SOCIAL changes in Scotland
consequent on the Union of the Crowns. Impetus given to these changes
after Culloden in the eighteenth century, and after the introduction of
steam as a motive power in the nineteenth. Posting from Scotland to
London. Stage coach travelling to England. Canal travelling between
Edinburgh and Glasgow. Loch Katrine in 1843. Influence of Walter Scott.
Steamboats to London. Railroads in Scotland. Effects of steamboat
development in the West Highlands.
When on the 5th of April,
1603, James VI. left Edinburgh with a great cavalcade of attendants, to
ascend the throne of England, a series of social changes was set in
motion in Scotland which has been uninterruptedly advancing ever since.
Its progress has not been uniform, seeing that it has fluctuated with
the access or diminution of national animosities on the two sides of the
Tweed, until, as these sources of irritation died away, the two nations
were welded into one by the arts of peace. Looking back across the three
centuries, we can recognise two epochs when the progress of change
received a marked impetus.
The first of these dates from the failure of the Jacobite cause in 1746.
At Culloden, not only were the hopes of the Stuarts finally
extinguished, but a new period was ushered in for the development of
Scotland. The abolition of the heritable jurisdictions, the extension of
the same organised legal system over every part of the kingdom, the
suppression of cattle-raids and other offences by the Highlanders
against their lowland neighbours, the building of good roads, and the
improvement of the old tracks, whereby easy communication was provided
across the country, and especially through the Highlands between the
northern and southern districts —these and other connected reforms led
to the gradual breaking down of the barrier of animosity that had long
kept Highlander and Lowlander apart, and by thus producing a freer
intercourse of the two races, greatly strengthened the community as a
whole, whether for peace or for war. On the other hand, the landing of
Prince Charles Edward, the uprise of the clans, the victory of
Preston-pans, and the invasion of England could not fail to revive and
intensify the ancient enmity of the English against their northern
neighbours. This animosity blazed out anew under the Bute
administration, when fresh fuel was added to- it from the literary side
by Wilkes and Churchill. Nevertheless the leaven of union was quietly at
work all the time. Not only did Scot commingle more freely with Scot,
but increasing facilities of communication allowed the southward tide of
migration to flow more freely across the Border. English travellers also
found their way in growing numbers into that land north of the Tweed
which for centuries had been at once scorned and feared, but which could
now be everywhere safely visited. What had been satirised as
The wretched lot
Of the poor, mean, despised, insulted Scot,
came to be the subject of banter, more or less good humoured. The
Englishman, while retaining a due sense of his own superiority, learnt
to acknowledge that his northern neighbour did really possess some good
qualities which made him not unworthy of a place in the commonwealth,
while the Scot, on his side, discovered that his ‘ auld enemies ’ of
England were far from being all mere ‘pock-puddings.’ As the result of
this greater intimacy of association, the smaller nation was necessarily
drawn more and more to assimilate itself to the speech and ways of its
larger, wealthier, and more advanced partner.
But the decline in Scottish national peculiarities during the hundred
years that followed Culloden was slow compared with that of the second
epoch, which dates from the first half of last century, when steam as a
motive power came into use, rapidly transforming our manufacturing
industries, and revolutionising the means of locomotion, alike on land
and sea. Scott in his youth saw the relics of the older time while they
were still fairly fresh and numerous, and he has left an imperishable
memorial of them in his vivid descriptions.
Cockburn beheld the last of these relics disappear, and as he lived well
on into the second of the two periods, he could mark and has graphically
chronicled the accelerated rate of change.
Those of us who, like myself, can look back across a vista of more than
three score years, and will compare what they see and hear around them
now with what they saw and heard in their childhood, will not only
realise that the social revolution has been marching along, but will be
constrained to admit that its advance has been growing perceptibly more
rapid. They must feel that the old order has indeed changed, and though
they may wish that the modern could establish itself with less
effacement of the antique, and may be disposed with Byron to cry,
Out upon Time! who for ever will leave
But enough of the past for the future to grieve,
they have, at least, the consolation of reflecting that the changes have
been, on the whole, for the better. Happily much of the transformation
is, after all, external. The fundamental groundwork of national
character and temperament continues to be but little affected. The
surface features and climate of the country, with all their profound, if
unperceived, influences on the people, remain with no appreciable
change. Even the inevitable wave of evolution does not everywhere roll
on with the same speed, but leaves outlying corners and remote parishes
unsubmerged, where we may still light upon survivals of an older day, in
men and women whose ways and language seem to carry us back a century or
more, and in customs that link us with an even remoter past.
