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LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART

Fifth Series

ESTABLISHED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS, 1832 CONDUCTED BY R. CHAMBERS (SECUNDUS)

No. 60.-VOL. II.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 1885.

CAMPAIGNING AT HOME.

REMINISCENCES OF THE SCOTTISH ORDNANCE SURVEY.

STAY-AT-HOMES read with wonder the adventures of those that 'go down to the sea in ships,' and of arduous campaigns abroad; while they also sympathise readily with the sufferings, hardships, and dangers reported from distant lands. Has it ever occurred to any considerable number of people, outside those actually concerned therein, that for many years a campaign of no mean difficulty was till recently carried on within the borders of our own 'tight little island?' We refer to the Ordnance Survey of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. This interesting undertaking has now been some few years completed. We do not propose to enter into any account of the origin, methods, or objects of the enterprise, but merely, by a few rapid sketches, to convey to the reader some idea of the mode of life to which the workers had to submit during its progress; in the hope of awakening some share of interest in and respect for the toils cheerfully gone through, and the hardships bravely borne by a small body of our fellow-countrymen in scenes not far from our own doors.

For many reasons, camping-out was decided on as the most suitable way of accommodating the surveyors. In a thinly populated country, lodgings would be difficult to find, and the men of a party would become so scattered that efficient supervision of the whole would be impossible. The tents and camp equipagebed-stretchers, blankets, cook-house, and cooking utensils-were of a superior kind to those issued to soldiers in the field, consisting, in fact, of those allotted for hospital purposes and officers' quarters. In a word, everything was provided with intelligent consideration for the comfort of the men, so far as that was possible.

From point to point, then, through the picturesque scenes of the North, the parties wandered for nearly twenty years, pitching by running streams or wild tarns in the most

PRICE 13d.

sheltered nooks they could find. Each morning brought the usual eight o'clock parade, the men having previously breakfasted; and each surveyor and his chainman was dismissed to his appointed task on the adjacent mountains. One of our number was left behind as a cook and camp-watch, to clear up the tents, make the beds, and provide dinner for the men against their return in the evening. Their lunch they carried with them. After their late dinner, the surveyors had their field-books to make up, diagrams to draw out, and the work to 'reference.' Hardy, light-hearted and sociable, the rest of the long summer or autumn evenings was spent sometimes in quoiting, 'putting' the stone, and other exercises; sometimes in visiting by twos or threes the nearest 'clachans;' and sometimes in getting up an improvised dancingmatch to the music of a concertina. Reading and letter-writing were generally left to wet days, when, it may be stated, the men not required to turn out.

were

Those wet days! They were now and then wet weeks, and even months, at a stretch. Such incontinent skies are surely nowhere else to be found but in the Western Highlands. The men welcomed a wet day or two now and then in the sincerest way; their tired feet got rested, and they could overtake arrears of correspondence or of 'book'-work; but beyond the second day their miseries began. The ground around and even inside the tents became a mire; the canvas hung dank and dripping; the stove-pipes would draw on no consideration; the meat got 'high,' and the bread mouldy; tempers got soured, and genuine British grumbling set in. concertina, the song, and the book kept the demon of ennui at bay for a time; but a second or third week of the deluge and inactivity combined let him slowly but surely inside the camp. The quiet ones moped, and the more gritty ones growled. We draw the curtain over the remainder of a six or seven weeks' rain-blockade.

The

In December 1873, the Director-general of the Ordnance Survey-Sir Henry James-stated in

the Blue-book for that year that the mainland of Scotland had been completed, and the survey of the islands of Skye and Mull been entered upon.' When this bald announcement was made, those best able to judge of the nature of the work prophesied that the survey of the Hebrides, Orkneys, and Shetlands would cost a number of valuable lives. Happily, the prophecy was not fulfilled, while the work has been done in excellent style. Only one life was lost by drowning, and even that was not strictly due to the hazards of the work. To all concerned, this is simply a marvel; and the fact that there was not a single case of broken limbs, and only one death from natural causes, makes the record more remarkable still.

Nevertheless, the task of surveying the islands was a fresh departure in the way of additional discomforts, dangers, and anxieties. It is therefore from this period that we draw a few sketches at random from the thousand subjects that readily occur to us. The work in the islands was perhaps little harder in itself than much of that already completed on the mainland. The two chief hardships that presented themselves for the first time were, greater isolation and the more frequent and more hazardous boating excursions which the duties involved. The parties were now also almost invariably farther from any base of supply. As a rule, sufficient provisions of a kind and at a price could still be obtained, but there was much uncertainty in their delivery, owing to the weather and the want of punctuality on the part of the caterers. At times, the men had to subsist for weeks together on tea, oatmeal cakes, and eggs. Fresh meat in some instances was not obtainable in any weather or at any price, so that some sections of the workers had to pursue their exceptionally arduous duties for a whole season together on bread and 'groceries.'

