Hebrid. Tour to plunge in! There will be less harbour for vermin about me when I am stripped." Dr. Johnson said, he was like one hesitating whether to go into the cold bath. At last he resolved too. I observed he might serve a campaign. JOHNSON. "I could do all that can be done by patience: whether I should have strength enough, I know not." He was in excellent humour. To see the Rambler as I saw him to-night, was really an amusement. I yesterday told him, I was thinking of writing a poetical letter to him, on his return from Scotland, in the style of Swift's humorous epistle in the character of Mary Gulliver to her husband, Captain Lemuel Gulliver, on his return to England from the country of the Houyhnhums: "At early morn I to the market haste, Studious in ev'ry thing to please thy taste. Three shillings cost the first, the last seven groats; He laughed, and asked in whose name I would write 66 After we had offered up our private devotions, and had chatted a little from our beds, Dr. Johnson said, "GOD bless us both, for Jesus Christ's sake! Good night." I pronounced "Amen.” He fell asleep immediately. I was not so fortunate for a long time. I fancied myself bit by innumerable vermin under the clothes; and that a spider was travelling from the wainscot towards my mouth. At last I fell into insensibility. Hebrid. Wednesday, 1st September.—I awaked very early. Tour to I began to imagine that the landlord, being about to emigrate, might murder us to get our money, and lay it upon the soldiers in the barn. Such groundless fears will arise in the mind, before it has resumed its vigour after sleep. Dr. Johnson had had the same kind of ideas; for he told me afterwards, that he considered so many soldiers, having seen us, would be witnesses, should any harm be done, and that circumstance, I suppose, he considered as a security. When I got up, I found him sound asleep in his miserable sty, as I may call it, with a coloured handkerchief tied round his head. With difficulty could I awaken him. It reminded me of Henry the Fourth's fine soliloquy on sleep, for there was here as uneasy a pallet as the poet's imagination could possibly conceive. 1 A red coat of the 15th regiment, whether officer, or only serjeant, I could not be sure, came to the house, in his way to the mountains to shoot deer, which it seems the Laird of Glenmorison does not hinder any one to do. Few, indeed, can do them harm. We had him to breakfast with us. We got away about eight. M'Queen walked some miles to give us a convoy. He had, in 1745, joined the Highland army at Fort Augustus, and continued in it till after the battle of Culloden. As he narrated the particulars of that ill-advised, but brave attempt, I could not refrain from tears. There is a certain association of ideas in my mind upon that subject, by which I am strongly affected. The very Highland names, or the sound of a bagpipe, will stir my blood, and fill me with a mixture of melancholy and respect for courage; with pity for an unfortunate and su [Shakspeare's Henry the Fourth, act iii., scene 1.-ED.] Hebrid. perstitious regard for antiquity, and thoughtless inclination for war; in short, with a crowd of sensations with which sober rationality has nothing to do. We passed through Glensheal', with prodigious mountains on each side. We saw where the battle was fought, in the year 1719. Dr. Johnson owned he was now in a scene of as wild nature as he could see; but he corrected me sometimes in my inaccurate observations. "There," said I, " is a mountain like a cone." JOHNSON. "No, sir. It would be called so in a book; and when a man comes to look at it, he sees it is not so. It is indeed pointed at the top; but one side of it is larger than the other." Another mountain I called immense. JOHNSON. "No; it is no more than a considerable protuberance." We came to a rich green valley, comparatively speaking, and stopped a while to let our horses rest and eat grass3. We soon afterwards came to Auch * 1 [In 1719, Spain projected an invasion of Scotland in behalf of the Chevalier, and destined a great force for that purpose, under the command of the Duke of Ormond. But owing to storms, only three frigates, with three hundred or four hundred Spaniards on board, arrived in Scotland. They had with them the banished Earl of Seaforth, chief of the Mackenzies, a man of great power, exiled for his share in the rebellion of 1715. He raised a considerable body of Highlanders of his own and friendly clans, and disembarking the Spaniards, came as far as the great valley called Glensheal, in the West Highlands. General Wightman marched against them from Inverness with a few regular forces, and several of the Grants, Rosses, Munros, and other clans friendly to government. He found the insurgents in possession of a very strong pass called Strachel, from which, after a few days' skirmishing, they retired, Seaforth's party not losing a man, and the others having several slain. But the Earl of Seaforth was dangerously wounded in the shoulder, and obliged to be carried back to the ships. His clan deserted or dispersed, and the Spaniards surrendered themselves prisoners of war to General Wightman.-WALTER SCOTT.] [This was hypercritical; the hill is indeed not a cone, but it is like one.— WALTER SCOTT.] 