THE KING AMONG SCOTIA'S ISLES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2541, 26 November 1902, Page 65

THE KING AMONG SCOTIA'S ISLES.

The "thunder-split-ten peaks of Arran" behaved in tihe most perfectly loyal way during the King's visit. Mountains are notoriously "difficult/ and often for days together will refuse to be on view, or to reward in any way the human folk who may have come from far on purpose to gaze upon their beauty. Scottish mountains are perhaps the most uncertain in the world, and Ben Goil and Caim-na-Calliac-h can be as shy as any two of the bare-footed lasses dwelling in the glens beneath. But on this occasion the glorious outlines of those Arran hills showed to their best advantage. Clouds swept across their shoulders, and shadows dark as purple pansies lay here and there upon the up-lffting of their moors. Sharp showers came pelting down, making the radiance of the sunlight but the brighter by contrast; and the huge stones glistened in the wet until they might have been precious as the foundations of the Fairy City itself. Princess Victoria's soul was stirred from its usual placid calm by the sight, and the Queen's enthusiasm was kindled by her daughter's. The royal ladies have seen the finest views in Europe; they have loitered on Lake Como t and watched the tideless sea break in ripples on Cap Martin ; they have seen the sun setting behind the Black Forest, and tinging with its sanguine glory the gardens of the Crimea; and, of course^ they know Deeside by heart. But nowhere have they before (beheld that softness blended with grandeur which seems the distinctive beauty of the West. Nowhere else do the rain-drenched skies reveal such forget-me-not blues, nor create exactly those pansy-purples and wine-dark russets and ambers. Brodick Bay, where the royal yacht lay for the first night, is quite a small anchorage, and it appeared "thronged out," to use a- Scotticism, by the presence of the yacht and the attendant warship and torpedo boats. The Duchess of Hamilton and Mr Forster hurried from their shooting lodge on the further side of the island to pay their duty to their Majesties, and as Brodick Castle is let just now the Queen insisted upon their staying the night aboard the Victoria and Albert.

After dinner the royal party sat for long on deck watching the glimmer of the starlight on the sea, and listening to stories of Brodick in the old days — the days wlien the Danes came in their "long ships" to harry the Clyde, and King Haco made his daughter Mara Queen of the western fiords. A very different Danish Princess to that wild Mara leaned and listened there, while the talk passed on to the tales of the Bruce, who haunted Arran in his fugitive days ; in fact, the Duchess declares that Brodick CastJe was the scene of the wellknown climbing spider incident, and has her own picturesque addition to the tale!

The next day, in carriages, on cycles, and on foot, the party :rossed the island ; and it was then that the full splendour of the scenery was understood. It is not that the mountains are so very high — Goatfell, the highest peak, scarcely touches 3000ft — but the w«rd "magnificent," which Princess Victoria applied to them over and over •gain, is nevertheless quite true. Curiously different is Colonsay, the island off which the Victoria and Albert next cast anchor. Far out in the plunging waves and turbulent tides of the Atlantic lie the "twin isles," Colonsay and Oronsay — long stretches of sand and rocky shore lying low and green in the silver setting of the sea. If Arran has its stories of Haco and Mara, of Robert the Bruce and Oliver Cromwell, Colonsay and Oronsay have traces of a yet more remote time. Ifc was here that Columba landed from his coracle when, in expiation of the sin of his blood feud, he was banished from Ireland. Here he stood in the early dawn and beheld far down on the misty horizon-line the faint looming of the country he so passionately loved. Colonsay was yet too near ; he must voyage further over sea, out of sight of the Erin he never more might tread. - So on to lona sailed the saint and his followers to found there the great church which was to spread Christianity through Britain. But Coiumba did not forget Colonsay. In after years he sent his monks to teach and preach, so that tbe wild pagans of the twin isles became also his disciples, and to this day the carven \^ork of ancient crosses and the rude sculpture on the tombs of chiefs and Kings testify to what these men did for the isles.

Sir John M'Neill, the owner of Colonsay, is descended from the chiefs of Castle Sween, who shared with the Macleans of Coll the lordship of the Inner Hebrides. Killoran, his residence, is a weather-beaten, low stone house, standing four square against the gales w-hioh sweep from the limitless ocean. Here Sir John spread lunch for the King, and tbade him a Highland ■welcome. Sir John has served his Sovereign since, fresh from Addiscombe, he buckled on his sword to act as aide-de-camp to Sir Edward Lugard in the terrible days of the Mutiny. For more years than he cares tc count he was Queen Victoria's trusted equerry and servant. And he had the joy and. honour of saving Princess Louis* from almost certain death when her sleigh wa overturned at Montreal. The little" bronze cross "For Valour" hangs on his breast, but his greatest treasure is a sheet of notepaper whereon are some grateful, gracious words signed Victoria R. He is devoted to his island home, although no wife exists to play Eve in his Paradise. Each year he brings his friends to enjoy with him th© charms of Colonsay. And really those charms are many — the views of the Ross of Mull, with its giant cliffs of basalt; of Jura, with its purple peaks ; of Islay and Scarba, and Lunga ; and of the Sound where the mysterious whirlpool of Corrievreckan moans and sobs ■with the rising and falling of the tide. . Then th© caves on the western coast are very fine, and in these the great grey seal, one of Britain's rarest "wild beasts," laws its milk-white children, watching

