<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I.</h2>
<div class="blockquot">
<p><span class="firstword">Social</span> 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.</p>
</div>
<p class="in0"><span class="firstword">When</span> 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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_2">2</span>
three centuries, we can recognise two epochs
when the progress of change received a
marked impetus.</p>
<div class="sidenote">NATIONAL ANIMOSITIES</div>
<p>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 Prestonpans,
and the invasion of England could not<span class="pagenum" id="Page_3">3</span>
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</p>
<div class="poetry-container pw25">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse indent24">The wretched lot</div>
<div class="verse indent0">Of the poor, mean, despised, insulted Scot,</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<p class="in0">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.’<span class="pagenum" id="Page_4">4</span>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<div class="sidenote">SOCIAL TRANSFORMATIONS</div>
<p>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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">5</span>
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,</p>
<div class="poetry-container pw25">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="stanza">
<div class="verse indent0">Out upon Time! who for ever will leave</div>
<div class="verse indent0">But enough of the past for the future to grieve,</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<p class="in0">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.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_6">6</span></p>
<div class="sidenote">MODES OF TRAVEL</div>
<p>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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">7</span>
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. These 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Probably few readers are aware how recently<span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">8</span>
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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">9</span>
to wheeled traffic, but reacted on the
general lines of communication throughout the
country.<SPAN name="FNanchor_1" href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">1</SPAN> 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.</p>
<div class="sidenote">LOCOMOTION TO ENGLAND</div>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">10</span>
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
<cite>Humphry Clinker</cite>, continued in use among
some county families long after the stage-coaches
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.</p>
<div class="sidenote">STAGE-COACHES TO LONDON</div>
<p>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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">11</span>
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 <em>in Scotland</em>,
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 <cite>Edinburgh
Evening Courant</cite> for July 1st, 1754:</p>
<div class="blockquot">
<p>‘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 <i>Coach and Horses</i>
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 winter to set out from
London and Edinburgh every other Monday morning and
to go to Burrow-bridge on Saturday night; and to set out<span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">12</span>
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,</p>
<p class="sigright">‘<span class="smcap">Hosea Eastgate</span>.</p>
<p>‘Care is taken of small parcels according to their
value.’</p>
</div>
<p>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.’<SPAN name="FNanchor_2" href="#Footnote_2" class="fnanchor">2</SPAN></p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">13</span></p>
<div class="sidenote">EDINBURGH AND GLASGOW COACHES</div>
<p>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 it
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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">14</span>
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.<SPAN name="FNanchor_3" href="#Footnote_3" class="fnanchor">3</SPAN></p>
<p>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.</p>
<div class="sidenote">LOCH KATRINE IN 1843</div>
<p>Both the stage-coaches and the passenger<span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">15</span>
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 <cite>Glasgow Courier</cite> 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.’</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">16</span>
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.</p>
<p>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 <cite>Lady of the Lake</cite>. 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; ‘but that d——d Walter Scott,
that everybody makes such a work about!’
exclaimed he with vehemence—‘I wish I
had him to ferry over Loch Lomond: I
should be after sinking the boat, if I drowned
myself into the bargain; for ever since he
wrote his <cite>Lady of the Lake</cite>, as they call it,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">17</span>
everybody goes to see that filthy hole Loch
Katrine, then comes round by Luss, and I
have had only two gentlemen to guide all
this blessed season, which is now at an end.
I shall never see the top of Ben Lomond
again!—The devil confound his ladies and
his lakes, say I!’<SPAN name="FNanchor_4" href="#Footnote_4" class="fnanchor">4</SPAN></p>
<div class="sidenote">SCOTT AND THE HIGHLANDS</div>
<p>If this indignant mountaineer could revisit
his early haunts, his grandchildren would
have a very different story to tell him of the
poet’s 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 <cite>Waverley</cite> 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
Ellen’s Isle, they scrutinise it, if haply any<span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">18</span>
relics of her home have survived. At Coilantogle
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 indeed
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.</p>
<p>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.’</p>
<div class="sidenote">STEAMBOATS TO LONDON</div>
<p>The first steamboats that plied between<span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">19</span>
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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">20</span>
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.</p>
<div class="sidenote">RAILWAY RIVALRY</div>
<p>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,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">21</span>
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,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">22</span>
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.</p>
<p>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?’</p>
<div class="sidenote">EARLY DAYS OF RAILWAYS</div>
<p>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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">23</span>
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.</p>
<p>Railway construction in the Highlands came
later than it did in the Lowlands, and entered<span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">24</span>
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:</p>
<p>‘Well, Donald, you’ve come for work, have
you? and what can you do?’</p>
<p>‘’Deed, I can do onything.’</p>
<p>‘Well, there’s some spade and barrow work
going on; you can begin on that.’</p>
<p>‘Ach, but I wadna just like to be workin’
wi’ a spade and a wheelbarrow.’</p>
<p>‘O, would you not? Then yonder’s some
rock that needs to be broken away. Can
you wield a pick?’</p>
<p>‘I wass never usin’ a pick, whatefer.’</p>
<p>‘Well, my man, I don’t know anything I can
give you to do.’</p>
<div class="sidenote">LIGHT LABOUR</div>
<p>So Donald went away crestfallen. But<span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">25</span>
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:</p>
<p>‘What, back again, Donald? Have you
found out what you can do?’</p>
<p>‘’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.</p>
<p>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 quarryman 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.</p>
<p>The unpunctuality of the railways, the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">26</span>
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.’</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">27</span>
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.’</p>
<div class="sidenote">STEAMBOATS ON WEST COAST</div>
<p>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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">28</span>
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.</p>
<div class="sidenote">DAVID HUTCHESON’S SERVICES</div>
<p>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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">29</span>
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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">30</span>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">31</span></p>
<div class="sidenote">‘SOMETIMES SOONER, WHILES EARLIER’</div>
<p>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 comin’ sometimes sooner, and whiles
earlier, and sometimes before that again.’
The idea of lateness was a reproach which
he would not acknowledge.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">32</span>
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.</p>
<div class="sidenote">WEST-COAST STEAMBOATS</div>
<p>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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">33</span>
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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">34</span>
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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">35</span>
all who give vent to this surprise: ‘Oh no,
nobody wears the kilt here but fools and
Englishmen.’</p>
<div class="sidenote">TOURISTS ON WEST COAST</div>
<p>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,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">36</span>
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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">37</span>
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.</p>
<div class="sidenote">THE TELEGRAPH IN HIGHLANDS</div>
<p>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.’</p>
<hr class="chap" />
<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">38</span></p>
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