3 Dr. Johnson, in his Journey, thus beautifully describes his situation here: "I sat down on a bank, such as a writer of romance might have delighted to feign. I had, indeed, no trees to whisper over my head, but a clear rivulet streamed at my feet. The day was calm, the air soft, and all was rudeness, silence, and solitude. Before me, and on either side, were high hills, which, by hindering the eye from ranging, forced the mind to find entertainment for itself. Whether I spent the hour well, I know not; for here I first conceived the thought of this narration." The Critical Reviewers, with a spirit and expression worthy of the subject, say, "We congratulate the publick on the event with which this quotation concludes, and are fully persuaded that the hour in which the entertaining traveller conceived this narrative will be considered, by Hebrid. nasheal, a kind of rural village, a number of cottages Tour to being built together, as we saw all along in the Highlands. We passed many miles this day without seeing a house, but only little summer huts, called shielings. Even Campbell, servant to Mr. Murchison, factor to the Laird of Macleod in Glenelg, ran along with us to-day. He was a very obliging fellow. At Auchnasheal, we sat down on a green turf-seat at the end of a house; they brought us out two wooden dishes of milk, which we tasted. One of them was frothed like a syllabub. I saw a woman preparing it with such a stick as is used for chocolate, and in the same manner. We had a considerable circle about us, men, women, and children, all M'Craas', Lord Seaforth's people. Not one of them could speak English. I observed to Dr. Johnson, it was much the same as being with a tribe of Indians. JOHNSON. "Yes, sir, but not so terrifying." I gave all who chose it snuff and tobacco. Governor Trapaud had made us buy a quantity at Fort Augustus, and put them up in small parcels. I also gave each person a piece of wheat bread, which they had never tasted before. I then gave a penny apiece to each child. I told Dr. Johnson of this: upon which he called to Joseph and our guides, for change for a shilling, and declared that he would distribute among the children. Upon this being announced in Erse, every reader of taste, as a fortunate event in the annals of literature. Were it suitable to the task in which we are at present engaged, to indulge ourselves in a poetical flight, we would invoke the winds of the Caledonian mountains to blow for ever, with their softest breezes, on the bank where our author reclined, and request of Flora, that it might be perpetually adorned with the gayest and mest fragrant productions of the year."-BosWELL. [The Mac Raes are an example of what sometimes occurred in the Highlands, a clan who had no chief or banner of their own, but mustered under that of another tribe. They were originally attached to the Frasers, but on occasion of an intermarriage, they were transferred to the Mackenzies, and have since mustered under Seaforth's standard. They were always, and are still, a set of bold hardy men, as much attached to the Caberfae (or stag's head) as the Mackenzies, to whom the standard properly belongs.-WALTER SCOTT.] Hebrid. Tour to there was a great stir; not only did some children come running down from neighbouring huts, but I observed one black-haired man, who had been with us all along, had gone off, and returned, bringing a very young child. My fellow traveller then ordered the children to be drawn up in a row, and he dealt about his copper, and made them and their parents all happy. The poor M'Craas, whatever may be their present state, were of considerable estimation in the year 1715, when there was a line in a song: “And aw the brave M'Craas are coming 1." There was great diversity in the faces of the circle around us; some were as black and wild in their appearance as any American savages whatever. One woman was as comely almost as the figure of Sappho, as we see it painted. We asked the old woman, the mistress of the house where we had the milk (which, by the by, Dr. Johnson told me, for I did not observe it myself, was built not of turf, but of stone), what we should pay. She said, what we pleased. One of our guides asked her, in Erse, if a shilling was enough. She said, "Yes." But some of the men bade her ask more. This vexed me; because it showed a desire to impose upon strangers, as they knew that even a shilling was high payment. The The M'Craas, or Macraes, were, since that time, brought into the king's army, by the late Lord Seaforth. When they lay in Edinburgh Castle, in 1778, and were ordered to embark for Jersey, they, with a number of other men in the regiment, for different reasons, but especially an apprehension that they were to be sold to the East India Company, though inlisted not to be sent out of Great Britain without their own consent, made a determined mutiny, and encamped upon the lofty mountain, Arthur's Seat, where they remained three days and three nights, bidding defiance to all the force in Scotland. At last they came down, and embarked peaceably, having obtained formal articles of capitulation, signed by Sir Adolphus Oughton, commander-in-chief, General Skene, deputy commander, the Duke of Buccleugh, and the Earl of Dunmore, which quieted them. Since the secession of the Commons of Rome to the Mons Sacer, a more spirited exertion has not been made. I gave great attention to it from first to last, and have drawn up a particular account of it. Those brave fellows have since served their country effectually at Jersey, and also in the East Indies, to which, after being better informed, they voluntarily agreed to go. BOSWELL. |