their clumsy gambols with its big and beautiful eyes. Gannets plunge into the sea after their finny prey, making sharp splashes as though of bullets striking the water. Puffins and guillemots, gulls and seapies, ducks and divers, are there in countless thousands ; and Sir John pointed out the Cornish chough, that queer redbeaked and red-legged crow supposed to exist nowhere out of Cornwall, and to be exceedingly rare even there. The King was delighted with the patrimony of the M'Neills. He made Sir John tell over again the stories of old Lord Colonsay, and show the famous decanters which end in points, so that the wine can never rest until it again reaches the host and reposes for an instant in the socket-holes cut into the solid mahogany at his end of the table. Oh, there are many things worth seeing and hearing at Colonsav!

On the landing of Edward VH at Ramsay, Mona had once more, after a very long interval, a "King in Man," and the visit to Peel revived recollections of the time when the Earls of Derby were Kings in and of the lonely isle. In 1393 the Earl of Salisbury sold to Sir William le Scroop the "Isle of Man, with the title of King, and the right of being crowned with a golden crown." The Earl himself had acquired these possessions by marrying an heiress, whose claims were allowed by Edward HI.

Sir William le Scroop, Earl of Wiltshire, being beheaded for treason, the island was bestowed, in 1399, on Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, and when he was attainted and banished, Henry IV made a grant of it to Sir John Stanley for life. The first deed, however, was cancelled, and a new patent passed the Great Seal in 1406, bestowing the island, Castle Peel, and the Lordship of Man and the isles appertaining thereto, with all the royalties, regalities, and franchises, with the patronage of the see, on him and his heirs, in as full and ample a manner as had been granted to any former lord or king, to be held of the Crown of Great Britain, per homagium legium, paying to the King a cast of falcons at his Coronation. Sir John, whose armorial bearings were the Eagle and Child, married the heiress to Knowsley and Latham.

In the hope of putting an end to the very extensive contraband trade of Man, an Act of Parliament was passed in 1726 authorising the Earl of Derby to sell the royalties and revenues of the island, but nothing was done until 1765, when the Duke of Atholl, a descendant of the seventh Earl of Derby, agreed to alienate the sovereignty for £70.000. Certain important rights and perquisites were reserved, in respect of which a further sum of £2000 per annum was granted as an annuity to the Duchess, and so the sovereignty of the isles became vested in the Crown of England. By the revesting act of the island under the British Crown, the honorary service by the Duke of Atholl of rendering his Majesty and his successors two falcons at every Coronation was perpetuated "in consideration, " says a legal authority, "of the unique honours and privileges reserved by that august and noble family."

The Royal yacht, after leaving Uig in Skye, where it had lain at anchor during the night of the 2nd, steered due north for the Mineh — that dreaded sea where the whirling tides make "white water" even on calm days, and where the oldest sailor and the most knowing pilot keeps an anxious eye on chart and compass, well aware that a few minutes' inattention may bring his ship into dire difficuties. Nowhere the wide seas over do stronger currents set in unexpected directions ; nowhere are the sunken reefs more deadly, nor the gusty wind more variable.

But then it is worth some risk to be-hold the magnificent stretch of mountain land which bounds the view on either hand when once the vessel has cleared tihe extraordinary promontory of the Quiraing. The cliffs, over a thousand feet in height, are of basalt of various tints, and folded — so to speak — in perpendicular masses. The Kilt Rock tells its own peculiarity by its name, and the Quiraing also, for those who comprehend Gaelic. The word means an inaccessible perch, and truly the tiny meadow lifted hundreds of feet in the air is a quiraing, or quandary, indeed! Away oceanwards lie Uist and Uenbecula, Borera, Bernara, Harris, and the Lewis — those mist-laden and mysterious islands Iving on the very fringe of Europe, scarcely* known to the great world even yet. To the right are the mountains of Ross, Cromarty, and Sutherland, with salt fiords running far into the glens, and sherrycoloured rivers coining leaping to the sea. This was the country of" the great clan fights, where Maedonnels and (Frasers, Grants and Mackenzies fought endlessly until the heather showed dull red patches under the broken fern. Here across these sullen Seas came the little vessel with her cargo of muskets and powder, bringing the "bonny laddie, the Hielan' laddie," with his foreign manners and his Scottish garb, who was hurrying to make one lasteffort to regain the Stuarts' crown.