It would be far beyond my purpose to enter into any discussion of the
connection between the causes that have given rise to these social
changes and the effects that have flowed from them. The far-reaching
results of the introduction of steam-machinery in aggregating
communities around a few centres, in depopulating the country districts,
and in altering the habits and physique of the artizans, open up a wide
subject on which I do not propose to touch. My life has been largely
passed in the rural and mountainous parts of the country, where
increased facilities for locomotion have certainly been the most obvious
direct source of change to the inhabitants, though other causes have
undoubtedly contributed less directly to bring about the general result.
It has been my good fortune to become acquainted with every district of
Scotland. There is not a county, hardly a parish, which I have not
wandered over again and again. In many of them I have spent months at a
time, finding quarters in county towns, in quiet villages, in wayside
inns, in country houses, in remote manses, in shepherds’ shielings, and
in crofters’ huts. Thrown thus among all classes of society, I have been
brought in contact with each varying phase of life of the people. During
the last twenty years, though no longer permanently resident in
Scotland, I have been led by my official duties to revisit the country
every year, even to its remotest bounds. I have also been enabled,
through the kindness of a yachting friend, to cruise all through the
Inner and Outer Hebrides. T hese favourable opportunities have allowed
me to mark the gradual decline of national peculiarities perhaps more
distinctly than would have been possible to one continuously resident.
As a slight contribution to the history of the social evolution in
Scotland, I propose in the following chapters to gather together such
reminiscences as may serve to indicate the nature and extent of the
changes of which I have been a witness, and to record a few
illustrations of the manners and customs, the habits and humour of the
people with whom I have mingled.
My memory goes back to a time before railways had been established in
Scotland, when Edinburgh and Glasgow were connected only by a coach-road
and a canal, and when stage-coaches still ran from the two cities into
England. I may therefore begin these reminiscences with some reference
to modes of travel.
Probably few readers are aware how recently roads practicable for
wheeled carriages have become general over the whole country. In the
seventeenth century various attempts were made to run stage-coaches
between Edinburgh and Leith, between Edinburgh and Haddington, and
between Edinburgh and Glasgow. But these efforts to open up
communication, even with the chief towns, appear to have met with such
scant support as to be soon abandoned. The usual mode of conveyance, for
ladies as well as gentlemen, was on horseback. A traveller writing in
1688 states that there were then no stage-coaches, for the roads would
hardly allow of them, and that although some of the magnates of the land
made use of a coach and six horses, they did so ‘with so much caution
that, besides their other attendance, they have a lusty running footman
on each side of the coach, to manage and keep it up in rough places.’ It
was probably not until after the suppression of the Jacobite rising in
1715 that road-making and road-repair were begun in earnest. For
strategic purposes, military roads were driven through the Highlands,
and this important work, which continued until far on in the century,
not only opened up the Highlands to wheeled traffic, but reacted on the
general lines of communication throughout the country.1 By the time that
railways came into operation the main roads had been well engineered and
constructed, and were fitted for all kinds of vehicles.
Before the beginning of the railroad period, the inhabitants of Scotland
had three means of locomotion into England. Those who were wealthy took
their own carriages and horses, or hired post-horses from stage to
stage. For the ordinary traveller, there were stage-coaches on land and
steamboats on the sea.
With a comfortable carriage, and the personal effects of the occupants
strapped on behind it, posting to London was one of the pleasant
incidents of the year to those who had leisure and money at command.
Repeated season after season, the journey brought the travellers into
close acquaintance with every district through which the public road
passed.
In 1773, when Mrs. Grant of Laggan, as a girl, had to make the journey
from Inveraray to Oban there was ‘no road but the path of cattle,’ ‘an
endless moor, without any road, except a small footpath, through which
our guide conducted the horses with difficulty.’—Letters from the
Mountains, 5th edit., vol. i., p. 4. Half a century later the conditions
do not seem to have altered much in that region, as shown in Dr. Norman
Macleod’s Reminiscences of a Highland Parish.
They had a far greater familiarity with the details of these districts
than can now be formed in railway journeys. They knew every village,
church, and country-house to be seen along the route, and could mark the
changes made in them from year to year. At the inns, where they halted
for the night, they were welcomed as old friends, and made to feel
themselves at home. This pleasant mode of travelling, so graphically
described in Humphry Clinker, continued in use among some county
families long after the stagecoaches had reached the culmination of
their speed and comfort. My old friend, T. F. Kennedy of Dunure, used to
describe to me the delights of these yearly journeys in his youth.
