CHAPTER I. The Hegira or the Wests from Edinbtjboh.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XVI, Issue 42, 8 February 1889, Page 25

CHAPTER I. The Hegira or the Wests from Edinbtjboh.

I, Jambs Fqthbbqill West, student of law in the university of St. Andrews, have endeavoured in tbe ensuing pages to lay my statement befoie the public in a concise and business-like fashion. It is not my wish to achieve literary suscess ; nor have I any desire by the graces of my style, or by the artiitic ordering of my incidents, to throw a deeper shadow over the strange passages of which I shall have to •peak. My highest ambition is tnat those who know something of the matter should, after readiog my account, be able to conscientiously endorse it without rinding a single paragraph in which 1 have either added to or detracted from the truth. Should I attain this result, I shall rest amply satisfied with the outcome of my first, and probably my last, venture in literature. My father, John Hunter West, was a well-known Oriental aa d Sanskrit scholar, and his name is still of weight with those who are interested in such matters. He it was who first after Sir William Jones called attention to the great value of early Persian literature, and bis translations both from Hafiz and from Ferideddm A tar have earned the warmest commendations from tbe Baron von HaumerPurgstall, of Vienna, and other distinguished Continental critics. In tbe issue of the " Orientalisches Scienz-blatt " for January, 1861, he is described as " Der berhumte und sehr gelehrnte Hunter West von Edinburgh " — a passage which I well remember that he cut out and stowed away, with a pardonable vanity, among the most revered family archives. He had been brought up to be a solicitor, or Writer to the Signet, as it is termed in Scotland, but his learned bobby absorbed so much of bis time that he had little to devote to the pursuit of his profession. When his clients were seeking him at his chambers in George street he was buried in the recesses of the Advocates' Library, or poring over some mouldy manuscript at the Philosophical Institution, with his brain more exercised over the code which Mean propounded six hundred years before the birth of Christ than over the knotty problems of Scottish law in tbe nineteenth century. Hence it can hardly be wondered at that as his learning accumulated hid practice dissolved until at the «exy moment when he had attained the eenith of his celebrity he had also reached the nadir of his fortunes. There being no chair of Sanskrit in any of his native nniversities, and no demand anywhere for the ooly mental wares which he had to dispose of, we should have been f orc«d to retire into genteel poverty, consoling ourselves with tbe aphorisms and precepts of Firdousi, Omar Chiam, and other of his Eastern favourites, had it not been for the unexpected kindness and liberality of bis half-brother, William Farintosh, the Laird of Branksome, in Wigtownshire. This William Farintosh was tbe proprietor of a landed estate, the acreage of which bore, unfortunately, a most disproportion! relation to its value, for it formed the bleakest and most barren tract of land in tbe whole of a bleak and barren shire. As a bachelor, however, his expenses had been imall, and he had contrived from the rents of his scattered cottages, and the sale of the Galloway nags which he bred upon the moors, not only to live as a laird should, but to put by a considerable sum in the bank. We had heard little from our kinsman during the days of our comparative prosperity ; but just as we were at oar wits' end, there came a letter like a ministering angel, giving us assurance of sympathy and succour. la it the Laird of Branksome told ua that one of his lungs had been growing weaker for some time, aud that Dr. Easterling, of Stranraer, bad strongly advised him to spend tbe tew years which were left to him in some more genial climate. He had determined, therefore, to set out for the south of Italy, and he begged that we suould take up our residence at Branksome iv his absence, and that my father should act as his land steward and agent at a salary which placed us above all fear of want. Our mother bad been dead for eonae years, so that there were only myself, my father, and my sister Esther to consult ; and it may readily be imagined that it did not take us long to decide upon the acceptance of the Laird's generous offer. My father started for Wigtown that very night, while Esther and I followed a few days afterwards, bearing wi'h us two potato-sacks full of learned books, and such other of our household effects as were worth the trouble and expense of transport.