CHAPTER LII.
Tourist Grumblers; how to deal with them—Sea Fishing—Superstition about a Gull—Josephus—Story of Mosollam and the Augur.
With a bright sun overhead, at noon as nearly vertical as it can ever be in our latitudes, and a steady, kindly warmth, and no lack now of genial showers, our West Highlands are now [June 1876] beautiful exceedingly, almost at the height and heyday of their summer loveliness, while crops of all kinds are at their present stage all that we could wish them. Tourists in considerable numbers are already on the move; and coaches and steamers alike are beginning to carry daily increasing crowds of passengers, so delighted with the attention paid them, and the elegance and comfort of their surroundings whether afloat or ashore, that a crack with them, as you chance to forgather of an evening, is always pleasant, for the essentials of a pleasant conversation are there to begin with; they are pleased, and you are glad that it is so; the rest is all smooth sailing. You meet an occasional grumbler of course; a wretch, miserable himself, and anxious to make every one else miserable also. An extraordinary curiosity, in truth, is your thorough grumbler. The faculty would probably explain it all away by a reference to dyspepsia or some serious derangement of liver. From frequent and close study, however, of a not uninteresting phenomenon, we are rather inclined to think otherwise. In the genuine grumbler the disposition to look at things obliquely, and from a false or foreshortened point of view, seems ingrained in and interwoven with his very nature. In everything he says and does you detect a perverseness of disposition and a thrawnness of temper that you cannot believe to be temporary or accidental, but a veritable part and portion of the man’s being from the first. The old dictum about the poet, which after all is only true in a sense, is true of the grumbler absolutely. Grumblerus nascitur, non fit; he was born a grumbler, and if you put his mother in the witness box, and she chose to entertain you with reminiscences of his infancy, her testimony, we venture to say, would go to show that he kicked and screamed at existence and all the surroundings of his nursery at the earliest moment possible for such an exhibition, and that this disposition to hit out right and left indiscriminately at every one and everything, grew with his growth and strengthened with his strength, till in fulness of time he became the thoroughbred grumbler who sat opposite you at the table d’hôte a week ago, or rode with you atop of the coach yesterday. With spur on heel, and once fairly in the stirrups, your grumbler is ready to tilt, in dearth of anything more substantial, at his own shadow. Any attempt to mollify him, however well-meant and carefully worded, only makes him worse. Do what you can, he remains a grumbler still—implacable, unappeasable. As we generally meet with him here, his grievances for the most part are as to the steamer or coach by which he has travelled, and the food that he has had to eat. Try to put him right according to your view of it, and you are sure to catch it hot and heavy for your interference in a matter which he declares concerns him alone, and yet with which he has been pestering everybody that would for a moment listen to him all the way from Oban to Staffa, or from Ballachulish to Tyndrum. Give a man of this kind the softest cushion in the coziest corner of Cleopatra’s barge; the box seat in the victor’s own chariot in a triumphal procession; a first and full supply of all the delicacies at the table of Apicius of De rê Culinaria fame, and he would still be the same fault-finder and grumbler. One way of shutting up the inveterate grumbler, very effectual in most cases, is to fool him to the top of his bent—to give him line, in the piscatorial sense. If he complains that his seat on the coach is hard and the rails behind hurt his spine, assure him at once, in a confidential sort of way, that you believe the axle is horribly twisted, and is as likely as not to snap in twain just about half-way down the next incline. If he complains of the dust, give it as your candid opinion that the Road Trustees should be heavily fined for not allaying the nuisance by a properly arranged water-cart service all over the Black Mount. If he complains that the steamer trembles in all her timbers, and the steam, as it escapes at the calling-places, makes a horrible noise, agree with him at once, hinting that an explosion of the boiler is by no means an unlikely event through the carelessness of the coal-begrimed stoker, who is just then cooling himself at an open air-hole, and wiping his brow with a wisp of tow. If at dinner he abuses the soup, ask him how it could possibly be good, seeing that the water whereof it is made was taken a week ago, by means of a tarry bucket, from the third lock of the Crinan Canal? Does he abuse his salmon? Shake your head sadly, and point with your fork towards the round of beef, hinting that at this season cattle sometimes die a natural death, and then their carcasses are to be had for a third of the market price of good beef. Go with him and beyond him in this sort of way for a little, and he will soon see that you are only poking your fun at him, and the chances are that he will cease troubling you at all events with his complaints for the rest of the day. After all, however, it is but justice to observe that even your inveterate grumbler is not infrequently a much more amiable person than he seems; kind, too, after a fashion, and amazingly liberal when a proper occasion offers.