Posting into England did not die out until after the completion of the
continuous railway routes, when the failure of travellers on the road
led to the giving up of post-horses at the inns.
One of my early recollections is to have seen the London coaches start
from Princes Street, Edinburgh. Though railways were beginning to extend
rapidly over England, no line had yet entered Scotland, so that the
first part of the journey to London was made by stage-coach. There was
at that time no line of railway, with steam locomotives, leading out of
Edinburgh. Stage-coaches appear to have been tried between London and
Edinburgh as far back as 1658, for an advertisement published in May of
that year announces that they would ‘go from the George Inn without
Aldersgate to Edinburgh in Scotland\ once in three weeks for ^4 10s.,
with good coaches and fresh horses on the roads.’ In May, 1734, a coach
was advertised to perform the journey between Edinburgh and London ‘ in
nine days, or three days sooner than any other coach that travels the
road.’ An improvement in the service, made twenty years later, was thus
described in an advertisement which appeared in the Edinburgh Evening
Courant for July 1st, 1754:
‘The Edinburgh Stage-Coach, for the better accommodation of Passengers,
will be altered to a new genteel two-end Glass Machine, hung on Steel
Springs, exceeding light and easy, to go in ten days in summer and
twelve in winter; to set out the first Tuesday in March, and continue it
from Hosea Eastgate’s, the Coach and Horses in Dean Street, Soho,
London, and from John Somerville’s in the Canongate, Edinburgh, every
other Tuesday, and meet at Burrow-bridge on Saturday night, and set out
from thence on Monday morning, and get to London and Edinburgh on
Friday. In the w’inter to set out from London and Edinburgh every other
Monday morning and to go to Burrow-bridge on Saturday night; and to set
out
thence on Monday morning and get to London and Edinburgh on Saturday
night. Passengers to pay as usual. Performed, if God permits, by your
dutiful servant,
‘Hosea Eastgate.
‘Care is taken of small parcels according to their value.’
Before the end of the century the frequency, comfort, and speed of the
coaches had been considerably increased. Palmer, of the Bath Theatre,
led the way in this reform, and in the year 1788 organised a service
from London to Glasgow, which accomplished the distance of rather more
than 400 miles in sixty-five hours. Ten years later, Lord Chancellor
Campbell travelled by the same system of coaches between Edinburgh and
London, and he states that in 1798 he ‘performed the journey in three
nights and two days, Mr. Palmer s mail-coaches being then established ;
but this swift travelling was considered dangerous as well as
wonderful,—and I was gravely advised to stop a day at York, “as several
passengers who had gone through without stopping had died of apoplexy
from the rapidity of the motion.” The whole distance may now (1847) be
accomplished with ease and safety in fourteen hours.’
Passengers between Edinburgh and Glasgow before the days of railways had
a choice of two routes, either by road or by canal. As far back as the
summer of 1678, an Edinburgh merchant set up a stage-coach between the
two cities to carry six passengers, but :t appears to have had no
success. In 1743, another Edinburgh merchant offered to start a
stage-coach on the same route with six horses, to hold six passengers,
to go twice a week in summer and once in winter. But his proposal does
not appear to have met with adequate support. At last, in 1749, a kind
of covered spring-cart, known as the ‘ Edinburgh and Glasgow Caravan,’
was put upon the road and performed the journey of forty-four miles in
two days. Nine years later, in 1758, the ‘Fly,’ so called on account of
its remarkable speed, actually accomplished the distance in twelve
hours. The establishment of Palmer’s improved stage-coaches led to a
further advance in the communications between Edinburgh and Glasgow, but
it was not until 1799 that the time taken in the journey was reduced to
six hours. In my boyhood, before the stage-coaches were driven off by
the railway, various improvements on the roads, the carriages, and the
arrangements connected with the horses, had brought down the time to no
more than four hours and a half.
Much more leisurely was the transit on the Union Canal. The boats were
comfortably fitted up and were drawn by a cavalcade of horses, urged
forward by postboys. It was a novel and delightful sensation, which I
can still recall, to see fields, trees, cottages, and hamlets flit past,
as if they formed a vast moving panorama, while one seemed to be sitting
absolutely still. For mere luxury of transportation; such canal-travel
stands quite unrivalled. Among its drawbacks, however, are the long
detentions at the locks. But as everything was new to me in my first
expedition to the west, I remember enjoying these locks with the keenest
pleasure, sometimes remaining in the boat, and feeling it slowly floated
up or let down, sometimes walking along the margin and watching the rush
of the water through the gradually opening sluices.
