Hebrides

“ Mountains divide us and a waste of seas,
Yet still the blood is warm, the heart is Highland,
And we in dreams behold the Hebrides.”
Round the foot of the mountains winds a track, which, if it were not for the rabbit-holes, might be thought a fairly good one in these parts. As it is, it is extremely perilous; and the fresh green of the flat is also full of bog-holes, and beyond the grass is the stony river-bed with its bright blue streams hurrying along, breaking into foam at the rapids and shallows. ”

“ They had gone unto the wars, Trusting to the mild-eyed stars, Nightly from their azure towers To keep watch above the flowers, In the midst of which all day The red sunlight lazily lay. Now each visitor shall confess The sad valley’s restlessness. Nothing there is motionless— Nothing save the airs that brood Over the magic solitude. Ah, by no wind are stirred those trees That palpitate like the chill seas Around the misty Hebrides! ”

“ The sea was calm, a blue haze softened the outline of the neighbouring hills, but let the mountains in the farther Hebrides be but faintly seen. The little isle lay before us with no signs on it of human habitation. ”

“ CHAPTER VII THE ARMADA GALLEON OF TOBERMORY BAY
Between the western Highlands of Scotland and the remote, cloudy Hebrides lies the large island of Mull on a sound of that name. Its bold headlands are crowned with the ruins of gray castles that were once the strongholds of the clans of the MacLeans and the MacDonalds. Along these shores and waters one generation after another of kilted fighting men, savage as red Indians, raided and burned and slew in feuds whose memories are crowded with tragedy and romance. ”

“ Hebrides, or Western Islands, a general name for the islands on the west coast of Scotland (save the islands of the Firth of Clyde) , about 500 in number, of which 100 are inhabited; they belong to the counties of Ross, Inverness, and Argyll, and are divided by the Little Minch and the Minch into the Outer Hebrides, of which the chief are Lewis, Harris, North and South Uist, Benbecula, &c.; and the Inner Hebrides, including Skye, Rum, Mull, Iona, Staffa, &c.; they have wild and rocky coasts, but are picturesque and verdurous, and are much frequented by tourists; the climate is mild and moist ”

“ EMMA. "The New Hebrides are in my course, but the Friendly Isles are allotted to me."
MRS. WILTON. "Nevertheless, the New Hebrides claim a few words. They were discovered in 1506, and so named by Captain Cook. They are considerably hilly, and well clothed with timber. The valleys are extremely abundant, producing figs, nutmegs, and oranges, besides the fruits common to the rest of Polynesia. The inhabitants present the most ugly specimen extant of the Papuan race; the men wear no covering, and the women, who are used as mere beasts of burden; wear only a petticoat, made from the plantain leaf. ”

“ They are feelings which have ever actuated the inhabitants of the Highlands and the Hebrides. The plant of loyalty is there in full vigour, and the Brunswick graft now flourishes like a native shoot. To that spirited race of people I may with propriety apply the elegant lines of a modern poet, on the 'facile temper of the beauteous sex':
Like birds new-caught, who flutter for a time. ”

“ Dr Johnson had for many years given me hopes that we should go together, and visit the Hebrides. Martin's Account of those islands had impressed us with a notion that we might there contemplate a system of life almost totally different from what we had been accustomed to see; and, to find simplicity and wildness, and all the circumstances of remote time or place, so near to our native great island, was an object within the reach of reasonable curiosity. Dr Johnson has said in his Journey, 'that he scarcely remembered how the wish to visit the Hebrides was excited' ”

“ THE STANDING STONES OF CALLERNISH, ISLAND OF LEWIS
It is no wonder if tourists do not often get so far, when till our own day the law had to make a long arm to reach the Hebrides, and the Protestant Reformation only begins to set foot on some of those remote strongholds of old ways and thoughts. Nine tourists out of ten, indeed, would find little to repay them for the tossing of the Minch. ”