The sappers,' as they were generically styled, whether Royal Engineers, civil assistants, or labourers, had already had some taste and experience of boating on the ofttimes tempestuous Highland lochs, as well as off the grim coast of Ardnamurchan, where, when the wild north winds blow, the sea-view is one of the most awful that can be witnessed around our shores. But now, among the islands, rowing across ugly creeks or round some headland or other was often a part of their daily task. Although a calm morning was usually selected for starting on such expeditions, the weather, as may be supposed, did not always fulfil its augury. The return voyages were often of the most perilous nature. Frequent hairbreadth escapes thus occurred, the narratives of which would well compare in romantic interest with many boasted tales of the sea.

Hitherto, the hill-work and camp-life had been restricted to the summer and autumn months; but in the winter of 1874-75-the year of the great snow-storm, when a train was entombed for three days on the Highland line-an order was issued that the work in the islands should be henceforth prosecuted without stoppage until its final completion. There was no help for it: the men stuck to their tents as long as the tents stuck to them, working intermittently, as the weather would permit. Imagine, then-merely as an example-a small encampment, at Christmas-time

of that year, standing on the north-west shore of solitary Loch Buie, in Mull, coals and provisions short, the nearest village fourteen miles distant. There was no help for it, as we have said; till, on one of the last nights of the year, a more than usually wild tempest swept round the fir-clad hills that tower above the loch, tearing up trees by the roots, hurling masses of rock into the tarn, and lashing the waters into a seething expanse of furious foam. The rain-like sleet was a whirling torrent. After examining the guy-ropes and pickets of the tents with unwonted care, the drenched and wearied surveyors had turned into their cheerless stretchers, but not to sleep. From time to time a gust would strike the canvas with such violence as to threaten the instant destruction of the camp. The miserable task of turning out in that awful night to refasten pickets and slacken guys had to be repeated every few minutes for hours together. A lull came about two in the morning, and the men were just congratulating each other that the worst was over, when, with a crescendo whistle of warning, the storm leapt down the mountain side with redoubled fury, crashing and overthrowing everything on its way. With a succession of loud reports, the canvases split and the tents were overturned. The poor 'sappers' were left in 'storm and night and darkness, undressed, on their stretchers. Their clothing was scattered far and wide. Their experiences till daylight may be better imagined than described.

They entered

The heroes of the above episode, together with other parties, who had fared little better during the winter, had a brief respite from hardship in the spring of 1875 in the beautiful island of Islay, with its large area of cultivated land and succession of low undulating hills. The number of large villages-or small towns-which it contains admitted of the men dispensing with tents and enjoying the luxury of lodgings. Those were red-letter days for them. with zest into the almost forgotten enjoyments of civilised life. Pleasant may their memories be! But even Islay had its adventures. The stormy wreck-strewn shores of Loch an Dahl— an arm of the sea whose terrors are known to all west-coast mariners-very nearly saw the end of several men whose temerity tempted its waters when in angry mood. The poor, brave pilot of Port Charlotte, who frequently gave his solemn warning to the foolhardy, has since found his own grave at the bottom of the treacherous loch, of which he may be said to have been custodian.

Two

Thence to Jura. This, as is well known, is an interesting island in many respects. gracefully rounded hills rise like twin sugarloaves from either shore; while the 'raised beaches,' as geologists term them, which are found in the western district, at an elevation of many hundred feet above the present sea-level, the famous Corryvreckin whirlpool, between its northern shore and the island of Scarba, and its romantic coast-line and surrounding seas, give to Jura an exceptional interest both to the artist and the scientist. But to those who surveyed it for Ordnance purposes, the delights were indeed few and far between. The men so engaged, however, received many kindnesses from the proprietors, which, in their simple hearty way, they delight to recall.

Journal

Picture a camp, occupied by some twenty men, perched eyrie-like amongst a high, shapeless mass of rocks on the north-western side of the island; not a house within ken! Provisions and coal could only be obtained by smack from Port Askaig, in Islay, and that only when weather and accidents permitted. The men had a spell of three months in this delectable spot, and the ground they had to survey was probably as bad as any that chain was ever dragged over or theodolite ever stood upon. Fancy, in addition, three weeks of incessant rain under such circumstances! Rare opportunity for Mark Tapleys!

:

A second party had pitched their tents on a small stretch of fine pasture in a sheltered bight, just at the junction of the Sound of Jura and the Gulf of Corryvreckin, within earshot of the incessant din of the dreaded Corry. Near by, at the top of the grassy slope on which the camp stood, there were four small thatched cottages, one of which was occupied by that prince of boatmen and stoutest of hearts, old Colin Shaw. It was a snug spot, with various splendid sea prospects the Corry itself, the waters around which seemed, to the naked eye, to prance like a brigade of cavalry with the white plumes nodding on their helmets; the Sound, dotted with steamers and craft of every description; the distant Bay of Crinan, with its breakwater of small, low-lying islands; and the cloud-capt precipices of in hospitable Scarba. So far, so well; and those blessings were appreciated. But bread and groceries had to be brought to them eight miles by cart, and then another eight miles by sea, while fresh meat, or, indeed, meat of any kind, was not to be had on the island. This fact, and three weeks of a deluge, sponged a considerable deal of the rose-hue from the picture. Again, the boating! There had well need be a first-class boatman at Kinachdrach. The run from that point to the only landing-spot on Scarba is probably as ticklish a bit of manoeuvring as can well be conceived even by professionals, and that, too, in moderately fine weather; but in a stiff gale, the feat is one scarcely to be undertaken, and is seldom attempted. It had to be done, however, on many occasions, on one of which, a perilously near shave was made in avoiding being swept through the gulf and into the vortex of the whirlpool, not two miles distant. The task of surveying an outlying ridge of rocks near the Corry was done; but a little more than coaxing was needed to get the surveyor to undertake it. A calm day was chosen, and the run made at the slack of the tide, under which circumstances a yacht, or even a large sail-boat, can run the gauntlet of the whirlpool itself.

