Indeed, my feelings of appreciation were very much on the same par with those experiences when, in Japan, we were expected to sit on the mats with our lower limbs doubled up, or tied in a knot, during hours of personal agony. These classic performances were manifestly full of delight to the cultured admirers of pose and motion, in the “No” dances, though insufferably tedious to those whose legs had fallen asleep. Even in later times, when chairs were provided and the accessories were suggestive of comfort, there was not enough in the dancing of the “No” operatic performers or in the antics of the geisha, to serve as magnets.
It was easy to explain, however, why and wherefore Scottish cheeks are so suggestive of rose gardens, and also why consumption is so common. The rain did indeed redden the complexions, but as to the number of cases of pneumonia, or tuberculosis, which ensued after exposure on this chilly day, we cannot inform our readers, not having the statistics at hand. To this, however, we can testify, that when we got back to Room No. 6, of the Waverley Hotel, we were the subjects of a sort of telepathy that enabled us to feel profound sympathy with Peary when in search of the North Pole. Never did a grate full of live coals seem more welcome. We almost literally hung up ourselves, or at least what had been our outward semblance, to dry. When properly desiccated, we retired early, in order the more to enjoy the glorious island voyage among the Highlands which we knew awaited us next morning.
It was genuine Scotch weather when we woke up and looked out upon a landscape dominated by Ben Nevis, of whose towering form we could catch glimpses now and then through the cloud rifts, while on the hills around us lay patches and lines of snow. At times we were in that “Scotch mist,” in which, as hostile critics declare, the metaphysicians who live north of the Tweed do at times get lost. Just when it began or left off raining might have puzzled a weather bureau man to tell. As for ourselves, we could have taken oath as to our own inability if we had been called upon in court. If a jury had been empanelled, then and there, to determine whether it was or was not raining, the verdict in either case would undoubtedly have been, as became the country, “Not proven.”
Nevertheless, after we had crossed the gangway of the boat, a sister ship to the Gondolier of yesterday, and looked over the landscape, from both starboard and port side, we began to think it was true, as Professor Blaikie once said, that “Scotland is like a pebble, it requires rain to bring out its colors.” It is certain that many spots in this charming glen did look like the water lines, waves, and layers of varied tints which we have seen on the surfaces of chalcedony.
When at the lapidary’s I used to watch the process of cutting in half a stone, rolled for many ages mayhap and ground daily on the outside by glacial or stream action, it seemed for a few seconds as if the diamond saw, revolving with its irresistible edge, was to cut in vain and reveal nothing. From an outward view all beauty was hidden and the pebble seemed thoroughly ugly and uninteresting. Nor could I guess that treasures were hidden in the interior; but when the hemispheres were in our hands, emerging from their baptism in clean water, there was revealed, if the stone were hollow, a grotto of crystals, rich in Nature’s heraldry of color, telling the story of its fiery past. It seemed a more wonderful story, in fact, than that of Ali Baba and Open Sesame in fiction. Or, if solid, and, like Venus, born from water, and formed in slow deposit of liquid instead of from the cosmic flames, the curvilinear strata white, ruby red, black, yellow, and brown, seemed to excel in splendor.
Even so, to-day Scotland revealed herself as a new wonderland. The Caledonian pebble seemed a sapphire. For when, toward noon, something like dry weather arrived and sunbursts were occasional, Scotland looked as fresh as her maidens and almost as beautiful. We passed cataracts in full activity. One, which we did not see, ninety feet high and probably the finest on the great island, was near Fort Augustus. Beyond this, called “Foyers,” was another fall thirty feet high. To one, however, who has seen Niagara a hundred times, and who dwells near Taughannock Falls, which are thirty feet higher, and near Lake Cayuga, with two hundred waterfalls within a radius of twenty miles, a cataract must be out of the ordinary to be visited at the expenditure of time and money, when both these assets are limited and things more novel are to be seen. In our home town of Ithaca, as we two Americans mused, in that conceit and love of business peculiar to our nationals, we have a “local Niagara” over eighty feet high. Why visit Foyers?
At one of the lochs, we saw an Irishman, with the popular and traditional face, shape, and garb; that is, of the kind we read about in novels and see on the stage. He had on brogans, short breeches split in the end at the knees, woollen stockings, a small and short-tailed coat, a stumpy shillaly, a narrow-brimmed high hat, with pipe stuck in the front band and a shamrock set in another place. Besides bog-trotters’ capers and the dancing of an Irish jig, he sang songs which recalled boyhood’s memories in Philadelphia. After the potato famine in Ireland, the Emerald Isle was semi-depopulated, and the emigrant ships, despite the Know-Nothings, set their prows in fleets to the Land of Hope. I often saw seven ships a day bringing over the raw material of citizenship. Some of the girls, as we learned from our household experience in employing domestics, had never gone up—though on ship and with us, at first, they came backwards down—a pair of stairs. Such green but promising maids had never dwelt in a house built with more than one story, or touched a faucet, or lighted a gas jet. The Irishman’s song, in which his mention of Philadelphia was mnemonic, was delightful to hear. Another song, which as a child I heard my father’s coal-drivers and coal-heavers sing, told of travels nearer home, and of this I caught the words. They ran thus:—
“I cut my stick and greased my brogues—
’T was in the month of May, sir:
And off to England I did go