ancient language, by barely a mile of ferry. I first saw light on the southern shore of the Frith of Cromarty, where the strait is narrowest, among an old established Lowland community, marked by all the characteristics, physical and mental, of the Lowlanders of the southern districts; whereas, had I been born on the northern shore, I would have been brought up among a Celtic tribe, and Gaelic would have been my earliest language. Thus distinct was the line between the two races preserved, even after the commencement of the present century.
In returning to the Betsey during the mid-day interval in the service, we passed the ruinous two-gabled house beside the boat-harbor. During the incumbency of my friend's predecessor, it had been the public-house of the island, and the parish minister was by far its best customer. He was in the practice of sitting in one of its dingy little rooms, day after day, imbibing whisky and peat-reek; and his favorite boon companion on these occasions was a Roman Catholic tenant who lived on the opposite side of the island, and who, when drinking with the minister, used regularly to fasten his horse beside the door, till at length all the parish came to know that when the horse was standing outside the minister was drinking within. In course of time, through the natural gravitation operative in such cases, the poor incumbent became utterly scandalous, and was libelled for drunkenness before the General Assembly; but, as the island of Eigg lies remote from observation, evidence was difficult to procure; and had not the infatuated man got senselessly drunk one evening, when in Edinburgh on his trial, and staggered, of all places in the world, into the General Assembly, he would probably have died minister of Eigg. As the event happened, however, the testimony thus unwittingly furnished in the face of the Court that tried him was deemed conclusive;—he was summarily deposed from his office, and my friend succeeded him. Presbyterianism without the animating life is a poor shrunken thing: it never lies in state when it is dead; for it has no body of fine forms, or trapping of imposing ceremonies, to give it bulk or adornment: without the vitality of evangelism it is nothing; and in this low and abject state my friend found the Presbyterianism of Eigg. His predecessor had done it only mischief; nor had it been by any means vigorous before. Rum is one of the four islands of the parish; and all my readers must be familiar with Dr. Johnson's celebrated account of the conversion to Protestantism of the people of Rum. "The inhabitants," says the Doctor, in his "Journey to the Western Islands," "are fifty-eight families, who continued Papists for some time after the laird became a Protestant. Their adherence to their old religion was strengthened by the countenance of the laird's sister, a zealous Romanist; till one Sunday, as they were going to mass under the conduct of their patroness, Maclean met them on the way, gave one of them a blow on the head with a yellow stick,—I suppose a cane, for which the Erse had no name, and drove them to the kirk, from which they have never departed. Since the use of this method of conversion, the inhabitants of Eigg and Canna who continue Papists call the Protestantism of Rum the religion of the yellow stick." Now, such was the kind of Protestantism that, since the days of Dr. Johnson, had also been introduced, I know not by what means, into Eigg. It had lived on the best possible terms with the Popery of the island; the parish minister had soaked day after day in the public-house with a Roman Catholic boon companion; and when a Papist man married a Protestant woman, the woman, as a matter of course, became Papist also; whereas, when it was the man who was a Protestant, and the woman a Papist, the woman remained what she had been. Roman Catholicism was quite content with terms, actual though not implied, of a kind so decidedly advantageous; and the Roman Catholics used good-humoredly to urge on their neighbors the Protestants, that, as it was palpable they had no religion of any kind, they had better surely come over to them, and have some. In short, all was harmony between the two Churches. My friend labored hard, as a good and honest man ought, to impart to Protestantism in his parish the animating life of the Reformation; and, through the blessing of God, after years of anxious toil, he at length fully succeeded.
