Skye, Island of (Scotland) -- Description and travel
When we got to Skeabost there were the emigrants, to the number
perhaps of fifty or sixty, seated on the lawn. They were dressed as
was their wont on Sundays, when prepared for church. The men wore
suits of blue or gray kelt, the women were wrapped for the most part
in tartan plaids. They were decent, orderly, intelligent, and on the
faces of most was a certain resolved look, as if they had carefully
considered the matter, and had made up their minds to go through with
it. They were of every variety of age too; the greater proportion
young men who had long years of vigorous work in them, who would fell
many a tree, and reap many a field before their joints stiffened:
women, fresh, comely, and strong, not yet mothers, but who would be
grandmothers before their term of activity was past. In the party,
too, was a sprinkling of middle-aged people, with whom the world had
gone hardly, and who were hoping that Canada would prove kinder than
Skye. They all rose and saluted the Landlord respectfully as we
drove down toward the house. The porch was immediately made a hall
of audience. The Landlord sat in a chair, Pen took his seat at the
table, and opened a large scroll-book in which the names of the
emigrants were inscribed. One by one the people came from the lawn
to the porch and made known their requirements:--a man had not yet
made up his passage-money, and required an advance; a woman desired a
pair of blankets; an old man wished the Landlord to buy his cow,
which was about to calve, and warranted an excellent milker. With
each of these the Landlord talked sometimes in Gaelic, more
frequently in English; entered into the circumstances of each, and
commended, rebuked, expostulated, as occasion required. When an
emigrant had finished his story, and made his bargain with the
Landlord, Pen wrote the conditions thereof against his or her name in
the large scroll-book. The giving of audience began about noon, and
it was evening before it was concluded. By that time every emigrant
had been seen, talked with, and disposed of. For each the way to
Canada was smoothed, and the terms set down by Pen in his
scroll-book; and each, as he went away was instructed to hold himself
in readiness on the 15th of the following month, for on that day they
were to depart.
When the emigrants were gone we smoked on the lawn, with the moon
rising behind us. Next morning our party broke up. Fellowes and the
Landlord went off in the mail to Inverness; the one to resume his
legal reading there, the other to catch the train for London. Pen
went to Bracadale, where he had some business to transact preparatory
to going to Ireland, and I drove in to Portree to meet the
southward-going steamer, for vacation was over, and my Summer in Skye
had come to an end.
_HOMEWARDS._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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