MULL, STAFFA, AND IONA. MY DEAR BROTHER, - Oban is a town situated on the north-west coast of Argyllshire, in the centre of a noble bay, with the Island of Kerrera immediately opposite, and the wild and rocky Island of Mull be hind Kerrera, with the waters of Loch Linnhe on the right running into the Sound of Mull, and on the left Jura and Islay stretching away to the wide Atlantic. This place is much frequented by tourists through the western Highlands, because it lies on the route from Inverary to Fort William, and thence by the Caledonian Canal to Inverness, and more still, perhaps, because it is the starting point for a visit to Staffa and Iona. During the season, steamers are daily passing between Oban and Glasgow. They come by Loch Fine, which they pass up as far as Loch Gilphead, where there is a canal cut across the narrow neck of land which connects the loch with the Sound of Jura, called the Crinan Canal, and thence up that Sound to Oban. On alternate days one steamer runs to Fort William, and another to Staffa and Iona. Yachts may also be had here, for a week or a month, and on very moderate terms; I believe ten guineas is the price for the latter period. This would be a very pleasant mode for a party of friends to adopt, provided always they are not limited for time. They might touch where, and remain as long as, they pleased, and scour the whole Hebrides from Islay to Skye, and even, if they thought fit, Harris and Lewis themselves. But we were on other "thoughts intent." No deerstalking in Skye, or Hebridean tour, after the style of old Samuel Johnson, were in our plans of operation; but Fort William was our limit, north and west. Among the indispensable things to be done, however, in my designs, was a visit to those marvellous islands whichScience and Literature, through the oracular mouths of their then high priests, Sir Joseph Banks and Dr Johnson, revealed to the gaze and interest of an admiring world. Accordingly I went on board the steamer at six o'clock in the morning, after our arrival at Oban (K– not accompanying me, as he had already been twice, and felt disposed for a quiet day). The day was stated by the captain to have been the finest in the season. It was not one of your gorgeous, sun-illuminated, but haze-smothered days, when you can see no distance, but one of those delightful days in September, when the air is cool and the atmosphere is clearness itself. The packet fare is one pound five shillings; rather high, you will doubtless think, for a day's voyage; but that day, you will remember, lasts fifteen hours, during which you pass some of the very finest coast scenery in the world, and your packet is not filled like a Clyde or Greenwich steamer. I dare say, however, that as the tour becomes more and more known in the south, the pressure of visitors will enable the proprietors to reduce the charge. The accommodation is excellent, and this mode of viewing the scenery you pass as admirable as possible, with the exception of the bagpipes, which are incessantly played during the day, and most Englishmen will feel like me, totally at variance with the steward of Sir Robert Redgauntlet, "who was so specially fond of the pipes." You are delayed by nothing; but on you go, hour after hour, with unerring certainty, and with a continually changing prospect. There is none of the inconvenience experienced by Dr Johnson seventy years ago: "Here the violence of the weather confined us for some time. We would very willingly have visited the islands, which might be seen from the house scattered in the sea, and I was particularly desirous to have viewed Isay, but the storms did not permit us to launch a boat, and we were condemned to listen in idleness to the wind, except when we were better engaged in listening to the ladies."-(Tour to the Hebrides,' Dunvegan.) Who, by-the-bye, after that last line, shall say that the Doctor was a bear? But the substantial inconvenience of delay, perhaps for days, in visiting the islands of that stormy and uncertain sea, is gone. It is no longer necessary to "launch a boat," nor even to be dependent on a yacht; but the unfailing steamer performs with certainty the task it undertakes, and shows you the whole magnificent panorama in an autumn day. And what a panorama! Much, indeed, I anticipated, but more I enjoyed; much I had expected to see, but more I saw. You must follow me with the map of Western Scotland before you; you must have the chart in your hand to understand the bearings of our voyage. We first passed the ruins of Dunolly Castle, which I mentioned to you in my last letter as the former residence of the MacDougalls of Lorn, and which is situated on one point of the bay, formed by the Island of Kerrera, on which Oban is centrically placed. Near this point the waters of the wild and interesting Loch Etive flow into the sea; and separating the mouths of the two lochs, Etive and Linnhe, is the Island of Lismore, at the southern end of which is, what is a very necessary thing in that spot, a fine lighthouse. After passing that island, anciently the seat of the bishops of Argyll, you cross the mouth of Loch Linnhe, which is a very noble specimen of lake scenery, and is the terminating loch of the remarkable line of lochs which traverse Scotland between Fort William and Inverness, and now artificially connected by the Caledonian Canal. You are then in the Sound of Mull, and beginning