Both the stage-coaches and the passenger boats on the canal were disused
after the opening of the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway in the spring of
1842. A few weeks subsequent to the running of the first trains, the
Glasgow Courier announced that ‘ the whole of the stage-coaches from
Glasgow and Edinburgh are now off the road, with the exception of the
six o’clock morning coach, which is kept running in consequence of its
carrying the mail bags.’
Steamboats had not yet been introduced upon the large freshwater lakes
of Scotland, except upon Loch Lomond, when I visited the Trossachs
region for the first time in 1843.
I was rowed the whole length of Loch Katrine in a boat by four stout
Highlanders, who sang Gaelic songs, to the cadence of which they kept
time with their oars. It was my first entry into the Highlands, and
could not have been more impressive. The sun was almost setting as the
boat pushed off from Stronachlachar and all the glories of the western
sky were cast upon the surrounding girdle of mountains, the reflections
of which fell unbroken on the mirror-like surface of the water. As we
advanced and the sunset tints died away, the full autumn moon rose above
the crest of Ben Venue, and touched off the higher crags with light,
while the shadows gathered in deepening black along the lower slopes and
the margin of the water. Before we reached the lower end of the lake the
silvery sheen filled all the pass of the Trossachs above the sombre
forest. The forms of the hills, the changing lights in the sky, and the
weird tunes of the boatmen combined to leave on my memory a picture as
vivid now as when it was impressed sixty years ago.
No more remarkable contrast between the present tourist traffic in this
lake region and that of the early part of last century could be supplied
than that which is revealed by an incident recorded as having occurred
about the year 1814, four years after the publication of Scott’s Lady of
the Lake. An old Highlander, who was met on the top of Ben Lomond, said
he had been a guide from the north side of the mountain for upwards of
forty years.
If this indignant mountaineer could revisit his early haunts, his
grandchildren would have a very different story to tell him of the poets
influence. For one visitor to his beloved mountain in his day there must
now be at least a hundred, almost all of whom have had their first
longing to see that region kindled by the poems and tales of Scott. No
man ever did so much to make his country known and attractive as the
Author of Waver ley has done for Scotland. His fictitious characters
have become historical personages in the eyes of the thousands of
pilgrims who every year visit the scenes he has described. In threading
the pass of the Trossachs, they try to see where Fitz James must have
lost his ‘gallant grey/ In passing Ellens Isle, they scrutinise it, if
haply any relics of her home have survived. At Coilan-togle Ford they
want to know the exact spot where the duel was fought between the King
and Roderick Dhu. At Aberfoyle they look out for the Clachan, or some
building that must stand on its site, and their hearts are comforted by
finding suspended to a tree on the village green the veritable coulter
with which Bailie Nicol Jarvie burnt the big Highlander’s plaid. So
delighted :ndeed have the tourists been with this relic of the past that
they have surreptitiously carried it off more than once, and have thus
compelled the village smith each time to manufacture a new antique.
Before steam navigation was introduced, packet ships sailed between
Leith and London carrying both passengers and goods. But as the time
taken on the journey depended on winds and waves, these vessels supplied
a somewhat uncertain and even risky mode of transit. Thus in November,
1743, an Edinburgh newspaper announced that the Edinburgh and Glasgow
packet from London, ‘after having great stress of weather for twenty
days, has lately arrived safe at Holy Island and is soon expected in
Leith harbour.’
The first steamboats that plied between Leith and London were much
smaller in size and more primitive in their appointments than their
successors of to-day. Mineral oil had not come into use, and animal and
vegetable oils were dear. Hence the saloons and cabins were lighted with
candles, and, as wicks that require no snuffing were not then in vogue,
it may be imagined that the illumination could not be brilliant, and
that candle grease was apt to descend in frequent drops upon whatever
happened to lie below. The Rev. Dr. Lindsay Alexander used to tell that
when he once accompanied a brother clergyman in the steamboat to London,
they were unable to obtain berths in any of the state-rooms, and had to
content themselves each with a sofa in the saloon. In the middle of the
night he was awakened by a groaning which seemed to come from the sofa
of his elderly friend. Starting up, he enquired if the doctor was in
pain. The answer came in a shaky voice: ‘I’m afraid—I’ve had—a stroke—of
paralysis.’ In an instant the younger man was out of bed, calling for a
light, as the candles had all burnt themselves into their sockets. When
the light came, the reverend gentleman was seen to have been lying
immediately below the drip of a guttering candle, and the drops of
tallow, falling on his cheek, had congealed there into a cake that had
gradually spread up to his eye. As he could not move the muscles of his
face, the poor man’s imagination had transferred the powerlessness to
the rest of his side. With the help of the steward, however, the
hardened grease was scraped off, and the doctor, recovering the use of
his facial muscles, was able once more to drop off to sleep.
