Little Rivers [24]
and
past the dark hills of Skye, and through the unnumbered flocks of
craggy islets where the sea-birds nest, the spell of the sweet
Highland maid drew us, and we were pilgrims to the Ultima Thule
where she lived and reigned.
The Lewis, with its tail-piece, the Harris, is quite a sizable
island to be appended to such a country as Scotland. It is a
number of miles long, and another number of miles wide, and it has
a number of thousand inhabitants--I should say as many as three-
quarters of an inhabitant to the square mile--and the conditions of
agriculture and the fisheries are extremely interesting and
quarrelsome. All these I duly studied at the time, and reported in
a series of intolerably dull letters to the newspaper which
supplied a financial basis for my sentimental journey. They are
full of information; but I have been amused to note, after these
many years, how wide they steer of the true motive and interest of
the excursion. There is not even a hint of Sheila in any of them.
Youth, after all, is a shamefaced and secretive season; like the
fringed polygala, it hides its real blossom underground.
It was Sheila's dark-blue dress and sailor hat with the white
feather that we looked for as we loafed through the streets of
Stornoway, that quaint metropolis of the herring-trade, where
strings of fish alternated with boxes of flowers in the windows,
and handfuls of fish were spread upon the roofs to dry just as the
sliced apples are exposed upon the kitchen-sheds of New England in
September, and dark-haired women were carrying great creels of fish
on their shoulders, and groups of sunburned men were smoking among
the fishing-boats on the beach and talking about fish, and sea-
gulls were floating over the houses with their heads turning from
side to side and their bright eyes peering everywhere for
unconsidered trifles of fish, and the whole atmosphere of the
place, physical, mental, and moral, was pervaded with fish. It was
Sheila's soft, sing-song Highland speech that we heard through the
long, luminous twilight in the pauses of that friendly chat on the
balcony of the little inn where a good fortune brought us
acquainted with Sam Bough, the mellow Edinburgh painter. It was
Sheila's low sweet brow, and long black eyelashes, and tender blue
eyes, that we saw before us as we loitered over the open moorland,
a far-rolling sea of brown billows, reddened with patches of bell-
heather, and brightened here and there with little lakes lying wide
open to the sky. And were not these peat-cutters, with the big
baskets on their backs, walking in silhouette along the ridges, the
people that Sheila loved and tried to help; and were not these
crofters' cottages with thatched roofs, like beehives, blending
almost imperceptibly with the landscape, the dwellings into which
she planned to introduce the luxury of windows; and were not these
Standing Stones of Callernish, huge tombstones of a vanished
religion, the roofless temple from which the Druids paid their
westernmost adoration to the setting sun as he sank into the
Atlantic--was not this the place where Sheila picked the bunch of
wild flowers and gave it to her lover? There is nothing in
history, I am sure, half so real to us as some of the things in
fiction. The influence of an event upon our character is little
affected by considerations as to whether or not it ever happened.
There were three churches in Stornoway, all Presbyterian, of
course, and therefore full of pious emulation. The idea of
securing an American preacher for an August Sabbath seemed to fall
upon them simultaneously, and to offer the prospect of novelty
without too much danger. The brethren of the U. P. congregation,
being a trifle more gleg than the others, arrived first at the inn,
and secured the promise of a morning sermon from Chancellor Howard
Crosby. The session of the Free Kirk came in a body a little
past the dark hills of Skye, and through the unnumbered flocks of
craggy islets where the sea-birds nest, the spell of the sweet
Highland maid drew us, and we were pilgrims to the Ultima Thule
where she lived and reigned.
The Lewis, with its tail-piece, the Harris, is quite a sizable
island to be appended to such a country as Scotland. It is a
number of miles long, and another number of miles wide, and it has
a number of thousand inhabitants--I should say as many as three-
quarters of an inhabitant to the square mile--and the conditions of
agriculture and the fisheries are extremely interesting and
quarrelsome. All these I duly studied at the time, and reported in
a series of intolerably dull letters to the newspaper which
supplied a financial basis for my sentimental journey. They are
full of information; but I have been amused to note, after these
many years, how wide they steer of the true motive and interest of
the excursion. There is not even a hint of Sheila in any of them.
Youth, after all, is a shamefaced and secretive season; like the
fringed polygala, it hides its real blossom underground.
It was Sheila's dark-blue dress and sailor hat with the white
feather that we looked for as we loafed through the streets of
Stornoway, that quaint metropolis of the herring-trade, where
strings of fish alternated with boxes of flowers in the windows,
and handfuls of fish were spread upon the roofs to dry just as the
sliced apples are exposed upon the kitchen-sheds of New England in
September, and dark-haired women were carrying great creels of fish
on their shoulders, and groups of sunburned men were smoking among
the fishing-boats on the beach and talking about fish, and sea-
gulls were floating over the houses with their heads turning from
side to side and their bright eyes peering everywhere for
unconsidered trifles of fish, and the whole atmosphere of the
place, physical, mental, and moral, was pervaded with fish. It was
Sheila's soft, sing-song Highland speech that we heard through the
long, luminous twilight in the pauses of that friendly chat on the
balcony of the little inn where a good fortune brought us
acquainted with Sam Bough, the mellow Edinburgh painter. It was
Sheila's low sweet brow, and long black eyelashes, and tender blue
eyes, that we saw before us as we loitered over the open moorland,
a far-rolling sea of brown billows, reddened with patches of bell-
heather, and brightened here and there with little lakes lying wide
open to the sky. And were not these peat-cutters, with the big
baskets on their backs, walking in silhouette along the ridges, the
people that Sheila loved and tried to help; and were not these
crofters' cottages with thatched roofs, like beehives, blending
almost imperceptibly with the landscape, the dwellings into which
she planned to introduce the luxury of windows; and were not these
Standing Stones of Callernish, huge tombstones of a vanished
religion, the roofless temple from which the Druids paid their
westernmost adoration to the setting sun as he sank into the
Atlantic--was not this the place where Sheila picked the bunch of
wild flowers and gave it to her lover? There is nothing in
history, I am sure, half so real to us as some of the things in
fiction. The influence of an event upon our character is little
affected by considerations as to whether or not it ever happened.
There were three churches in Stornoway, all Presbyterian, of
course, and therefore full of pious emulation. The idea of
securing an American preacher for an August Sabbath seemed to fall
upon them simultaneously, and to offer the prospect of novelty
without too much danger. The brethren of the U. P. congregation,
being a trifle more gleg than the others, arrived first at the inn,
and secured the promise of a morning sermon from Chancellor Howard
Crosby. The session of the Free Kirk came in a body a little