Oban, Iona, and Staffa.

Caledonian Canal, September 3, 1902.

The fog was so thick the morning we steamed down the ill-smelling Clyde, and out through the Kyles of Bute, that we could see nothing whatever, and had to content ourselves as best we could with the tantalizing recollections of one member of the party, who on a former occasion had made an excursion with some five hundred other persons, delegates to the Glasgow Council and their friends, on the elegant steamer, Duchess of Hamilton, up Loch Long, Loch Goil, and the Kyles of Bute, with alternating showers and sunshine, getting charming views of the lovely scenery that abounds about the Firth of Clyde. But the atmosphere lightened somewhat as we steamed through the Crinan Canal, and as we approached Oban it cleared completely, and gave us full opportunity to enjoy the glorious scenery on every hand.

Situated near the southern terminus of the Caledonian Canal, and also not far from the western isles, and being the starting point of all excursions through this, the wildest and most romantic region of Scotland, Oban is called "the Charing Cross of the Highlands."

The first excursion undertaken by our party from Oban was the famous one to Staffa and Iona, and in this we were so fortunate that we almost forgot our disappointment at the Kyles of Bute. Frequently the sea is so rough in this windy region that passengers cannot be landed on the islands. It was so on the day before our trip, and also on the day after it. It seemed to us rough enough on the day we made the trip, and the captain was doubtful about landing us until the very last. But the boats from shore put out and came alongside, swinging on the waves five or six feet up, and then quickly down again, so that it was necessary for us to step in promptly, one by one, just at the moment when they rose to the highest point. It looked dangerous, but nobody backed out. It looked still more dangerous after we were in the tossing boats, with the great green waves running high all around us. I think several of the party had doubts whether they would ever again set foot on land, and there were thankful hearts and deep sighs of relief when, after the visit to Staffa, we all got safe back on the steamer. The danger, however, was more apparent than real. The boats were staunch, strongly manned, and handled with consummate skill.

We visited Iona first, a small island and homely, but sacred and memorable forever as the place where the presbyter abbot, Columba, the Apostle of Caledonia, and his twelve companions from Ireland, landed in A. D. 563, to begin that series of toilsome, but marvellously successful campaigns, which resulted in the evangelization of a large part of Scotland. The tomb of Columba is still shown in the ancient cathedral. For centuries Iona was a part of the domain of the Duke of Argyll, but three or four years ago the late Duke, the author of The Reign of Law, presented the property to the Church of Scotland. Since that time the cathedral has been re-roofed and otherwise restored, so that now it presents a less desolate appearance than it did on my first visit a few years ago. Iona was the burial place of the ancient Scottish kings. More than fifty of them lie in the cemetery, hard by the cathedral, in graves marked, for the most part, by ancient tombstones, with interesting inscriptions. The last of these kings to be laid here was Duncan I., who was murdered by Macbeth about the middle of the eleventh century. Not far away stands Maclean's Cross, supposed to be the oldest in Scotland. It is one of three hundred and sixty Iona crosses which are said to have once stood on the island.

Half an hour from Iona by the steamer is Staffa. Staffa means the "isle of columns." It is of the same columnar basaltic formation as the Giant's Causeway in the north of Ireland, and was produced by the same outpouring of lava that formed the Irish Causeway. We climbed along the irregular floor of perfectly formed polygonal columns, which fit each other with absolute exactness, though no two are alike. We stopped for a moment to sit down in Fingal's Wishing Chair, and then pushed on to see the most impressive of all these natural wonders—Fingal's Cave—which penetrates the volcanic columns for a distance of two hundred and twenty-seven feet.

This stupendous basaltic grotto in the lonely Isle of Staffa remained, singularly enough, unknown to the outer world until visited by Sir Joseph Banks in 1772. As the visitors' boat glides under its vast portal, the mighty octagonal columns of lava, which form the sides of the cavern—the depth and strength of the tide which rolls its deep and heavy swell into the extremity of the vault unseen amid its vague uncertainty—the variety of tints formed by the white, crimson, and yellow stalactites which occupy the base of the broken pillars that form the roof, and intersect them with a rich and variegated chasing—the corresponding variety of tint below water, where the ocean rolls over a dark red or violet-colored rock, from which the basaltic columns rise—the tremendous noise of the swelling tide mingling with the deep-toned echoes of the vault that stretches far into the bowels of the isle—form a combination of effects without a parallel in the world!

Sir Walter Scott's lines express the sentiment most proper to the place:

The trip from Oban to Inverness, through the Caledonian Canal, with its alternating locks and lochs, and its mountain walls on either side, is one of the finest in the world in point of scenery. It was something of a surprise to us to find at Fort Augustus, half way up the canal, the Benedictine Order established in a magnificent group of buildings, which had been erected at a cost of four hundred thousand dollars, but we presently remembered that there had always been a Roman Catholic element in the Highlands, that this element had ardently supported the pretensions of Charles Edward Stuart to the British crown, and that Lord Lovat, the leading Roman Catholic nobleman of the region, had been executed for the treasonable part he took in that affair. In the Tower of London we had seen the block on which he was beheaded, with the print of the axe showing plainly in the wood. In 1876 the Lord Lovat of that time presented this splendid property to the Benedictines. Of Prince Charlie's career in this part of Scotland we shall have more to say in our next letter.