your excursion round that island, which you sail completely round before the termination of your voyage. The Sound forms one of the four sides of the island. Here is the land of poetry and romance, indeed! On your right are the hills of Morvern, so often celebrated in Ossian;' although I confess I did not look on them with any of that in terest which other scenes in that remarkable district gave me, from having been celebrated by a true genius, because you and I have long made up our minds to the imposition and quackery of Macpherson; and notwithstanding Napoleon's preposterous admiration of Ossian, I own for one I think the great bulk of it sad rant. But if Ossian is not Homer, Scotland has had a bard, who arose in a civilized age, to transmit to the most distant times a memory and interest for her wildest and most rocky scenes; and for the generation of untamed and desperate men, which for ages lived amongst them,-albeit now happily passed away, and only existing in the undying pages of the 'Minstrel.' The scenes through which you pass on this voyage I need not tell you are the locality of that delightful poem, the Lord of the Isles; and not far up the Sound is Artornish Castle, which makes such a figure in the opening of that poem, and was long the stronghold of those petty sovereigns, the Lords of the Isles. At the termination of the Sound, on the right-hand side, which is the mainland of Inverness-shire, and the extremest point of land on the western coast of Scotland, are the hills of Ardnamurchan, which stretch out into ocean's bed full many a league, and serve as a rampart against the surges of the wild Atlantic. For miles and miles their towering crests are seen before you as you come up the Sound, and turn the northern point of the Isle of Mull; and wilder and wilder they look as you approach them-apparently only the residence of the eagle and the cormorant. What a country is this! No wonder that man, unconnected with his fellows of a happier climate, became as savage as the scene, and yet would not exchange the fiery independence his inaccessi ble mountains gave him for all the beauties of brighter skies and civilized life! "No product here the barren hills afford, But man and steel, the soldier and his sword. No vernal blooms these torpid rocks array, But winter lingering chills the lap of May. No zephyr fondly sues the mountain's breast, But meteors glare, and stormy glooms invest.' And yet, as the poet truly adds, as the moral to his fine picture : "Dear is that shed to which his soul conforms, When you reach Ardnamurchan point, on The 'Traveller.' limity; it is the thing of which you can form the nearest conception. It was almost exactly what I expected to see. The cave runs two hundred and fifty feet, with columnar rocks of basalt, sixty or seventy feet high, and the sea eternally breaking and moaning against those picturesque pillars, which seem to stand the memorials of a former world. The description of Scotland's poet is the only adequate one, and will bear repetition for the thousandth time : "The shores of Mull on the eastward lay, That guard famed Staffa round. That Nature's voice might seem to say, Doubtless there is a continuous basaltic substratum across the seas from Staffa to the Giant's Causeway and thence far inland.* The island of Staffa is about two miles in circumference, and is depastured in summer by black cattle. About ten miles distant is Iona, meaning, according to the picturesque language of the Gael, the Island of the waves, and Icolmkill, meaning the Island of the cell of St Columba. Here we again landed, and I own I was somewhat disappointed, although unreasonably, for if I only saw ruins and a wretched 'clachan' of fishermen, what else was I to expect? The whole interest of the scene was moral, and that at any rate was intense. The site, however, of the celebrated monastery and cathedral is very grand. On your left is the distant Staffa, and on the right the isles of Jura and Colonsay, and before you the wild rocks of Mull, tenanted only by the cormorant, and around you the Atlantic ocean. The enthusiasm of Dr Johnson was so strongly roused when A few years ago two gentlemen, one from Edinburgh and another from London, went from Mull to Staffa in an open boat; and it being then fine weather, sent the boat back. A storm, however, arose, which continued for some days, so that the boat could not return. The gentlemen were obliged to kill a sheep, and lighted a fire with the lucifer matches for their cigars, sleeping in one of the caves. treading this celebrated island, that it developed itself in a passage of eloquence which is, in our opinion, you know, the finest in all the Johnsonian declamations:— "We were now treading that illustrious island which was once the luminary of the Caledonian regions, whence savage clans and roving barbarians derived the benefits of knowledge and the blessings of religion. Far from me and my friends be such frigid philosophy as may conduct us indifferent and unmoved over ground which has been dignified by wisdom, learning, or virtue. That man is little to be envied, whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona." The Doctor afterwards minutely and agreeably describes the monumental ruins, and adds a passage not generally known on the important point of Iona being the site of interment of the Scottish kings. "Iona," he says, "has long