Outer 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is the same at Portree, the capital of Skye, and it is the same at the still more important town of Stornoway, in the island of Lewis. At Tobermory, one sees in the shop windows, besides ship stores, mutton—you never see beef either in the Inner or Outer Hebrides; articles symptomatic of feminine love for fashion—actually a skating-rink hat being one of the attractions at one of the leading shops, though I can’t hear of a skating-rink on this side of the world at all. ”

“ The chalk country, owing to the homogeneousness of its component strata, has been moulded by the action of weather and running water into an undulating region with a softly-flowing outline, while the district of composite formation has yielded unequally to the action of Time’s workers—rains, and frosts, and rivers—and so is diversified with ridge, and escarpment, and knolls, and crags. When, therefore, we learn that the Outer Hebrides are composed for the most part of the rock called gneiss and its varieties, we seem to have at once found the meaning of the uniformity — 136 — and monotony. ”

“ She told me that a family of Campbells, who lived near Loch Eynort or Loch Skipport, had rowed the Prince and Neil MacEachain to Benbecula, and that the Prince was furiously angry with them; but her explanation of his anger was that the boatmen were Campbells, a name not beloved in the Outer Hebrides: no one had ever thought of the terrifying effect of a tidal island on a stranger. ”

“ LEWIS-WITH-HARRIS, the most northerly island of the Outer Hebrides, Scotland. It is sometimes called the Long Island and is 24 m. from the nearest point of the mainland, from which it is separated by the strait called The Minch. It is 60 m. long and has an extreme breadth of 30 m., its average breadth being 15 m. ”

“ It might well be, therefore, that in modern use the Isle of Druids signified only the Isle of Priests. There is a little island of the Outer Hebrides called Innis Chailleachan Dhubh—the isle of the black old women; and a legend has grown up that witches once dwelt here and brewed storms and evil spells. But the name is not an ancient name, and was given not so long ago, because of a small sisterhood of black-cowled nuns who settled there.
St. Adamnan, ninth Abbot of Iona, writing [Pg 125] at the end of the seventh century, invariably calls the island Ioua or the Iouan Island. ”

“ Harris and the southern part of Lewis are wholly mountainous, and show hardly a single acre of level ground. The mountains are often bold and picturesque, especially those which are over 1600 feet in height. They are also exceedingly bare and desolate, the vegetation on their slopes being poor and scanty in the extreme. Some of the hills, indeed, are absolutely barren. In North Harris we find the highest peaks of the Outer Hebrides: these are the Clisham, 2622 feet, and the Langa, 2438 feet. ”

“ Beyond the point of Ardnamurchan the western islands seem to have been comparatively unknown. No islands are mentioned which correspond with the Outer Hebrides, and the island of Skye seems only to have been known by name, as it is probably meant by Ptolemy’s island of ‘Scetis,’ which however he places apparently at random near the north-east promontory of Scotland. On the mainland three points only are noticed,—the mouth of the Itys river, which is probably the river Carron flowing into Loch Carron; the Volsas Bay or Loch, which can only be the great arm of the sea termed Loch Broom ”

“ Prior to 1849, the manufacture of kelp in the Outer Hebrides had been for many years a large source of income to the proprietors of those islands, and a considerable revenue to the inhabitants; the lairds, in consequence, for many years encouraged the people to remain, and it is alleged that they multiplied to a degree quite out of proportion to the means of subsistence within reach when kelp manufacture failed. ”

“ INVERNESS-SHIRE, a highland county of Scotland, bounded N. by Ross and Cromarty, and the Beauly and Moray Firths, N.E. by the shires of Nairn and Elgin, E. by Banff and Aberdeen shires, S.E. by Perthshire, S. by Argyllshire and W. by the Atlantic. It includes the Outer Hebrides south of the northern boundary of Harris, and several of the Inner Hebrides (see Hebrides) and is the largest shire in Scotland. It occupies an area of 2,695,037 acres, or 4211 sq. m., of which more than one-third belongs to the islands. ”

“ Angus Sutherland did not answer for a moment; but at last he said, rather shyly—
"Gaelic is a very complimentary language, at all events. Beau is 'a woman;' and bean-nachd is 'a blessing.' An ti a bheannaich thu—that is, 'the one who blessed you.'"
Very pretty; only we did not know how wildly the young man might not be falsifying Gaelic grammar in order to say something nice to Mary Avon.
Patience works wonders. Dinner-time finds us so far across the Minch that we can make out the lighthouse of South Uist. And all these outer Hebrides are now lying in a flood of golden-red light ”

“ One who was familiar with the Highlands in the middle of last century will be struck with the further decay or disappearance of various customs which even then were evidently fading out of use. Of these vanished characteristics, one of the most distinctive, whose loss is most regrettable, was the practice, once universal, of singing Gaelic songs during operations that required a number of men or women, working together, to keep time in their movements. This picturesque usage appears to265 have died out on the mainland, though it still survives among the Catholic islands of the Outer Hebrides. ”

“ Such intelligence the Hebridians probably receive from their transmarine correspondents. But with equal temptations of interest, and perhaps with no greater niceness of veracity, the owners of the Islands spread stories of American hardships to keep their people content at home.
Some method to stop this epidemick desire of wandering, which spreads its contagion from valley to valley, deserves to be sought with great diligence. In more fruitful countries, the removal of one only makes room for the succession of another: but in the Hebrides, the loss of an inhabitant leaves a lasting vacuity ”

“ The day was still lowering; the sounding sea of the stormy Hebrides dashed its waves on the echoing beach; the eternal mist, like a mighty shroud, rolled along the drenched hills and dripping heather; and through it, as through a veil, the joyless sun, shorn of his rays, seemed at times to hang in mid air, like an obscured lamp. Our hearts were heavy indeed. Even the Lowland Scots are peculiarly liable to be impressed by the appearance of nature at all times ”

“ The Hebrides are but the shattered relics of an old land that had its mountain-peaks and its glens, its streams and lakes, and may have nursed in its solitude the red-deer and the eagle, but was never trodden by the foot of man. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The traveller who comes hither from more opulent countries, to speculate upon the remains of pastoral life, will not much wonder that a common Highlander has no strong adherence to his native soil; for of animal enjoyments, or of physical good, he leaves nothing that he may not find again wheresoever he may be thrown.
The habitations of men in the Hebrides may be distinguished into huts and houses. By a house, I mean a building with one story over another; by a hut, a dwelling with only one floor. The Laird, who formerly lived in a castle, now lives in a house ”

“ 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' ”

“ Then there will fall to be recorded my call from the Islands in recent years to revisit all the Colonial Presbyterian Congregations once again, telling them the story of the Conversion of Aniwa—the sinking of the well, and other incidents, which turned an entire people from idols and from cannibalism to the service of the living and true God—whereby the 363Churches, and especially the children, were led more and more to make the New Hebrides their own very harvest field in the Heathen world. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”