Railroads have been unquestionably the most powerful agents of social
change in Scotland. From the opening of the first line down to the
present time, I have watched the yearly multiplication of lines, until
the existing network of them has been constructed. Had it been possible,
at the beginning, to anticipate this rapid development, and to foresee
the actual requirements of the various districts through which
branch-lines have been formed, probably the railway-map would have been
rather different from what it now is. Some local lines would never have
been built, or would have followed different routes from those actually
chosen. The competition of the rival companies has led to a wasteful
expenditure of their capital, and to the construction of lines which
either do not pay their expenses, or yield only a meagre return for the
outlay disbursed upon them. A notable instance
of the effects of this rivalry was seen in the competition of two great
companies for the construction of a line between Carnwath on the
Caledonian system and Leadburn on the North British. The country through
which the route was to be taken was sparsely peopled, being partly
pastoral, partly agricultural, but without any considerable village.
When the contest was in progress, a farmer from the district was asked
to state what he knew of traffic between Carnwath and Dolphinton, a
small hamlet in Lanarkshire. His answer was, ‘ Od, there’s an auld wife
that comes across the hills ance in a fortnicht wi’ a basket o’ ribbons,
but that’s a’ the traffic I ken o’.’ The minister of Dolphinton, being
eager to have a railway through his parish, set himself to ascertain the
number of cattle that passed along the road daily in front of his manse.
He was said to have counted the same cow many times in the same day. The
result of the competition was a compromise. Each railway company
obtained powers to construct, a new line which was to run to Dolphinton
and there terminate. And these two lines to this hamlet of a few
cottages, and not as many as 300 people, were actually constructed and
have been in operation for many years. Each of them has its terminal
station at Dolphinton, with station-master and porters. But there were
not, and so far as I know, there are not now, any rails connecting the
two lines across the road. This diminutive village thus enjoys the proud
preeminence of being perhaps the smallest place in the three kingdoms
which has two distinct terminal stations on each side of its road,
worked by two independent and rival companies.
Not long after the opening of the North British line to Dolphinton, I
spent a day at the southern end of the Pentland Hills, and in the
evening, making my way to the village, found the train with its engine
attached. The station was as solitary as a churchyard. After I had taken
my seat in one of the carriages, the guard appeared from some doorway in
the station, and I heard the engine-driver shout out to him, ‘Weel,
Jock, hae ye got your passenger in?’
The opening of a railway through some of these lonely upland regions was
a momentous event in their history. Up till then many districts which
possessed roads were not traversed by any public coach nor by many
private carriages, while in other parishes, where roads either did not
exist or were extremely bad and unfit for wheeled traffic, the sight of
a swiftly-moving train was one that drew the people from far and near.
Some time, however, had to elapse before the country-folk could accustom
themselves to the rapidity and (comparative) punctuality of railroad
travelling. When the old horse-tramways ran, it was a common occurrence
for a train to be stopped in order to pick up a passenger, or to let one
down by the roadside, and it is said that this easy-going practice used
to be repeated now and then in the early days of branch-railways. An old
lady from Culter parish, who came down to the railway not long after it
was opened, arrived at the station just as the train had started. When
told that she was too late, for the train had already gone beyond the
station, she exclaimed, ‘Dod, I maun rin then,’ and proceeded at her
highest speed along the platform, while the station-master shouted after
her to stop. She was indignant that he would not whistle for the train
to halt or come back for her.
Railway construction in the Highlands came later than it did in the
Lowlands, and entered among another race of people with different habits
from those of their southern fellow-countrymen. The natural disposition
of an ordinary Highlander would not often lead him to choose the hard
life of a navvy, and volunteer to aid in the heavy work of railway
construction. The following anecdote illustrates a racial characteristic
which probably could not have been met with in the Lowlands. During the
formation of one of the lines of railway through the Highlands a man
came to the contractor and asked for a job at the works, when the
following conversation took place :
‘ Well, Donald, you’ve come for work, have you? and what can you do?’
