And sweetly o’er the lake was heard thy strain,
Mixed with the sounding harp, O white-hair’d Allan-bane!”
CHAPTER VI.
Severe Drought—The Drive by Coach from Fort-William to Kingussie—Breakfast at Moy—Where did Scott find Dominie Sampson’s “Pro-di-gi-ous!”?—Professor Blackie’s Poem on Glencoe.
That the people of Lochaber and the Western Isles should be rejoicing in the advent of heavy rains [August 1869], and seriously glad at the reappearance of clouds in the heavens and mists upon the mountain tops, may seem odd enough to those who know anything of our usual meteorological characteristics; yet true it is, and of a verity that so it is, for here, as elsewhere, the heat was for many consecutive weeks intense, and the parching drought and fierce glare of a summer’s sun from a constantly unclouded sky well nigh unbearable by man or beast, whether in the sheltered valley, where for days and days no breath of air shook the tiniest leaflet or ruffled the surface of the sullen tarn, or on the upland moor, where, if breath of air there was, it was hot and stifling as the breath of a furnace. Were it not for the occasional sea breezes, that sometimes of an evening swept over the almost pulseless deep, and copious falls of blessed night-dews, we should have been badly off indeed. But, as matters have turned out, we have much reason to be thankful, for if our crops are not quite so heavy as in average years, they are at least of excellent quality, and being ripe sooner than usual, we have a chance of getting them secured in a condition that will add immensely to their value. So thorough and persistent was the drought even with us, that springs failed that never before were known to refuse their waters to the thirsty; and water-courses that heretofore, even in the driest years, still presented shady pools connected by purling rivulets, were for weeks together arid and waterless as the course of an ancient lava stream. As you wandered among the hills you could set your fusee alight on a stone in a torrent bed over which in ordinary summers rolls a volume of foaming waters. The demand for beer wherever you went was in these circumstances something wonderful; and at times, on the arrival of coach or steamer with its load of panting tourists, the bawling from husky throats for a supply—an instant and copious supply—of the delicious liquid was sufficiently amusing. One of the happiest illustrations of the proverbial close treading of the ridiculous on the heels of the sublime, and the wafer-like thinness of the partition that divides the sentimental from the absurd, was Dr. Johnson’s celebrated parody on the quasi-sentimental style of poetry so much in vogue in his latter years—and sooth to say too much in vogue in our day as well—a style as unlike the school of Pope as you can well imagine, and the very antipodes of the sturdily masculine and didactic strains which Johnson, an intellectual giant—for there were giants in these days—alone accounted true poetry:—
“Hermit hoar, in solemn cell,
Wearing out life’s evening grey,
Smite thy bosom, sage, and tell