Our Journey to the Hebrides

by Joseph Pennell; Elizabeth Robins Pennell

All things come to those who wait, even the ferry-men of the Hebrides; but the steamer had carried the pilgrims far from St. Columba's Island towards Staffa before the little ferry-boat sailed with the wind, round the rocks, into the tiny bay by the landing. One passenger was put out, and a woman ran down from the black cottages for a bundle done up in a handkerchief, from which, as she took it, fell out broken pieces of bread and meat. Unconsciously, these people are always reminding you of their poverty.

There was no sailing in the teeth of the wind. The ferry-man and a small boy with him rowed, keeping under the shelter of the rocks as far as possible. At first both were silent. But we were fast learning that this silence is not the stupidity or surliness which the stranger in the islands is apt to think it. It comes rather of the sadness which has been the Western Islander's inheritance for generations, and of his shyness in speaking the foreign Scotch—that is, if he can speak it at all—for which he is so often laughed at. Once you break through the silence, and show the people that you do not look upon them as children or as slaves, they are friendly enough.

All this part of the Ross of Mull, as far as we could see, belonged to the Duke of Argyll, our ferry-man said. There had been trouble here as in Tiree, and the Commission was coming in a week. He had only his house and his boat. Five shillings and sixpence a year he paid; it was not much, but it was about the land there was trouble, and he had no land. We might have agreed with him and thought his rent no great thing, had we not seen his bare cottage, stranded on the bare rocks, probably built by himself or by his father before him. As it was, it seemed to us, if there was any question of payment, it should have been the other way.

Our stay in Iona was the one perfect part of our journey. In the first place, we were free to wander where and how we chose without thought of long miles to be walked before nightfall, and, better still, without our knapsacks, which we left in the inn. It was no small surprise to learn that we had our choice of three hotels. After careful study of "Macleod of Dare," we rather expected to be stranded on an almost uninhabited island. We can now recommend Mr. Black, on his next visit, to try the very excellent house at which we stayed. This was St. Columba's Inn. We went to it, not so much to do honor to the saint as because it was the biggest in the place, the nearest to the cathedral, and commanded the finest view.

IN THE TRANSEPT OF THE CATHEDRAL, IONA.

Southward, it looked to the broken walls of the nunnery rising high above house roofs and chimneys, and farther to a sweep of water, and farther still to the Ross of Mull, the low black rock of Erraid, the isle Mr. Stevenson has made famous, at its far end. In the distance, shadowy islands lay over the gray sea. To the north was the cathedral and the ruined monastery.

The inn was quite full, but the landlady promised us a room in the manse, a short way down the road.

Iona is the show-place by which we fancied the Duke of Argyll must hope to answer the question, once in a great while asked, about misery, terrorism, extortion, rent, in the Hebrides. Strangers come to the islands only to fish or to shoot. It is the exception when, as at Iona, there are sights to be seen. They have time to give only a glance to the Islander and his home. In Iona this home seems decent enough; if you stop to ask the Islander what he thinks, however, I doubt if it will be praise alone you will hear of his model landlord. Above the stony beach, where boats lie among the rocks, is the village street, lined with white cottages; and beyond, fields of tall grain and good pasture slope upward to the foot of the low green hills, whose highest peak rises to the north of the village, a background for the cathedral. Many of the cottages are new, others are whitewashed into comparative cheerfulness. The crops on the lower ground, the sheep and cattle on the hills, are pleasanter to see in an island where men live than endless wastes of heather. In Iona the civilization of the monks of the Dark Ages has survived even the modern sportsman.