‘’Deed, I can do onything.’
‘Well, there’s some spade and barrow work going on; you can begin on
that.’
‘Ach, but I wadna just like to be workin’ wi’ a spade and a
wheelbarrow.’
‘O, would you not? Then yonder’s some rock that needs to be broken away.
Can you wield a pick?’
‘I wass never usin’ a pick, whatefer.’
‘Well, my man, I don’t know anything I can give you to do.’
So Donald twent away, crestfallen. But being of an observing turn of
mind, he walked along the rails, noting the work of each gang of
labourers, until he came to a signal-box, wherein he saw a man seated,
who came out now and then, waved a flag, and then resumed his seat. This
appeared to Donald to be an occupation entirely after his own heart. He
made enquiry of the man, ascertained his hours and his rate of pay, and
returned to the contractor, who, when he saw him, good-naturedly asked:
‘What, back again, Donald? Have you found out what you can do?*
‘’Deed, I have, sir. I would just like to get auchteen shullins a week,
and to do that ’ —holding out his arm and gently waving the stick he had
in his hand.
A desire to select the lightest part of the work, however, is not
peculiar to the Celtic nature, but comes out, strongly enough,
sometimes, in the Lowlands, as was illustrated by the proposal of a
quarry man to share the labour with a comrade. ‘If ye ram, Jamie,’ said
he, ‘I’ll pech’; that is, if his friend would work the heavy iron
sledge-hammer, he himself would give the puff or pant with which the
workmen accompany each stroke they make.
The unpunctuality of the railways, the dirtiness of the carriages on
branch lines, and the frequent incivility of the officials are only too
familiar to all who have to travel much upon the system of at least one
of the Scottish companies. A worthy countryman who had come from the
north-east side of the kingdom by train to Cowlairs, was told that the
next stoppage would be Glasgow. He at once began to get all his little
packages ready, and remarked to a fellow-passenger,
‘I’m sailin’ for China this week, but I’m thinkin’ I’m by the warst o’
the journey noo.’ It must be confessed, however, that the railway
officials often have their forbearance sorely tested, especially in the
large mining districts, where the roughness and violence of the mob of
passengers can sometimes hardly be held in check, and where the
temptation to retaliate after the same fashion may be difficult to
resist. Having also to be on the watch for dishonesty, they are apt to
develop a suspiciousness . which sometimes, though perhaps needlessly,
exasperates the honest traveller. Occasionally their sagacity is,
scarcely a match for the knavery of a dishonest Scot. Thus, a man, when
the ticket collector came round, was fumbling in all his pockets for his
ticket, until the official, losing patience, said he would come back for
it. When he returned, noticing that the man had the ticket between his
lips, he indignantly snatched it away. Whereupon a fellow-passenger
remarked, ‘You must be singularly absent-minded not to remember that you
had put your ticket in your mouth.’ No sae absent-minded as ye wad
think,’ was the answer; 'I was jist rubbin’ oot the auld date wi’ my
tongue.’
Perhaps the most striking evidence of the effect of increased facilities
for locomotion and traffic upon the habits of the population is
presented by the western coast of the country, or the region usually
spoken of as the West Highlands and Islands. Few parts of Britain are
now more familiar to the summer tourist than the steamboat tracks
through that region. Every year thousands of holiday-makers are carried
rapidly and comfortably in swift and capacious vessels through that
archipelago of mountainous land and blue sea. They have, as it were, a
vast panorama unrolled before them, which changes in aspect and interest
at every mile of their progress. For the most part, however, they obtain
and carry away with them merely a kind of general and superficial
impression of the scenery, though the memory of it may remain indelibly
fixed among their most delightful experiences of travel. They can have
little or no conception of the interior of those islands or of the glens
and straths of the mainland, still less of the inhabitants and their
ways and customs. Nor, as they are borne pleasantly along past headland
and cliff, can they adequately realise what the conditions of travel
were before the days of commodious passenger-steamers.
When Johnson and Boswell landed in Skye in the year 1773, there was not
a road in the whole island practicable for a wheeled carriage.