Fish are now becoming plentiful along our shores, and with a little trouble in selecting a very early or a very late hour, and watching the state of the tides, they may be caught in considerable numbers with rod and line; and irrespective of their value as an article of food, the pastime is by no means contemptible even as a matter of sport, though, sooth to say, many people live within sight of the sea for years, and know little or nothing of the amusement that may be had so readily and cheaply in this way. Those caught at present are principally whitings, lythes, and seths, or coal-fish, with an occasional sea-bream. This last is reckoned a somewhat coarse fish, but it is by no means bad eating when properly cooked and served, and you recollect as you eat that the price of mutton is something like a shilling the pound, and frequently not to be had even at that.
More prone, perhaps, to superstition in every form than their more inland brethren, our maritime population have quite a number of freits, forms, fancies, and superstitious observances, most of them only silly and harmless enough, in connection with all their sea-fishing adventures, whether with rod, net, or line. A few evenings ago, as a party of four, douce and decent men enough, were preparing to launch their boat to go a-fishing, we chanced to pass along the beach, joining them, as has long been our habit in such circumstances, for a few minutes’ conversation. Suddenly, as we were speaking, a large black-backed gull (Larus marinus) wheeled towards us out of a flock that were lazily circling about at a considerable distance seawards. Right towards us, as if on some express and special errand, came the gull, one of the largest and most beautiful of sea-birds, until he was within less than fifty yards of us, when by a change of poise, and a scarcely perceptible movement of wing, he slowly swept round our heads, screaming the while as only a black-backed gull can scream—a wild and eerie note that may be heard for a league. The gull’s business, whatever it might be, was so manifestly connected with one or all of us, or with the boat, perhaps, round which we were standing on the beach, that it could not but attract attention and provoke comment from the most unobservant. After circling some half-dozen times round and round and right above our heads, the bird, with one loud parting scream—and yet scream is not the word either; the Gaelic guileag is nearer it—and with an upward oblique sweep, so beautifully easy and effortless that it seemed the result of a simple act of volition rather than a grand pas in volitation, flew away to join his companions, who were now heard clamouring over a coal-fish goil or boil, as the Highlanders call the ebullition of the surface play of a shoal of sea-fish. The men looked at each other and at us meaningly; and at last out it came. “Small chance,” said one of them, “have we of anything like a good fishing this evening: better for us to stay at home.” “Why so?” we quietly inquired. “Well, sir,” was the response, “I never knew a gull act in that sort of way but it meant bad luck in fishing, and the non-accomplishment of one’s errand afloat, whatever it might be.” The rest agreed with the speaker, but we persuaded them, after some trouble, to proceed to their fishing-ground, to give it a trial at least; and when, at a much later hour, they returned, we were on the beach to meet them, and found that after all they had made an excellent fishing. There and then we sat down beside them as they were dividing their fish into equal shares, and told them the following story from Josephus, Against Apion. Quoting from Hecatæus, the great Jewish historian proceeds:—“As I was myself going to the Red Sea, there followed us a man, whose name was Mosollam; he was one of the Jewish horsemen who conducted us. He was a person of great courage, of a strong body, and by all allowed to be the most skilful archer that was either among the Greeks or barbarians. Now, this man, as people were in great numbers passing along the road, and a certain augur was observing an augury by a bird, and requiring them all to stand still, inquired what they staid for. Hereupon the augur showed him the bird from whence he told his augury, and told him that if the bird staid where he was, they ought all to stand still; but that if he got up and flew onward, they must go forward; but that if he flew backward, they must retire again. Mosollam made no reply, but drew his bow and shot at the bird, and hit him and killed him; and as the augur and some others were very angry, and wished imprecations upon him, he answered them thus:—‘Why are you so mad as to take this most unhappy bird into your hands? for how can this bird give us any true information concerning our march, which could not foresee how to save himself? For had he been able to foreknow what was future, he would not have come to this place, but would have been afraid lest Mosollam the Jew would shoot him as he has done, and kill him.’ ” The men, who had listened most attentively, smiled as we concluded, and agreed that Mosollam must have been a very sensible man; and vowed that for the future they would attach no more meaning or importance to a circling, screaming gull, than to the chirping of a wren in the elder bushes at the cottage doors. And what after all, the reader may ask, brought the black-backed gull circling and screaming over your heads? Well, from its great and immense spread of wing, it was probably the leader and guardian of its own particular flock, and as such thought it his duty to reconnoitre in person, in case the five men about the boat on the beach should have sinister intentions as to him or his. His scream or guileag was just his way of telegraphing the results of his observations to his distant companions; or he may have been scolding us in his own manner for our manifest intention of leaving the land, and invading what he considered his own proper element and territory, the sea. A more prosaic explanation, if it please you better, is perhaps to be found in the fact that the boat was internally largely incrusted with fish scales, and smelt strongly of fish, and that that, to one of his sensitive olfactory nerves, was the only or main attraction, the rest being mere idle curiosity, from which birds are no more exempt than men. One thing only is certain, if difficult to be accounted for, and that is, that individual gulls frequently act as this gull acted when a boat is about to put off from the shore in the fishing season, which being occasionally connected, as must sometimes happen, however accidentally, with an unsuccessful fishing adventure, gave rise to the silly superstition which, by the aid of Flavius Josephus, we were able in this instance at least successfully to combat.
CHAPTER LIII.
Heat in Mid-August—Early Planting and Sowing—Over-ripening of Crops—Medusæ—Stinging Jelly-Fish—The amount of solid matter in Jelly-Fish.
The unprecedented heat of mid-August lasted with us here precisely a fortnight [September 1876]. Beginning on the 10th, it continued with little intermission or mitigation till the 24th, when the wind suddenly chopped round to the south-west, our rainy quarter; the sky assumed the threatening aspect, an ugly interminglement of black and dark grey, with which we are only too familiar, and rain began to fall with that dour, persistent pattering, and aimless horizontal drift, which sufficed to convince the most careless and unobservant student of our West Highlands meteorology that it was neither a thunder-plump nor a mere passing shower, but a determined and regular “set-in” of probably some days, or, it might be, of some weeks’ duration. The last ten days have accordingly been more or less wet, and as the corn over the country generally is about ripe for scythe and sickle, many an anxious eye is cast heavenwards with wistfullest glance, morning, noon, and night, in hopes of a change of wind and a return to fair weather. We are about tired of advocating the advantages of early sowing to our friends of the West Highlands. We are content with once again stating the fact that, having sown early, our own corn was cut in ripe and good condition on the 17th August, and safely housed without having once been touched by a single drop of rain. A single armful of such well-preserved provender is worth a whole back-burden of the washed-out and sapless stuff that usually goes by the name of “wintering” and “winter keep” in this and the neighbouring districts. It is proper to say, however, that, though so difficult to move to an earlier date in corn-sowing, our people here have of recent years been more amenable to good advice in the matter of potato culture. This year a large breadth of potatoes was planted in March and early April, and the consequence is that these are now nearly ripe, and of the best quality, stronger too, and in every way better able to resist the attacks of blight—absit omen!—should it unfortunately come their way, as we hope it won’t; while the still green and half-ripe tubers of later plantings would probably suffer largely under a similar visitation. Not even when it is quite ready for the sickle do people generally cut their corn timeously. Too often it is allowed to ripen overmuch, till the straw is over-dry and sapless, besides the inevitable loss of grain in the stooking and subsequent ingathering. It is very much the same with hay. As a rule, it is left too long uncut, by which its quality is sadly deteriorated. Nor is this mistake in haymaking peculiar to the west coast, but much too common over all the country. Even in Morayshire and about Inverness the hay crop is, as a rule, allowed to ripen over-much. If it were cut ten days or a fortnight earlier it would weigh more, smell sweeter, be more nutritious, and better every way than under the present system, which allows it not merely to ripen, but to more than ripen, to wither up and lose most of its sap and seed before it is cut and secured. It may, perhaps, be laid down as an axiom that root crops cannot be allowed to ripen over-much; cereals and grasses most certainly may.
