Cruising in Scotland.
To those who wish to embark upon a cruise, the West Coast of Scotland must always have a special appeal. One glance at the map shows us that it is made for cruises. It is fringed with such tempting islands, snuggling into romantic inlets, named with famous names which have only to be spoken to recall memories of midnight landings and escapes. The city dweller, whose desire is towards the sea, listens to the surf and feels that he, too, is on the brink of adventure.
Two kinds of cruises can be undertaken ; those by the stout of heart and steady of legs for the sake of the voyage ; and those which even the unsteady and faint-hearted can contemplate to reach an island which they wish to visit. Mull, Skye, Iona, and Colonsay—to take examples at random—can all be reached in a few hours, though to the sea-sick these hours are a sort of eternity. To those who choose Skye, there are mountains to climb, sport to be pursued, or friends to be visited. I do not know how they would fare now, but when I went to Skye before the War, I was proudly assured that we were being conveyed by the oldest paddle-boat in Britain. This consoled me a little for the fact that I had been forced to give way to sea-sickness in shameful publicity, owing to the lack of cabin accommodation, and my relief was boundless when the veteran craft wallowed her way into Portree Harbour. But sea-sickness was soon forgotten in Portree, where a half-moon of whitewashed houses greets the travellers, and the savage and jagged 'outlines of the Coolins pierce the evening sky. Beyond Dunvegan Castle, the Macleod stronghold, where the icy fingers of the murdered drummer-boy, still may clasp your hand as you lay it on the balustrade of the stairs, you get glimpses of the islands of Harris and Lewis, leading to even further and more remote worlds. Dunvegan Castle overlooks an inlet of sea, and from the dining- room, where at a feast each Macleod turned and slew his neighbour, you can see the water eddying and tossing below.
To those who care more for wild nature than the works of man, Colonsay, where the grey seals disport themselves on the skerries, will have more charm than the picturesque houses and Celtic crosses of Iona. At Iona the torch of civilization once burned in the midst of savagery. The monks of St. Columba, returning over the perilous mainland to the ruffled strip of Atlantic, must have thought longingly of the noble cruciform building, with lamps burning at the altars, against whose strong walls the savage winds hurled themselves. Last summer, when we motored across Mull in the teeth of a gale, we were informed that the steamer to Iona had broken down, and that we must cross in an open sailing boat. Accordingly, we embarked in a boat sailed by two alarm- ingly serious Vikings, who frowned and said " Hush ! " in thunderous voices if any child laughed or chattered.
Iona is ringed by the most wonderful shining white sands. The church is sombrely beautiful, and green inside like the depths of the sea. The faint-hearted traveller returns to Mull, and drives thirty miles, where he embarks and goes over to Oban. The stout-hearted traveller goes by steamboat and braves the Atlantic rollers until he sights Ardnamurchan Point and attains the corn- parative peace of the Sound of Mull.
A very different voyage is that to the island of Unst, the northernmost island of the Shetlands—the furthest northern outpost of the British Isles. It is an experience not to be forgotten. The journey begins in the busy harbour of Aberdeen, where the squat little craft bound for Shetland is surrounded by vessels of all nations.
You steam out into a wide grey sea under a wide grey sky, casting, perhaps, a regretful look back at the austere silhouette of Aberdeen, which has the merit of being fixed and immovable in a moving world. Lerwick is reached—a town possessed by birds. Sea gulls sit in rows upon the roofs, quarrel in the gutters, and ahnost elbow the traveller off the pavements with their sweeping wings. Then the 'Earl of Zetland ' majestically convoys her load through the islands. The Earl' is greeted with the enthusiasm due to aristocracy. She sets up, as an island approaches, a dignified hooting. Flat-bottomed boats of ancient Norse design put out to meet her nobility. They are strangely named "flit boats," although they lumber rather than flit. The ' Earl ' fills them with sacks of food, passengers, and cans of petrol, and goes on her way.
Uyeasound has a beautiful circular harbour, and the sober square houses are the only prose in the surrounding poetry. The pale water lies under pale skies, across which armies of majestic clouds, fantastically shaped, march all the time in grave procession. There are no trees upon Unst, and the wind blows always. The weather changes every quarter of an hour. The hills are low, and there are many lakes free to the fisherman, where good brown trout are to be had. The ardent fisher also advances into the sea clad in waders, where the unwary sea-trout rush on his fly.
The voyage to Shetland may be fair, but the return is apt to be a storm-tossed purgatory. At Lerwick with us the wind began to blow. The shawled and cloaked Shetland girls came on to the boat gaily chattering. As, we proceeded into the Roost of Sumburgh, with a head wind against us, the chattering ceased, and they lay motionless like statues. Over this thirty-six hours I draw a veil ; but to those who tottered on shore at the end of the cruise, what a paradise of stability and endurance seemed Aberdeen after the heaving, straining craft which they had just left.
But cruises either to North or West have much in common. The traveller's appetite is sharpened by the sea air. He is apt to eat ravenously of oatcakes and kippers, an action of which he will almost certainly repent later in his cabin, when the skies cloud and the sea roughens. Then the all-pervading smell of sheep; their slowness in being put off in boats on to wet rocks, and the sense of the passengers' insignificance compared with any form of live stock ; the suffocating whiffs of oil from the engine, and the rock-like hardness of the seats on deck—such is the darker side of the picture.
But there is another side. The Sound of Mull on a rare summer day. Ben More rising nobly, russet and green, with a wisp of mist, like a bridal veil, crowning his crest. The water and sky are of a vivid, satisfying blue. as of fine porcelain or glass. But towards the Atlantic the blue becomes more and more transparent. The islands seem like those of the Hesperides, although they are named Egg, Rum, and Muck—suggestive of cocktails. On a summer day " the name of those islands is lone" as they float on opalescent water so pale as to be scarcely dis- tinguished from the distant sky. All is still, except for the movement of the boat through the water, and the cries of the sea-gulls, whose swoops of calculated greed cannot mar their beauty. Around the boat lie the shadows of the mountains, motionless in the water, while the jelly-fish, like fairy flowers, open and shut their
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