Royal visits have been rare in the Hebrides. Prince Charlie is, indeed, linked with almost every mountain and come from Heckla Hill to Rannoch Moor, but King Edward is the first Sovereign of Scotland to set foot in these " islands of mist" since his far-away ancestor, James V, the father of the luckless Mary Stuart, made a progress through the wild northwest, that the sight of his pomp and power might strike fear into the rebel spirits of the clansmen. A curiously different visit is this from that. The Victoria and Albert steamed swiftly into Stornoway Harbour ; her beautiful lines showing low and dark upon the sea, the snake-like torpedo boats slipping along to show her the way, and the cruiser Crescent bringing up the rear — a little flotilla meaning much, as we know, in the matter of speed, and of deadly strength, and the very latest outcome of scientific research, but a modest enough -how judged by ignorant eyes. King James t with Ids 12 ships, made a much more imposing spectacle. The Stan-

dard of Scotland — "the ruddy lion ramping on a field of gold" — flew at the masthead among the multitude of streamers flying from ropes and spars. The towering poop of the King's ship was crowded by men-at-arms glittering in their burnished armour, and bearing the huge pikes or the cumbersome crossbows which were then the chief Scottish weapons. In the next ship sailed the Cardinal Archbishop of St. Andrews, the notorious Beaton, with five hundred picked men-at-arms from Fife and Forfar. Then came Huntly and his following, the Earl of Arran with six hundred knights, besides the royal suite and bodyguard, and the innumerable gentlemen of the King's train.

It was the summer of 1540. The Queen, Mary of Guise, had just given birth to a Prince ? a treaty of peace had been happily concluded with the King's terrible uncle, Henry of England ; and the world for one brief spell seemed bright about the House of Stuart when v.at fleet set sail, gallantly equipped, for the Outer Isles. The Mackays and the MacLeods had been giving trouble, to say nothing of Clanranald and the Moidart men. So James sailed hither and thither, overawing the chiefs, who for the most part crowded to do homage as he passed ; and if any turbulent souls dared to make but a hint of resistance they were seized and carried away, safely immured in some corner of the great hulls of those towering ships, which under the press of their acres of canvas went staggering over the sea.

More than 300 years have gone by since then. Again the MacLeods and Mackinuons, Glengarry and the Moidart men throng down to the shore to watch for their King. But King Edward's sojourn in the Outer Isles is different indeed from that of King James. When Sir Donald Currie put oft in his steam launch from his splendid yacht lolaire. and joined Major Matheson in bidding their Majesties welcome to Stonvoway, they had not the remotest scrap of suspicion that they would be whisked off to the hold of the Victoria and Albert, to be held at ransom or detained during the King's pleasure to gratify the King's whim. The weather was wild and the storm warnings were firing when the royal yacht left Stornoway. Out through the plunging tides and under the lowering skies the yacht ploughed her way ; past Kyle Sku and Bulgie Island, under the bleak cliffs of Handa, and away pas+ Eriboll and Armidale ; and so to Dumiet Bay, where shelter was reached at last. Five-and-twenty years ago the Prince and Princess of Wales vis-it ed John r o' Groat's house, when they were gue=ts of tbe Duke and Duchess of Sutherland at Dunroibin. It was with keen pleasure they pointed out the well-rememberd landmarks to Princess Victoria as they passed the place. The weather, luckily, had cleared, and that "iridescent sunshine" peculiar to the raindrenched air of Caithness was over the Pentland Firth and Duncansbay Head as the yacht turned the extreme noith-east corner of Britain. John o' Groat was a Dutchman, so the story goes, who obtained a charter from that "potent lord," the Earl of Caithness, of lands near Dunc.insbay, where he settled with his eight sons. These lads quarrelled so unceasingly that their father despaired of leaving his property in such a way as would satisfy them all. At last he made them sign a document binding them to peace and goodwill as long as they met every Christmas day at a feast, where each should sit at tbe head of the table, and enter the door fust. This difficulty he solved by building an octagonal tower with eight doors, and an eight-sided table in the lofty central hall — "John o' Groat's House," the wonder of his own days, and the proverbial word which means the ultima thule of our British ground. Stornoway Castle, which their Majesties

visited, is one of the wonders which wealth has worked in the West Highlands. The island of the Xewis was sold by Mrs Stewart Mackenzie, the daughter and heiress of the last chief of Kintail, Francis Mackenzie, Lord Seaforth. It was bought by a certain James Matheson, who had piled up a fortune in the East, and who reckoned himself as indeed lucky to be able to purchase part of the patrimony of the Mackenzies, from whom he could trace descent in the female line. The northern end of the long Island was then one of the dreariest moorlands in Scotland. The white tufts of the bog-grass shone like snowflakes on the treacherous surface of the morass ; and the bleached boughs of trees submerged for centuries showed here and there through the peat.

Then, as we have said, the magic of money worked miracles iff the wilderness. The stagnant water was drained away, the black bog land was broken and burned with lime, and well-grown trees were imported by the shipload. Thousands of acres were planted as pleasure grounds, and the handsome turrets of the castle arose, stately and fair, in that old Franco-Scottish style which fits so well with northern winds and weather. Sir James earned his baronetcy by his noble benevolence and untiring generosity to the islanders during the sufferings of the famine years of '47 and '48. He had no son, and his large property passed to his sister's son, Alexander Matheson, of Loch Alsh. A baronetcy was conferred upon him also, and passed to his son, -the present baronet, who is unmarried.