NOTES FROM THE SCOTTISH ISLES.

11.—LOCII SCRESORT.

VIEWED in the soft sparkling light of a windless summer morning, Loch Scresort is as sweet a little nook as ever Ulysses

mooned away a day in during his memorable voyage homeward. Though merely a small bay, about a mile in breadth, and curving inland for a mile and a half, it is quite sheltered from all winds save the east, being flanked to the south and west by Haskeval and Houdeval, and guarded on the northern side by a low range of heathery slopes. In this sunny time the sheep are bleating from the shores, the yacht lies double, yacht and shadow, and the still bay is painted richly with the clear reflection of the hills. On the northern point of the loch, where the old red sandstone is piled in torn fantastic heaps high over the sea, gulls innumerable sit and bask. " Croak ! croak !" cries the monstrous hooded crow at their backs, perched like an evil spirit on the very head of the cliffs, and squinting fiercely at the far-off sheep. A bee drones drowsily past the yacht, completing the sense of stillness and pastoral life.

Scattered along the southern side of the bay are a few poor cottages, rudely built of stone and roofed with peat turfs, and at the head of the loch is a comfortable whitewashed house, the abode of Captain Macleod of Dunvegan, the tenant of the island. There is, moreover, a rude stone pier, where a small vessel might lie secure in any weather, and off which a battered old brigantine is even now unloading oatmeal and flour. Casting loose the punt, we row over to the vessel, and begin a chat with the shrewd- looking old skipper, who is superintending the passage of the sacks into a skiff alongside. In that extraordinary dialect called Gaelic-English, which may be described as a wild mingling of Gaelic, bad Irish, and Lowland Scotch, he gives us to under- stand that he is at once the owner and master of his craft, and that he cruises from island to island during the summer, bartering his cargo of food for whatever marketable commodities the poor folk of the place may have prepared. His great trade is with the fishers, who pay him in dried fish, chiefly ling and cod ; but all is fish that comes to his net, and can be anyhow cashed in the South.

Doubtless, the odds of the bargains are quite on his side. In answer to our queries as to the general condition of the islanders, he shakes his grey head dismally, and gives us to understand that but for him, and such as him, many a poor household would perish of starvation.

Starvation, however, does not seem the order of the day in Loch Scresort. On landing, and making for the first hut at hand, we find the cow, with her calf by her side, tethered a few yards from the dwelling, two pigs wallowing in the peat mire close by, and at least a dozen cocks, hens, and chickens running to and fro across the threshold, where a fresh, well-fed matron, with a fine smile for the stranger, salutes us in the Gaelic speech. With that fine old grace of hospitality which has fled for ever from busier scenes, she leads us into her cottage —a " but " and a " ben."

The apartment into which we are shown, despite the damp earthen floor and mildewy walls, is quite a palace for the Highlands ; for it has a wooden press bed, wooden chairs and table, and a rude cupboard, shapen like a wardrobe; and the walls are adorned, moreover, by a penny almanack and a picture cut out of the Illustrated London News. Drink for the gods is speedily handed round, in the shape of foaming bowls of new milk fresh from the udder—a cup of welcome invariably offered to the traveller in any Highland dwelling that can afford it. A few friendly words warm up the good woman's heart, and she begins to prattle and to question. She is a childless widow, and her" man" was drowned. She dwells here all alone ; for all her relatives have emigrated to Canada, where she hopes some day to join them. On hearing that we have passed through Glasgow, she asks eagerly if we know a woman called Maggie, who sells eggs ; the woman's surname she does not remem- ber, but we must have noticed her, as she is splay-footed and has red hair. She has never been further south than Eig, and hence her notion of big cities. She longs very much to see Tobermory and its great shops,—also to look up a distant kinsman, who has flourished there in trade. She tells us much of the laird and his family—the "folk in the big house ;" they are deceit, pious people, and kind to the poor. Will she sell us some eggs? Well, she has not heard the price of eggs this season, but will let us have some at fivepence a dozen. She loads the pilot with a basketful of monsters, and we go on our way rejoicing.

Casting our eyes up the hill as we leave the cottage, we meet a pair of steadfast eyes regarding us over a knoll a few yards distant ; and lo ! the head and antlers of a noble stag, a veri- table red deer from the peaks. Ile has wandered down to prey upon the little patch of corn, from which the widow with difficulty drives him and his mates many times in the day. A royal fellow ! Conscious of his immunity, he stares coolly at us with his soft yet powerful eye. We approach nearer —be does not move—a pistol-shot would stretch him low ; but suddenly espying our retriever, who has lingered behind, lapping up some spilt milk, he tosses his head disdainfully, and turns to go. As the dog runs towards him, he breaks into a trot, then bounds suddenly over a boulder, and is off at full speed. The dog pursues him eagerly, but the fleet-footed one speeds silently away, floating lightly upward to the heights, and leaving his panting pursuer far behind.

But the eye, following him upward, rests on the peaks, and is sublimed by a sudden sense of the silences broken only by the red deer's splash in some dull tarn. Fading gradually upward from deep green to ashen grey, mingling softly into the white little cloud that poises itself on the highest peak of all, the moun- tains lie in the crystalline air of a hazeless summer day. Every rock comes out clear, every stream shows its intense white seam against the hillside, and the knolls of crimson heather in the fore- ground seem visible to the tiniest leaf.