enjoyed, without any very credible attestation, the honour of being reputed the cemetery of the Scottish kings. It is not unlikely, that when the opinion of local sanctity was very prevalent, the chieftains of the isles, and perhaps some of the Norwegian and Irish princes, were deposited in this venerable enclosure; but by whom the subterraneous vaults are peopled is now utterly unknown. The graves are very numerous, and some of them undoubtedly contain the remains of men who did not expect to be so soon forgotten." After leaving Iona, we came in sight of Colonsay, and then turning our course by the southern side of Mull, had Jura on our right, with Ben Cruachan distinctly visible in the distance. All the coast scenery on both sides is peculiarly bold and rocky, and the cliffs stand up like battlemented castles from the deep in a succession of many a mile. Eventually, at nine o'clock in the evening, we arrived at Oban, after a day enjoyed, by me at least for one, as one of the most interesting it has ever been my good fortune to spend, and I felt, indeed, after the intensely-exciting scenery we had been passing, and the instructive "lessons on objects" we had been taking for fifteen hours, that on retiring to rest on that day, at any rate, I might conscientiously say, "Diem non perdidi!" Your affectionate brother, ALFRED. Science Rewarded.-It is with pleasure we announce that a pension of 2001. a year has been granted by her Majesty to Sir William Hamilton, Professor of Astronomy, and President of the Royal Irish Academy.-Rumours are current that the Presidency of King's College, London, is about to be given to Dr Mill, formerly President of Bishop's College, Calcutta. Arms. Or three eagles displayed, purple, Crest. On a ducal coronet or, an eagle rising, purple. Supporters. Two eagles, wings endorsed, purple, each sustaining with the interior claws a banner of St George, tasselled or, the staves enfiled with a naval coronet of the last. Motto. "Non generant aquila columbas." Eagles do not generate doves." THE NOBLE HOUSE OF RODNEY. SPLENDID deeds of modern date, and not a lineage of extraordinary antiquity, distinguish the noble house of Rodney. The eminent man who raised it to the proud rank which it now claims was George Brydges Rodney. He was the son of Henry Rodney, Esq., of Walton-onThames, and Mary, eldest daughter and co-heir of Sir Henry Newton, Knight, and Envoy Extraordinary to Genoa, Tuscany, &c., LL.D., and Judge of the Admiralty. He was born February 13, 1718. He devoted himself to the naval service of his country, and having passed with credit through the humbler walks of the service, became Vice-Admiral in 1762; was created a Baronet, January 22, 1764; and in 1780 made a Knight of the Bath. On the 19th of June, 1782, he was elevated to the Peerage as Baron Rodney, of Rodney Stoke, county of Somerset, as a reward for the memorable victory gained over the French fleet, commanded by the Count de Grasse, on the 12th of April in that year. No triumph was ever more welcome to the English nation. It came at a moment when the people generally were dispirited at the ill success of the war with America, and all the circumstances were honourable to the British name and to the hero who commanded. It was at daybreak on the 12th that the line of battle was formed. The hostile fleets were nearly equal in force. Rodney had thirty-six ships under him, his antagonist thirty-four; but the latter had a greater number of guns, besides a body of land forces then on their way to attack the island of Jamaica. A cable's length was allowed by Rodney between each ship. The signal being given for close combat, the ships came up severally and took their stations against their selected opponents. Victory was held in suspense, when the English Admiral executed a manoeuvre which, according to some writers, was never before resorted to in British naval tactics, but which has since been repeated 66 with splendid success. In his own ship the "Formidable," supported by the "Namur," the "Duke," and the "Canada," he bore down, with all sails set, on the enemy's line, within three ships of the centre, and succeeded in breaking through it. This was accomplished with the most masterly skill. "In the act of doing so," says Sir Gilbert Blaine, "we passed within pistol shot of the 'Glorieux,' which was so terribly handled, that, being shorn of all her masts, bowsprit, and ensign staff, but with a white flag nailed to her stump, and breathing defiance, as it were, in her last moments, she lay, a motionless hulk, presenting a spectacle which struck our Admiral's fancy as not unlike the remains of a fallen hero; being an indefatigable reader of Homer, he exclaimed, 'That now was to be the contest for the body of Patroclus!" The result was all that he could have desired, and the French were totally defeated, with the loss of eight ships; one had been sunk, one blew up after she had been taken, and six remained in the hands of the conqueror. One of these was the Admiral's own ship, the "Ville de Paris," of 106 guns, and the only first-rate man-ofwar that had then ever been taken into port as a prize by a naval commander. She had been a present to Louis XV, from the city of Paris, and was said to have cost 176,000l. Her commander had made a gallant resistance, fighting, though surrounded, till night, and when he at length submitted, only three of the survivors of his crew