At twelve it was bed-time. I had a chamber to myself, which, in eleven rooms to forty people, was more than my share. How the company and the family were distributed, is not easy to tell. Macleod, the chieftain, and Boswell, and I, had all single chambers, on the first floor. There remained eight rooms only, for, at least, seven and thirty lodgers. I suppose they put up temporary beds in the dining-room, where they stowed all the young ladies. There was a room above stairs with six beds, in which they put ten men. The rest in my next.
XXIV.—To MRS. THRALE.
Ostich in Skie, Sept. 30, 1773.
DEAREST MADAM,—I am still confined in Skie. We were unskilful travellers, and imagined that the sea was an open road, which we could pass at pleasure; but we have now learned, with some pain, that we may still wait, for a long time, the caprices of the equinoctial winds, and sit reading or writing, as I now do, while the tempest is rolling the sea, or roaring in the mountains. I am now no longer pleased with the delay; you can hear from me but seldom, and I cannot at all hear from you. It comes into my mind, that some evil may happen, or that I might be of use while I am away. But these thoughts are vain; the wind is violent and adverse, and our boat cannot yet come. I must content myself with writing to you, and hoping that you will sometime receive my letter. Now to my narrative.
Sept. 9th. Having passed the night as is usual, I rose, and found the dining-room full of company; we feasted and talked, and when the evening came it brought musick and dancing. Young Macleod, the great proprietor of Skie, and head of his clan, was very distinguishable; a young man of nineteen, bred awhile at St. Andrew's, and afterwards at Oxford, a pupil of G. Strahan. He is a young man of a mind, as much advanced as I have ever known; very elegant of manners, and very graceful in his person. He has the full spirit of a feudal chief; and I was very ready to accept his invitation to Dunvegan. All Raarsa's children are beautiful. The ladies, all, except the eldest, are in the morning dressed in their hair. The true highlander never wears more than a riband on her head, till she is married.
On the third day Boswell went out, with old Malcolm, to see a ruined castle, which he found less entire than was promised, but he saw the country. I did not go, for the castle was, perhaps, ten miles off, and there is no riding at Raarsa, the whole island being rock or mountain, from which the cattle often fall, and are destroyed. It is very barren, and maintains, as near as I could collect, about seven hundred inhabitants, perhaps ten to a square mile. In these countries you are not to suppose that you shall find villages or inclosures. The traveller wanders through a naked desert, gratified sometimes, but rarely, with the sight of cows, and now and then finds a heap of loose stones and turf, in a cavity between rocks, where a being, born with all those powers which education expands, and all those sensations which culture refines, is condemned to shelter itself from the wind and rain. Philosophers there are, who try to make themselves believe, that this life is happy; but they believe it only while they are saying it, and never yet produced conviction in a single mind; he whom want of words or images sunk into silence still thought, as he thought before, that privation of pleasure can never please, and that content is not to be much envied, when it has no other principle than ignorance of good.
This gloomy tranquillity, which some may call fortitude, and others, wisdom, was, I believe, for a long time, to be very frequently found in these dens of poverty; every man was content to live like his neighbours, and, never wandering from home, saw no mode of life preferable to his own, except at the house of the laird, or the laird's nearest relations, whom he considered as a superiour order of beings, to whose luxuries or honours he had no pretensions. But the end of this reverence and submission seems now approaching; the highlanders have learned, that there are countries less bleak and barren than their own, where, instead of working for the laird, every man will till his own ground, and eat the produce of his own labour. Great numbers have been induced, by this discovery, to go, every year, for some time past, to America. Macdonald and Macleod, of Skie, have lost many tenants and many labourers; but Raarsa has not yet been forsaken by a single inhabitant.
Rona is yet more rocky and barren than Raarsa, and, though it contains, perhaps, four thousand acres, is possessed only by a herd of cattle and the keepers.
I find myself not very able to walk upon the mountains, but one day I went out to see the walls, yet standing, of an ancient chapel. In almost every island the superstitious votaries of the Romish church erected places of worship, in which the drones of convents, or cathedrals, performed the holy offices; but, by the active zeal of protestant devotion, almost all of them have sunk into ruin. The chapel at Raarsa is now only considered as the burying-place of the family, and, I suppose, of the whole island.
We would now have gone away, and left room for others to enjoy the pleasures of this little court; but the wind detained us till the 12th, when, though it was Sunday, we thought it proper to snatch the opportunity of a calm day. Raarsa accompanied us in his six-oared boat, which, he said, was his coach and six. It is, indeed, the vehicle in which the ladies take the air, and pay their visits, but they have taken very little care for accommodations. There is no way, in or out of the boat, for a woman, but by being carried; and in the boat thus dignified with a pompous name, there is no seat, but an occasional bundle of straw. Thus we left Raarsa; the seat of plenty, civility, and cheerfulness.