“ The outer Hebrides may have existed as the inner skeleton of some ancient country, contemporary with the main land, and that bore on its upper soils the productions of perished creations, at a time when by much the larger portion of the inner Hebrides,—Skye, and Mull, and the Small Isles,—existed as part of the bottom of a wide sound, inhabited by the Cephalopoda and Enaliosaurians of the Lias and the Oölite. Judging from its components, the Long Island, like the Lammermoors and the Grampians, may have been smiling to the sun when the Alps and the Himalaya Mountains lay buried in the abyss ”

“ The Hebrides, Scottish islands off the western coast, have Hallowe'en traditions of their own, as well as many borrowed from Ireland and Scotland. Barra, isolated near the end of the island chain, still celebrates the Celtic days, Beltaine and November Eve.
In the Hebrides is the Irish custom of eating on Hallowe'en a cake of meal and salt, or a salt herring, bones and all, to dream of some one bringing a drink of water. Not a word must be spoken, nor a drop of water drunk till the dream comes. ”

“ That, I fancy, is an art not much cultivated in the Hebrides. Once a crony of mine and I got ourselves rowed off an island shore for a dive into deep water; and over forty years I remember how the boatman’s boy stared at our throwing off jackets and kilts, and the excited cry with which he jumped up, exclaiming in Gaelic, “They will be drowned!” To youngsters a night in a fishing-boat makes a pleasing taste of adventure, if the waves leave them appetite for coffee sweetened by treacle, and mackerel caught and cooked off-hand to be eaten with the hard biscuits that serve also for plates ”

“ The rich stranger encloses these poor islands for his deer, narrowing and debasing the hard life of the people. Here and there snug inns invite anglers to sport such as Izaak Walton never dreamt of. Some parts, as Harris, show oases of real Highland scenery. But more often the Outer Hebrides present a bleak and monotonous aspect of rock, water, sand, and bog, where “the sea is all islands, and the land is all lakes.” ”

“ Mr Pennant, in the course of his tour to the Hebrides, passed two nights at this gentleman's house. On its being mentioned, that a present had here been made to him of a curious specimen of Highland antiquity, Dr Johnson said, 'Sir, it was more than he deserved: the dog is a Whig.'
We here enjoyed the comfort of a table plentifully furnished, the satisfaction of which was heightened by a numerous and cheerful company; and we for the first time had a specimen of the joyous social manners of the inhabitants of the Highlands. ”

“ From 1041 till 1064, the Hebrides appear subject to the Orkney earl Thorfinn. During this time, the islands supplied forces to Harald Hardrada, king of Norway, for an invasion of England. After this time, there are indications that the predominance of the Orkney earls was replaced in the Hebrides by that of the kings of the Isle of Man. Later on, the kings of Man are seen to occupy a middle position of authority between the kings of Norway and the local rulers of the Hebrides. ”

“ There is only one place in all the Outer Hebrides where we might expect to meet with extraneous boulders in the till, and that is in the north of Lewis, where the land shelves gently into the sea, and the great rocky ridge terminates. Here the under-strata of the ice would begin to steal up upon the land, favoured by its gentle inclination, and in that very place accordingly we meet with a deposit of till in which are found many boulders of a hard red sandstone, and some of various porphyries which are quite alien to the Long Island. ”

“ They soon discovered one serious difference between the New Hebrides and the isles of the Eastern Pacific. In the latter, one language is understood throughout a whole group, with only such variations as occur between Yorkshire and Somerset. But in the New Hebrides, each island speaks a totally different dialect, and though within sight one of another (as Fortuna, Aneiteum, Tanna, and Eromanga) they cannot understand one another ”

“ I have endeavoured to illustrate the process of denudation by a reference to breaker-action on the existing coast-line of the Hebrides; but a strong current must have materially increased the force of the ancient waves, and produced abrasion to some depth below them.
If we attempt to trace the connexions of strata among the Hebrides, we shall be more fully impressed with the magnitude of the changes which have been effected. Thus the Lias and Oolite occur in patches along the shores of Mull, Morven, Ardnamurchan, Eigg, Skye, Raasay, and Applecross. ”

