The Cruise of the Elena: or, Yachting in the Hebrides

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James Ewing Ritchie. The Cruise of the Elena: or, Yachting in the Hebrides

CHAPTER I. off for greenock

CHAPTER II. from greenock to ardrossan

CHAPTER III. a sunday at oban

CHAPTER IV. from oban to glencoe

CHAPTER V. off mull

CHAPTER VI. fast day at portree

CHAPTER VII. to stornoway

CHAPTER VIII. kintyre and campbeltown

CHAPTER IX. back again

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I shall never forget my first view of the Clyde from the heights above Greenock. It is true I had seen the Clyde before, but it was at Glasgow years ago, and it had left on my mind but a poor impression of its extent, or utility, or grandeur. What a sight you have of dockyards, where thousands of men are ship-building! and what a fleet of vessels laden with the produce of every country under heaven! As I take up a Scotch paper, I read: – “The cargoes imported during the month included 64 of grain, &c., 65 of sugar, 22 of timber, 5 of wine, 2 of fruits, 1 of brandy, 1 of ice, 3 of esparto grass and iron ore, 3 of rosin, 2 of oil, 1 of tar, 1 of guano, 1 of nitrate of soda, and 4 with minerals.” And then how grand is the prospect beyond – of distant watering-places, crammed during the summer season, not alone with Glasgow and Edinburgh citizens, but with English tourists, who find in these picturesque spots a charm they can discover nowhere else. Almost all the way – at any rate, since I left Leeds – I have had my carriage almost entirely to myself; and now I am in a crowd greater and busier than of Cheapside at noon, with knapsacks and carpet-bags and umbrellas, all bent on seeing those beauties of Nature of which Scotland may well be proud.

To leave the train and hurry down the pier, and rush on board the Iona, is the work of a minute, but of a minute rich in marvels. The Iona is a fine saloon steamer, which waits for the train at Greenock, and thence careers along the Western Coast, leaving her passengers at various ports, and picking up others till some place or other, with a name which I can hardly pronounce, and certainly cannot spell, is reached. It must carry some fourteen or fifteen hundred people. I should think we had quite that number on board – people like myself, who had been travelling all night – people who had joined us at such places as Leicester, or Leeds, or Carlisle – people who had come all the way in her from Glasgow – people who had come on business – people who were bent on pleasure – people who had never visited the Highlands before – people who are as familiar with them as I am with Cheapside or the Strand – people with every variety of costume, of both sexes and of all ages – people who differed on all subjects, but who agreed in this one faith, that to breakfast on board the Iona is one of the first duties of man, and one of the noblest of woman’s rights. Oh, that breakfast! To do it justice requires an abler pen than mine. Never did I part with a florin – the sum charged for breakfast – with greater pleasure. We all know breakfasts are one of those things they manage well in Scotland, and the breakfast on board the Iona is the latest and most triumphant vindication of the fact. Cutlets of salmon fresh from the water, sausages of a tenderness and delicacy of which the benighted cockney who fills his paunch with the flabby and plethoric article sold under that title by the provision dealer can have no idea; coffee hot and aromatic, and suggestive of Araby the blest; marmalades of all kinds, with bread-and-butter and toast, all equally good, and served up by the cleanest and most civil of stewards. Sure never had any mother’s son ever such a breakfast before. It was with something of regret that I left it, and that handsome saloon filled with happy faces and rejoicing hearts.

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And now, after skirting the greater and the lesser Cumbraes, and the cave where Bruce hid himself, &c., &c., we are coaling off Ardrossan, apparently a busy town on the Ayrshire coast. I have been on shore, and have seen no end of coal and lumber ships in the docks, and in the streets are many shops with all the latest novelties from town, and with ladies lounging in and out. I know I am in Scotland, as I hear the bagpipes droning in the distance, and stop to judge the beef and mutton exposed for sale at the shop of the nearest “flesher.” On a hill behind me is a monument which, the natives inform me, is in memory of Dr. Mac-something, of whom I never heard, and respecting whom no one apparently can tell me anything. I know further I am in Scotland, as I see everywhere Presbyterian places of worship, and hear accents not familiar to an English ear. I know also I am in Scotland, as I see no gaudy public-house with superfine young ladies to attract my weak-kneed brethren to the bar, but instead dull and dark houses, in which only sots would care to go. I know I am in Scotland, because it is only there I read of “self-contained houses” to let or sell; and as to Ardrossan in particular, let me say that it is much frequented by the Glasgow merchants in the season; that it, with its neighbour Saltcoats, supports a Herald, published weekly for a penny; that from it, as a local poet writes —

The poet speaks truly. As I write I see the heights of the Scottish Alps, whose feet are fringed with the white villas of the Glasgow merchants for miles, and washed by the romantic waters of the Clyde.

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