remained without a wound. In the following year Lord Rodney was granted a pension of 2,000l. per annum to himself and his successors, for his conduct during the war. He married in January, 1753, Jane, the daughter of Charles Compton, Esq., sister of Spencer, Earl of Northampton, by whom he had two sons, George, who succeeded to the Peerage, and James, who was lost at sea in 1776. His Lordship having become widower, married Henrietta, daughter of John Clies, Esq., by whom he had two sons. He died May 21, 1792, and was succeeded by his eldest son, George, who was born December 25, 1753, who married, April 10, 1781, Anne, daughter of the Right Hon. Thomas Harley, Alderman of London, and grandson of Edward, third Earl of Oxford, by whom he had a numerous family. He died January 2, 1802, and was succeeded by his eldest son, George, the Peer lately deceased. REGICIDAL OUTRAGES. LAHORE, in the East Indies, has again been the scene of deeds of blood shocking to humanity. The murders perpetrated have all the wildness and ferocity about them which have heretofore marked oriental outbreaks. Revolutions there, however, deliberately planned when the moment for proceeding to action comes, are executed with the rapidity of thought, and tragedy speedily succeeds to tragedy. It appears that an insurrection broke out at Lahore on the 15th of September. It was marked by the murder of Shere Singh, his son, and all their families. The Sirdar Ajeet Singh was the perpetrator of this bloody tragedy. The event took place at the north gate of Lahore, about a mile and a half from the palace, at halfpast nine o'clock in the morning. The conspiracy was formed by Fakeer Azeezood-deen and Dhyan Singh, and it fell to the lot of Sirdar Ajeet Singh to execute it; Sirdars Golab Singh, Lena Singh, and Soochet Singh were also concerned. Dhyan made the arrangement by pro posing to the Maharajah to inspect Ajeet's troops, which the Maharajah said he would do the following morning, and orders were accordingly issued. On the Maharajah's arrival at the parade ground he found fault with the appearance and condition of some horsemen purposely placed to attract attention, when Ajeet became angry, words ran high, and drawing a pistol from his bosom, he shot Shere Singh through the head, the ball having entered his right temple. General Ventura and his party attacked the murderer, but being opposed by a powerful body of troops, were defeated. Ajeet cut up the Rajah's body, placed his head on a spear, and on entering the town met Prince Purtaub Singh's suwarie, which was immediately attacked, and the prince killed. The palace was taken, the treasury thrown open, and the troops paid their arrears of pay; every child and all the wives of Shere Singh and Prince Purtaub were then brought out and murdered, amongst the rest one of Shere Singh's sons only born the previous evening. Troops were sent off to guard all the ghauts, and all the opposite party (except Gen. Ventura, who escaped) were made prisoners. Ajeet, after having killed Shere Singh, was returning to the fort and met Dhyan; he told him he had done the deed, and asked him to return; he got into Dhyan's carriage, and when they got near the gate of the fort, Ajeet stabbed Dhyan, and sent his body to his brother and his son, who surrounded the city with their troops, while the people inside continued plundering all night. In the morning (16th) Heera Singh having entered the fort, seized Ajeet, Lena, and others, and having avenged the murder of his father by putting them to death, exposed their heads in the plain and threw their bodies into the bazaar. Dhuleep Singh, an alleged son of Kurruck, ten years of age, is on the throne, and Heera Sing has been appointed Prime Minister. The reader will be struck with the swift succession of rulers. The prince now advanced is the fifth that has ascended the throne since 1839, being something more than a monarch per year. Runjeet Singh died in June, 1839; his son Kurruck succeeded. He died, and was followed by Nao Nehal Singh, who was killed at his father's funeral. Shere Singh (succeeded, and he has been killed, and a child placed in his room, to become a victim in his turn. The anarchy which prevails, it is thought, will lead to British interference. Our empire, we believe it is generally felt, is more than sufficiently large. Experience has taught England that the happiness of a nation does not increase in proportion as it multiplies the number of its foreign dependencies. Still, where such anarchy prevails, it is almost to be wished that a power capable of commanding obedience should in charity step forward to govern those who seem so miserably incapable of governing themselves. AGRICULTURAL CHEMISTRY. LETTER VII. As in a state of nature all animals instinctively frequent those localities which are best adapted to their habits and wants, so also do plants, in the same way, accommodate themselves to the changes taking place in the surrounding soils. Salt-loving plants frequent the sandy margins of the sea, and peaty soils are distinguished by their woolly grass. The serpentine rocks are clothed with the Cornish heath, Erica vagans, while the red broom-rape, Orobanche rubra, thrives best on basaltic rocks. Some plants seek an acid soil; others again, one where alkalis abound: thus, the red clover and the vetch are found with gypsum; and white clover where alkaline salts are present. |