Locomotion, when not afoot, was either on horseback or by boat. The
inland bridle-tracks lay among loose boulders, over rough, bare rock, or
across stretches of soft and sometimes treacherous bog. The boats were
often leaky, the oars and rowlocks unsound, the boatmen unskilful; while
the weather, even in summer, is often boisterous enough to make the
navigation of the sea-lochs and sounds difficult or impossible for small
craft. And such continued to be the conditions in which the social life
of the West Highlands was carried on long after Johnson’s time. During
the first thirty or more years of last century the voyage from the Clyde
to Skye was made in sailing packets, and generally took from ten to
fifteen days. It was not until steamboats began to ply along the coast
that the scattered islands were brought into closer touch with each
other and with the Lowlands. To the memory of David Hutcheson, who
organised the steamboat service among the Western Highlands and Islands,
Scotland owes a debt of gratitude. The development of this service has
been the gradual evolution of some seventy years. Half a century ago it
was far from having reached its present state of advancement. There were
then no steamers up the West Coast to Skye and the Outer Hebrides, save
those which carried cargo and came round the Mull of Cantyre. During the
herring season, and about the times of the cattle-markets, the
irregularities and discomfort of these vessels can hardly be
exaggerated. When the decks were already loaded perhaps with odoriferous
barrels of herring, and when it seemed impossible that they could hold
anything more, the vessel might have to make a long detour to the head
of some mountain-girdled sea-loch to fetch away a flock of sheep, or a
herd of Highland cattle. At most of the places of call there were no
piers. Passengers had accordingly to disembark in small boats, sometimes
at a considerable distance from high-water mark, to which, perhaps in
the middle of the night, they scrambled across sea-weed and slippery
shingle.
As a steamboat called at each place in summer only once, in later years
twice, in a week, and in winter only once in a fortnight, the day of its
arrival was eagerly looked forward to by the population, in expectation
of the supplies of all kinds, as well as the letters and newspapers,
which it brought from the south. You never could be sure at what hour of
the day or night it might make its appearance, and if you expected
friends to arrive by it, or if you proposed yourself to take a passage
in it, you needed to be on the watch, perhaps for many weary hours. In
fine weather, this detention was endurable enough; but in the frequent
storms of wind and rain, much patience and some strength of constitution
were needed to withstand the effects of the exposure. The desirability
of having waiting-rooms or places of shelter of any kind is even yet not
fully realised by the Celtic mind.
The native islander, however, seemed never to feel, or at least would
never acknowledge these various inconveniences. It was so great a boon
to have the steamers at all, and he had now got so used to them that he
could not imagine a state of things different from that to which he had
grown accustomed. Nor would he willingly allow any imperfections in
David Hutcheson’s arrangements, on which he depended for all his
connection with the outer world. I remember a crofter in the island of
Eigg, who, when asked when the steamer would arrive, replied at once,
‘Weel, she’ll be cornin’ sometimes sooner, and whiles earlier, and
sometimes before that again.’ The idea of lateness was a reproach which
he would not acknowledge.
William Black, the
novelist, used to tell of an English clergyman who, having breakfasted
and paid his bill at Tobermory, was anxious for the arrival of the
steamboat that was to take him north. He made his way to the pier, and
walked up and down there for a time, but could see no sign of the
vessel. At last, accosting a Highlander, who, leaning against a wall,
was smoking a cutty-pipe, he asked him when the Skye steamer would call.
Out came the pipe, followed by the laconic answer, ‘That’s her smoke,’
and the speaker pointed in the direction of the Sound of Mull. The
traveller for a time could observe nothing to indicate the expected
vessel, but at last noticed a streak of dark smoke rising against the
Morven Hills on the far side of the island that guards the front of the
little bay of Tobermory. When at last the steamer itself rounded the
point and came fully into sight, it seemed to the clergyman a much
smaller vessel than he had supposed it would be, and he remarked to the
Highlander, ‘That the Skye steamer! that boat will surely never get to
Skye.’ The pipe was whisked out again to make way for the indignant
reply, ‘She’ll be in Skye this afternoon, if nothin’ happens to Skye.’
The order of nature might conceivably go wrong, but Hutcheson’s
arrangements could be absolutely depended upon.
The captains of these steamers were personages of some consequence on
the west coast. Usually skilful pilots and agreeable men, they came to
be on familiar terms with the lairds and farmers all along their route,
whom they were always glad to oblige and from whom they received in
return many tangible proofs of recognition and good-will. At the end of
a visit which I had been paying to friends on the south coast of Mull,
the captain, to whom my kind host had previously written, brought his
vessel a little out of his way in order to pick me up. The shore being
full of rocks and reefs, my boat had to pull some distance out to the
steamer, so that the tourist passengers had time to gratify their
curiosity by crowding to one side to see the cause of this unusual
stoppage. When the boat came alongside its cargo was transhipped in the
following order: first a letter for the captain, next a live sheep, then
a portmanteau, and lastly myself. There were many inquisitive glances at
the scantiness of my flock, but the sheep had been sent as a present
from my host to the captain, in recognition of some little services
which he had lately been rendering to the family.
