can presume to analyse that inexplicable feeling which binds the
person born in a mountainous country to his native hills,--perhaps
some early associations, retaining their effect long after the
cause was forgotten, mingled in the feelings of pleasure with which
he regarded the scene before him.
"And what," said Brown to the boatman, "is the name of that fine
cape, that stretches into the sea with its sloping banks and
hillocks of wood, and forms the right side of the bay?"
"Warroch Point," answered the lad.
"And that old castle, my friend, with the modern house situated
just beneath it? It seems at this distance a very large building."
"That's the Auld Place, sir; and that's the New Place below it.
We'll land you there if you like."
"I should like it of all things. I must visit that ruin before I
continue my journey."
"Ay, it's a queer auld bit," said the fisherman and that highest
tower is a gude landmark as far as Ramsay in Man, and the Point of
Ayr--there was muckle fighting about the place lang syne."
Brown would have inquired into further particulars, but a fisherman
is seldom an antiquary. His boatman's local knowledge was summed
up in the information already given, "that it was a grand landmark,
and that there had been muckle fighting about the bit lang syne."
"I shall learn more of it," said Brown to himself, "when I get
ashore."
The boat continued its course close under the point upon which the
castle was situated, which frowned from the summit of its rocky
site upon the still agitated waves of the bay beneath. "I
believe," said the steersman, "ye'll get ashore here as dry as ony
gate. [*Any place] There's a place where their berlins and
galleys, as they ca'd them, used to lie in lang syne, but it's no
used now, because it's ill carrying gudes up the narrow stairs, or
ower the rocks. Whiles of a moon-light night I have landed
articles there, though."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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