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[Illustration: CROFTERS' COTTAGES NEAR UIG, SKYE.]


OUR JOURNEY TO THE HEBRIDES.

by

JOSEPH PENNELL and ELIZABETH ROBINS PENNELL.







[Illustration]

London
T. Fisher Unwin
Paternoster Square
MDCCCXC




PREFACE.


The greater part of "Our Journey to the Hebrides" was published
originally in HARPER'S MAGAZINE. When it appeared it was severely
criticised, and we were taken to task for not discovering in Scotland
and the Scotch what has been made the fashion to find there--for not
giving second-hand descriptions, which are the stock in trade of Scotch
guide-books, whether romantic or real; in a word, for not staying at
home and manufacturing our journey in the British Museum.

It is gradually dawning upon us that this is what is wanted by the
majority of critics. To go to a country and tell what really happened to
you--to dare to say, for the information of future cyclers or
travellers, that one small piece of road is bad, that on one day out of
ten or fifteen it rained, that at one small hotel you were uncomfortable
or turned away, is enough to make the critic declare that you have found
everything in that country to be awry. This was our fate when we
attempted to describe the most enjoyable trip we ever made--our ride
across France. We have no hesitation in saying that our trip to
Scotland was the most miserable. We undertook to walk, owing to the
misrepresentations of people who we do not believe ever in their lives
walked half as far as we did a year ago. As we have shown, when tramping
became unendurable we went by coach or train, by steamer or sail-boat;
but we walked far enough to see the country as, we venture to think, it
has seldom been seen by other travellers. For, with all its drawbacks,
walking has this one advantage: not only do you stop at the correct
show-places on your route, but you go slowly over the unknown country
which lies between them. That the weather in the Western Highlands and
Islands is vile is a fact which cannot be denied, though to mention it
is held to be a crime. But, for the benefit of those who, because we
speak of the rain and of the fatigue of walking, think we shut our eyes
to everything else on our journey, let us say here, once and for all,
that we found the whole country BEAUTIFUL and full of the most WONDERFUL
EFFECTS; but we must also add that it is the most abominable to travel
through, and its people are the most down-trodden on God's earth.

This is the best and most concise description of the Western Highlands
and Islands that could be given.

Because we saw and described the actual condition of the population, and
ignored the pleasures--in which we might have joined--of a handful of
landlords and sportsmen whose fathers brought about this condition, and
who themselves are fighting to maintain it, we have been asked what is
the use of digging up ancient history? Thank Heaven, it is now two years
since the Crofters' Act was passed by Parliament; but when we were in
the Islands the first test case of a tenant pleading against the
landlord who wished to evict him was tried, and gained by the tenant.
While we were in Barra, the disenfranchisement of the entire island was
accomplished by a trick which the most unscrupulous American politician
would not have dared to play. The Crofters' Commission had then just
begun to reduce rents--fifty-seven per cent. is the average
reduction--and to cancel arrears. It has raised rents on certain
estates, is an argument used by landlords, who forget to tell you that
where rents have been raised they have been compelled to give back