The temptation is too great, and we are soon vigorously facing the lesser range of heights. On all the knolls around us the white canna-grass waves in the wind, and the yellow iris peeps among the green twigs of under-grass, and in the hollows here, where the peat is cut and piled for drying, we stop and pluck bog asphodel. Higher we speed, knee-deep now in the deep red heather,—froin which the dog scares moor fowl under our very feet. The air rarifies, full, as it were, of holier, deeper breath. The deep red of the heather dies away into brown and green, and yet a few paces further, only green herbage carpets the way,—boulders thicken, the hillside grows still more steep, till at last, quite breathless with exercise and the sharp fine air, we get among the greystone cliffs and hugely piled boulders of the peaks.

The great glorious world lies still around us,—mountains, peaks, and their shadows in a crystal sea. Close at hand, to the northward, see Canna, with her grim shark's teeth of outlying rock cutting up here and there out in the west- ward ocean ; and behind her tower the Coolin Hilbt of Skye, sharpening into peak on peak, blue mists brooding on their base, but all above snowed over with livid layers of basalt, and seamed with the black forked bed of torrents, that in wild weather twist down like lightning to the hiddeu lakes below.

Far down westward there is a long low line, as of cloud on the horizon. That is the Outer Hebrides, our Ultima Thule. The low levels arc veiled by distance, but the hills and promontories,—now a dull headland, beyond a stretch of highland,—lootn clearly here and there through the mist. With a feeling distantly akin to that of the old wanderers of the seas, gazing front their frail barks at the cloud of unexplored demesne, we eye our far-off quarry. A far flight for the tiny Tern, on seas so great and strange ! Weary with a long- reaching gaze, our eye drops downward on the western side of the isle whereon we stand. The low glassy swell of the Minch break in one thin, creamy line against that awful coast,—a long range washed steep into cliffs and precipices, and unbroken by a single haven or peaceful creek. When the mists and vapours gather here, and the south-wester comes pour- ing in on these shores, and the sea rises and roars as it can roar only on rocky coasts, many a brave ship goes to pieces yonder. There is here no hope on this side of time. Not a soul is there to look on from the land, and he who drifts living as far as the shore is dashed to pieces on its jagged wall. There is no pause, no sus- pense. A crash, a shriek, and the vessel is churned into spindrift and splintering planks.

After a long ramble, we regain our punt, and are soon busy hoisting sail on board the yacht, for a fresh breeze has sprung up, which should waft us swiftly on to Canna. Up goes the Tern's white wings, and we fly buoyantly away, the faint scent of honeysuckle floating from the rocks as we round the jagged point of the bay. It is the last farewell of Loch Scresort,—the last sweet breath of assweet place. The sun shines, the spray sparkles, and with happy hearts and backward-looking eyes, we speed along on the joyful gentle sea.

The breeze stiffens, blowing on our quarter, and the little Tern, though she carries a double reef in the mainsail, has soon about as much as she can bear ; but cheerily she foams through it, veritably "like a thing of life," fearless, eager, quivering through every fibre with the salt fierce play,—now dipping with a stealthy motion into the green hollow of the waves, then rising, shivering on their crest, and glancing this way and that like a startled bird ; drifting sidelong for a moment as if wounded and faint, with her white wing trailing in the water, and again, at the wind's whistle springing up and onward, and tilting the foam from her breast in showers of silver spray.

Though the breeze is so keen, there is neither mist nor rain. Far away yonder to the west, a slight grey streak hovers over the clear sea-line,—and from thence, as from the outstretched hand of a god, the invisible wind is blown. All is fresh and clear,—the peaks of Rum, the far-off mainland,—all save the white Coolins, which have suddenly clothed themselves on with their own smokes and vapours, through which they loom at intervals, Titan-like and forlorn. From the blank stony stare of hills so ghostly in their beauty, yet so human in their desolation, one turns to look at Kihnory Bay, which opens before us as we round the northern shores of Rum. It is a little space of shingly sand, yellow and white and glistening, slipped in between grim crags and under the shadow of the mountains. The thin cream line of foam stirs not on its edge, as the deep soft billows roll inward and lessen over shallows. Above, on the slope of the hill, there are stretches of grassy mead as green as any in Kent, and cattle grazing thereon ; and still higher, tile heights of heather die away into hues of grey moss and lichen, till the stony peaks are pencilled grimly on the quiet azure of the sky.

Canna is now in full view. The "castled steep," as Scott calls its high cliff, towers in deep brown shadow, surrounded by green heights of pasture, while below is one long line of torn crags and caves, in the lee of which, on a stretch of nearly calm sea, the gulls and guillemots gather and the solan goose drops like a stone to his prey. The breeze now strikes nearly dead ahead, and the Tern has a sore struggle of it beating onward. Not until she is close in upon the jagged cliffs does the narrow entry into the harbour open, and it is a difficult job indeed to pick our way through the rocks, in the teeth of wind so keen ; but directly we round the corner of the steep, the little landlocked bay opens safe and calm, and gliding into five-fathom water, we cast anchor just opposite the laird's house.