“ The Solomon group, which is the centre of the Church of England’s mission, is about 200 miles northwest from the New Hebrides. New Caledonia is about 200 miles southwest, Fiji about 400 miles, Auckland about 1,000, and Sydney, Australia, 1,400 miles distant from our group. In her first charter to New Zealand, Britain included the New Hebrides, but, apparently by some mistake, they were afterward left out. Yet, except to New Zealand and Australia, the group is of little commercial value to 13any other country, on account of the great distances of all others from it. ”

“ As our Lord spoke of unclean spirits walking through dry places, seeking rest, so these islanders believe that unquiet spirits roam at large in the forest, and they propitiate them by offerings of food.
In the New Hebrides, Dr Turner met with a curious illustration of that strange history of Elisha giving his staff to Gehazi, and bidding him lay it on the face of the sick child. The staff of the New Hebrides was a polished stick of black iron-wood, which was the representative of a god, whose ministering priest was one of the disease-makers. ”

“ Did you find that the West Highland men and men resident in the Hebrides were able to supply themselves with provisions in the same way as the east coast men?-No. They are not the same class at all, they are not in the same good circumstances as the east coast men. We usually advance meal and money and materials before they can go to the fishing at all. ”

“ On 8 June 1762 Walker was transferred to Moffat, and in 1764 he was appointed, by the interest of Lord Kames, to make a survey of the Hebrides, being at the same time commissioned to make a report to the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge. On this occasion he travelled three thousand miles in seven months; and his report, which was found among his papers after his death and printed by his friend Charles Stewart under the title ‘An Economical History of the Hebrides’ (Edinburgh, 1808, 2 vols. 8vo; reissued in London in 1812) , is of a most comprehensive and practical character. ”

“ But the coast regions of Scotland, lying right opposite to the Hebrides, had already a greatly preponderant Celtic-speaking population, and there was thus no bulwark that could defend the Norn of the Hebrides against the steadily continued pressure of the Celtic of West Scotland, which at last overwhelmed it.
The Hebrides, also, lay much farther away from Norway than Orkney and Shetland, and were separated from Norway at an earlier date than these latter Island-groups, that is, immediately after King Håkon Håkonsson’s ill-starred expedition to the West of Scotland. ”

“ The abundance of large trees in the peat-mosses, and the fact that these ancient peat-covered forests extend out to sea, are alone sufficient to convince one that the Outer Hebrides have been much reduced in area since the close of the glacial period. ”

“ The first native pastor in the New Hebrides
97It is easy to raise the shallow cry that the New Hebrides Mission is overmanned, as compared with India, China and Africa, as some, and very specially the same men who most keenly oppose the Dayspring, are persistently doing. We might answer by retort,—Your own Towns and Villages are overmanned; why not resign your charges, and go to the millions of Heathendom? ”

“ That part of the story will show the fruits of the education and perils and experiences of a lifetime, in the marvellous impression produced by the simple and unadorned recital of the story of Tanna and Aniwa, amongst the Christian people of Scotland, Ireland, and England. Multitudes were blessed in almost every town where a meeting was granted me. Three Missionaries devoted themselves to the New Hebrides, and are already labouring there; while others consecrated themselves to several of the great seats of Foreign Mission enterprise in Africa and Asia. ”

“ By the end of the 9th century a sort of naval empire had arisen, consisting of the Hebrides, parts of the western coasts of Scotland, especially the modern Argyllshire, Man, Anglesea, and the eastern shores of Ireland. ”

“ Much the same state of things prevailed on some of the New Hebrides, where the isle of Aneiteum was the most hopeful centre of operations, its population of upwards of 3000 persons having all professedly become Christians, and 300 being actually church members. Fifty-six different villages had built schools for their own use, and eleven had chapels. Sixty of the more advanced natives ranked as teachers, and several had gone to work on the hostile isles around. ”

“ It was sufficient for a Laird of the Hebrides, if he had a strong house, in which he could hide his wife and children from the next clan. That they are not large nor splendid is no wonder. It is not easy to find how they were raised, such as they are, by men who had no money, in countries where the labourers and artificers could scarcely be fed. The buildings in different parts of the Island shew their degrees of wealth and power. ”