Cavill’s recent attempt to swim the Channel, in rivalry of Captain Webb’s feat, was a failure, and had medical aid not been so opportunely at hand when the swimmer, comatose and unconscious, was lifted out of the water by his friends in the attendant lugger, the venture, noteworthy, though unsuccessful, for its pluck and daring, would probably have resulted in something far more serious than mere failure. In accounting for his non-success, and his state of extreme exhaustion when taken out of the water, Cavill largely blames the jelly-fish or sea-blubber, through perfect shoals of which he had once and again to force his way; and although he wore a thin jersey, which must have been some protection, enough of the bare skin was exposed to contact with the cold, clammy, slimy Medusæ, to make him exceedingly nervous and generally uncomfortable throughout a full third of the distance covered. The number of these Medusæ to be met with at certain seasons all along the British shores is enormous; and towards the close of summer and early autumn they are more abundant, perhaps, in our western lochs than anywhere else. Looking over the boat’s side on a fine day, we have seen them in our own Loch Leven in incalculable numbers, thick as autumnal leaves in Vallambrosa, or the stars in the Milky Way—of all shapes and sizes too, swimming about aimlessly by a slow but constant contraction and expansion, regular as the beat of a pendulum, of their umbrella-like bodies, fringed like a lady’s parasol, with a close edging of thread-like cilia, and frequently having long, pendulous tentaculæ attached to their under surface, giving the healthy animal, when busy in its proper element, a very curious appearance. Though the jelly-fish is in constant motion—in perpetual motion, so to speak, for it never rests, that ever we could discover, either by night or day—its progress in the sea is rather due to the set of the wind and the tide-drift than its own exertions, its incessant labours of contraction and expansion being performed not so much for the purpose of shifting its place in the water, as for the purpose of grasping and sucking in at each contraction such microscopic organisms as form its food. It is true that in a calm and tideless sea its motions cause it to be carried in the direction of the contracting beat an inch or thereby at a time, but this progress is clearly accidental and unintentional, so far as it is concerned, the great object of the incessant contraction and expansion being, as we have said, not so much change of place as the capture and insuction of its ordinary food. The Medusæ swim at all depths in the sea, but as a rule they seem to prefer feeding within a fathom or two of the surface, particularly if the sun is bright and the sea is perfectly calm. The mouth of the Medusa is in the centre of the under concave surface, and the animal’s modus operandi in sweeping in its food towards this orifice is not difficult to understand. Stretch out your right hand, with its back or knuckle surface uppermost. First expand the hand and fingers to their full extent, then contract so as almost, but not quite, to close the hand, not quickly, but very firmly and decidedly. Continue in this way opening out and closing the hand and fingers, not quite so fast as a second’s beating pendulum oscillates, and you have the perfect analogue, or more properly the homologue, of the Medusa’s action. If you can fancy an orifice or mouth in the centre of your palm, and your fingers to be the fringe surrounding the jelly-fish disc, and if you perform the action indicated in a tub or pool of water, into which a little flour or fine oatmeal has been thrown to represent the animalculæ forming the Medusa’s food, so much the better: you will at once understand how the animalculæ and food particles are swept and sucked in by the current created towards the animal’s mouth, or gastric cavity, as it might be more properly termed. When one or more of these animals comes in contact with a swimmer’s skin, the sensation is anything but agreeable, a feeling of indescribable loathing and horror being engendered by the touch of the cold, gelatinous mass, that you are yet conscious is not dead matter, but an animated pulsating organism. But though contact with the ordinary Medusa is bad enough, there is another species of jelly-fish not uncommon in British waters at certain seasons, accidental contact with which is a very serious matter indeed. These are known to naturalists as Acalephæ, from a Greek word signifying a nettle. They are not so numerous on our shores as the true