I had got wet, and the day continued bad; and so, instead of returning to the evening sermon, which began at six, I remained alone aboard of the vessel. The rain ceased in little more than an hour after, and in somewhat more than two hours I got up on deck to see whether the congregation was not dispersing, and if it was not yet time to hang on the kettle for our evening tea. The unexpected apparition of some one aboard the Free Church yacht startled two ragged boys who were manœuvring a little boat a stone-cast away, under the rocky shores of Eilean Chaisteil, and who, on catching a glimpse of me, flung themselves below the thwarts for concealment. An oar dropped into the water; there was a hasty arm and half a head thrust over the gunwale to secure it; and then the urchin to whom they belonged again disappeared. Meanwhile the boat drifted slowly away: first one little head would appear for a moment over the gunwale, then another, as if reconnoitering the enemy; but I still kept my place on deck; and at length, tired out, the ragged little crew took to their oars, and rowed into a shallow bay at the lower extremity of the glebe, with a cottage, in size and appearance much resembling an ant-hill, peeping out at its inner extremity among some stunted bushes. I had marked the place before, and had been struck with the peculiarity of the choice that could have fixed on it as a site for a dwelling: it is at once the most inconvenient and picturesque on this side the island. A semi-circular line of columnar precipices, that somewhat resembles an amphitheatre turned outside in,—for the columns that overlook the area are quite as lofty as those which should form the amphitheatre's outer wall,—sweeps round a little bay, flat and sandy at half-tide, but bordered higher up by a dingy, scarce passable beach of columnar fragments that have toppled from above. Between the beach and the line of columns there is a bosky talus, more thickly covered with brushwood than is at all common in the Hebrides, and scarce more passable than the rough beach at its feet. And at the bottom of this talus, with its one gable buried in the steep ascent,—for there is scarce a foot-breadth of platform between the slope and the beach,—and with the other gable projected to the tide-line on rugged columnar masses, stands the cottage. The story of the inmate,—the father of the two ragged boys,—is such a one as Crabbe would have delighted to tell, and as he could have told better than any one else.
He had been, after a sort, a freebooter in his time, but born an age or two rather late; and the law had proved over strong for him. On at least one occasion, perhaps oftener,—for his adventures are not all known in Eigg,—he had been in prison for sheep-stealing. He had the dangerous art of subsisting without the ostensible means, and came to be feared and avoided by his neighbors as a man who lived on them without asking their leave. With neither character nor a settled way of living, his wits, I am afraid, must have been often whetted by his necessities: he stole lest he should starve. For some time he had resided in the adjacent island of Muck; but, proving a bad tenant, he had been ejected by the agent of the landlord, I believe a very worthy man, who gave him half a boll of meal to get quietly rid of him, and pulled down his house, when he had left the island, to prevent his return. Betaking himself, with his boys, to a boat, he set out in quest of some new lodgment. He made his first attempt or two on the mainland, where he strove to drive a trade in begging, but he was always recognized as the convicted sheep-stealer, and driven back to the shore. At length, after a miserable term of wandering, he landed in the winter season on Eigg, where he had a grown-up son, a miller; and, erecting a wretched shed with some spars and the old sail of a boat placed slantways against the side of a rock, he squatted on the beach, determined, whether he lived or died, to find a home on the island. The islanders were no strangers to the character of the poor forlorn creature, and kept aloof from him,—none of them, however, so much as his own son; and, for a time, my friend the minister, aware that he had been the pest of every community among which he had lived, stood aloof from him too, in the hope that at length, wearied out, he might seek for himself a lodgment elsewhere. There came on, however, a dreary night of sleet and rain, accompanied by a fierce storm from the sea; and intelligence reached the manse late in the evening, that the wretched sheep-stealer had been seized by sudden illness, and was dying on the beach. There could be no room for further hesitation in this case; and my friend the minister gave instant orders that the poor creature should be carried to the manse. The party, however, which he had sent to remove him found the task impracticable. The night was pitch dark; and the road, dangerous with precipices, and blocked up with rough masses of rock and stone, they found wholly impassable with so helpless a burden. And so, administering some cordials to the poor, hapless wretch, they had to leave him in the midst of the storm, with the old wet sail flapping about his ears, and the half-frozen rain pouring in upon him in torrents. He must have passed a miserable night, but it could not have been a whit more miserable than that passed by the minister in the manse. As the wild blast howled around his comfortable dwelling, and shook the casements as if some hand outside were assaying to open them, or as the rain pattered sharp and thick on the panes, and the measured roar of the surf rose high over every other sound, he could think of only the wretched creature exposed to the fury of a tempest so terrible, as perchance wrestling in his death agony in the darkness beside the breaking wave, or as already stiffening on the shore. He was early astir next morning, and almost the first person he met was the poor sheep-stealer, looking more like a ghost than a living man. The miserable creature had mustered strength enough to crawl up from the beach. My friend has often met better men with less pleasure. He found a shelter for the poor outcast; he tended him, prescribed for him, and, on his recovery, gave him leave to build for himself the hovel at the foot of the crags. The islanders were aware they had got but an indifferent neighbor through the transaction, though none of them, with the exception of the poor creature's son, saw what else their minister could have done in the circumstances. But the miller could sustain no apology for the arrangement that had given him his vagabond father as a neighbor; and oftener than once the site of the rising hovel became a scene of noisy contention between parent and son. Some of the islanders informed me that they had seen the son engaged in pulling down the stones of the walls as fast as the father raised them up; and, save for the interference of the minister, the hut, notwithstanding the permission he gave, would scarce have been built.