I have known a number of these captains, and have often been struck with
their quiet dignity and good nature in circumstances that must have
tried their temper and patience. They had much responsibility, and must
often have had anxious moments in foggy or stormy weather. Now and then
a vessel met with an accident, or was even shipwrecked, but the rarity
of such always possible mishaps afforded good proof of the skilful
seamanship with which the Hutcheson fleet was handled. There was always
a heavy traffic in goods. Scores of cases, boxes, barrels, and parcels
of all conceivable shapes and sizes had to be taken on board and
distributed at the various places of call. Live stock had to be
adequately accommodated, and the varying times and direction of the
tides had to be allowed for. Then there was the tourist-traffic, which,
though small in those days compared with what it has now grown to,
required constant care and watchfulness. Not improbably the human part
of his cargo gave a captain more trouble than the rest. The average
tourist is apt to be selfish and unreasonable, ready to find fault if
everything does not go precisely as he wished and expected. He is
usually inquisitive, too, and doubtless asks the same questions that are
put to the captain and seamen of the ship season after season. He has
formed certain anticipations in his own mind of what he is to see, and
when these are not quite realised he wants to know why. A common
hallucination among travellers south of the Tweed clothes every
Highlander in a kilt, and surprise is often expressed that the ‘ garb of
old Gaul ’ is so seldom seen. The answer of one of David Hutcheson’s
officers should suffice for all who give vent to this surprise: ‘Oh no,
nobody wears the kilt here but fools and Englishmen.’
Various anecdotes are in circulation about the passengers and crew of
these western steamboats. One of these narratives, of which different
versions have been told, relates how on a dull, drizzling, and misty
evening, when every attention had to be given to the rather intricate
navigation, a lady began to ask questions of the man at the wheel. He
answered her as briefly as possible for a time; but, as she still plied
him with queries, he at last lost his temper and abruptly desired her to
go to the nether regions. She retired in high dudgeon and sought out the
captain, insisting that the man should be discharged, and that she would
report the matter to Mr. Hutcheson. The captain tried to soothe her,
expressing his own regret at the language that had been used to her, and
assuring her that he would make the man apologise to her for his
conduct, She thereupon went down to the saloon and poured out her
indignation to some of her fellow-passengers. In the midst of her talk,
a man in dripping oilskins and cap in /hand appeared at the door, and,
after some hesitation and looking round the company, advanced to the
irate lady and said, ‘Are you the leddy I tellt to gang to hell? Weel,
the captain says ye needna gang yet.’ Such was the apology.
I well remember, when as a lad of eighteen I first visited Skye, that
the steamer carrying the usual miscellaneous cargo in the hold and on
deck, after rounding the Mull had made so many calls, and had so much
luggage and merchandise to discharge at each halt, that it was past
midnight of the second day before we came into Broadford Bay. The
disembarkation was by small-boat, and as we made our way shorewards, the
faces of the oarsmen were at every stroke lit up with the pale, ghostly
light of a phosphorescent sea. The night was dark, but with the aid of a
dim lantern one could mount the rough beach, where I was met by a son of
the Rev. John Mackinnon of Kilbride, with whom I had come to spend a few
weeks. We had a drive of some five miles inland, enlivened with Gaelic
songs which my young friend and his cousin screamed at the pitch of
their voices. At a certain part of the road they became suddenly silent,
or only spoke to each other in whispers. We were then passing the old
graveyard at Kilchrist; but when we had got to what was judged a safe
distance beyond it and its ghosts, the hilarity began anew, and lasted
until we came to our destination between two and three o’clock in the
morning.
The introduction of the electric telegraph naturally aroused much
curiosity in the rural population as to how the wires could carry
messages. A West Highlander who had been to Glasgow and was consequently
supposed to have got to the bottom of the mystery, was asked to explain
it. ‘Weel,’ said he, ‘ it’s no easy to explain what you will no be
understandin’. But I’ll tell ye what it’s like. If you could stretch my
collie dog frae Oban to Tobermory, an’ if you wass to clap its head in
Oban, an’ it waggit its tail in Tobermory, or if I wass to tread on its
tail in Oban an’ it squaked in Tobermory—that’s what the telegraph is
like.’ |