Medusa, but they grow to a much larger size, some of them measuring eighteen, twenty, or even twenty-four inches across the disc, and thick and heavy in proportion, large enough, when fresh from the sea, to fill a tub of considerable size. If one of these wretches comes in contact with the human skin, it is found to sting like a nettle, only much more severely, and hence its scientific name. A swimmer stung by contact with an acaleph feels not only the cruel smarting of the nettle-like and burning stinging, but he is in a few minutes frequently overcome by a feeling of languor and sickness, that lasts for a considerable time, and is sometimes only relieved by a violent fit of vomiting, just as if he was a sufferer for the moment under the influence of a powerful emetic. We have more than once been stung by an acaleph, and can speak feelingly on the subject. Only last season a boy on the opposite coast of Appin was, while bathing, so severely stung by one or more acalephs that he was for some days confined to bed, seriously ill, and under medical treatment. This power of stinging seems to be a wise provision in the economy of the animal, for the purpose of rendering helpless and numbing its prey, to make them easier of capture and subsequent deglutition, just as the Mysotis, or electric eel, with like purpose puts to a very important and practical use its electro-battery shocks. The true acaleph may generally be distinguished from the more harmless jelly-fish by having a good deal of colour in its tissues, being striated with red, pink, and pale green, which gives it a very beautiful appearance as under the bright sunlight it floats about, contracting and expanding with the regularity of a pendulum beat, near the surface of the calm, unruffled sea. The amount of solid matter in a jelly-fish of any kind, however large, is amazingly small. Within a thin, filmy skin, they are entirely made up of water, with a few threads spider-net-wise running through it to keep it in shape, like the ropes on which was stretched the immense velarium of an ancient amphitheatre. After a summer storm we have seen the sea-beach covered with a considerable wall of jelly-fish that had been cast ashore, a yard in breadth, perhaps, and a couple of feet in height; and before the evening of the next day, during which the sun shone out hot and clear, the whole had melted away like so much snow, leaving only a thin film of gelatinous matter, which, if gathered together in a single heap, wouldn’t have filled our venerable but still useful “Clachnacuddin” hat. There is a good story told of a farmer, somewhere from the altitudes of Druimuachdar, who took some land by the sea, not a hundred yards from our own neighbourhood. One morning he saw the beach covered with a deep ring of jelly-fish as above, and being an eident body, he got his horses and carts in order, and commenced to cart them afield, in the belief that they could not but prove excellent manure for the land. After working at the job nearly half a day, a naturalist, who chanced to pass the way, astonished the farmer not a little by assuring him that some hogsheads of sea-water, and a single pocket-handkerchief full of manure from the nearest dung-heap, would fitly and fully represent all that he had on his land in the fifty odd carts of jelly-fish that had cost him so much labour! The story goes on to say that that particular farmer looked askance at jelly-fish ever afterwards, and didn’t care much to have their natural history discussed in his presence at kirk or market, at bridal or funeral, all his life long. The fact is, that a mass of jelly-fish sufficient to load the “Great Eastern” wouldn’t probably yield a peat creelful of solid serviceable matter for any purpose or purposes whatever. The jelly-fish is known to the Gaels of the Hebrides and West Coast by a curious name—Sgeith an Róin for the smaller ones, that is, the seal’s vomit, and for the larger ones, Sgeith na Muicamara, the whale’s vomit, in the absurd belief that they were the vomits respectively of the uncanny Sealchs, of whom the Highlander had always a superstitious dread, and of the largest of marine monsters, after they had gorged themselves to repletion on a shoal of extra-oleaginous herring or mackerel. These names for the jelly-fish are doubtless absurd enough, and yet, in defence of the good old Gaelic name-givers, let us observe that they are not a whit more absurd than the Caprimulgus (goat-sucker) of Linnæus as applied to the night-jar, or the Frugilegus (corn-gatherer) of the same high authority as applied to the common rook.