After a few weeks of lenten fare, the men of this party began naturally enough to long for the fleshpots. They were not supplied by the authorities with provisions, but found' for themselves in whatever way they could out of their full pay, the portage of the week's supply alone being chargeable in the accounts. Their caterer in the present instance was at 'Small Isles, and could provide no meat; on the other hand, the hire of a boat to make a separate journey to the mainland in search of that commodity would have to be borne by themselves. After growling at this dilemma for some weeks

longer, they resolved to despatch a quest-party, and one wet day engaged Colin Shaw and his large boat for the occasion. Kinachdrach in the island of Jura is distant from Crinan on the mainland about eleven miles. The men had to row the whole distance, the old boatman acting as steersman, with a tide running southerly with great velocity. The boat was a heavy one, and the two oarsmen had therefore their work cut out for them. When they had gone about three parts the distance, Colin began to look anxious and to urge them to pull as hard as they were able. There was a low reef of rocks which he wished to pass on the north side. The men made a spurt; but just as they seemed likely to row well clear of the danger, one of them 'caught a crab,' and fell backwards into the bottom of the boat. Quick as lightning, but with a face pale and set, Colin dropped the tiller, sprang to the bows, seized a rope, and leapt on to the nearest point of the ridge, to which the boat had miraculously escaped coming broad-side on! And there, in mid-channel of the Sound of Jura, against a strong tide, the three men had to haul the boat round and clear of the reef before they could resume their journey, which, however, they finished in safety, and, after a drive of eight miles to Lochgilphead, succeeded in laying in a store of mutton, which they brought triumphantly to camp.

As we have said, we can only indicate by a few glimpses the hard circumstances under which much of the survey of the islands was effected. Pen would fail to describe the terrible discomforts, privations, and miseries that the surveyors endured during their 'shifts' from one island to another. The journeys to Colonsay, Tiree, Coll, Rum, Barra, &c., were each of them small 'expeditions' in themselves, in the sense in which that term has lately come to be applied. Exposure in open boats, oftentimes in wet and boisterous weather; landings, some of them at midnight, on unknown beaches or amongst rocks, with several tons of stores and valuable instruments in charge; and the impossibility of obtaining any but the meagrest fare at any time, gave to the task a grimness and severity which many a campaign in earnest has not possessed-and without the glory. The inhabitants were almost invariably kindly in manner to the strangers; but, in strict truth, gave nothing but their goodwill for nothing; on the contrary, they always drove pretty hard bargains with the sappers.' Those of the parties who could speak Gaelic fared best, and were alone able to enjoy such little society as these solitudes afforded.

It is a far cry from Jura to Orkney. The different parties met by appointment in smacks one evening at a given point off the Jura coast, and lay-to all night, waiting for the steamer from Glasgow, which was to pick them up. About midnight of the second day after, they reached Scrabster in the far north, debarked and unloaded, and, after the Sunday's rest, began at midnight to get their stores on board the Express steamer, which sailed next morning for Stromness. There, orders awaited them to take up the Orkney stations allotted to them. Stores were once more landed, provisions and coal hurriedly purveyed, a smack for one, and a string of carts for another party hired, and the loading

process was again repeated. The party with the carts went inland; that with the smack sailed for the island of Hoy. On arriving, the smack could not be run up to the pier on account of the tide. The stores were landed by small boats, and transferred to a procession of twentyfive of the small carts used in the island; and then the tired party marched up the desolate valley of Rackwick to their camping-ground. Not a bale was opened nor a fire lit that night. Overcome with fatigue, the entire party bivouacked on the peat-moss, and next morning they began the detail-survey of the Orkneys.

The precipitous island of Hoy was finished in a fortnight, and then a pleasanter time began; for the remainder of the Orkney Islands, mostly flat and under cultivation, presented little but easy work; while the numerous villages, and the warm hospitality of an English-speaking race, afforded a most agreeable change from the uncouth surroundings of the Hebrides. There was, of course, plenty of boating, and plenty of stormy weather to do it in. The north-east winds and the strong tidal currents that sweep between the islands make sailing amongst them exceptionally hazardous to all but the natives. The islanders are, however, aquatic from their birth. The children are as familiar with a boat as an agricultural

labourer's children are with a horse. The boats themselves, too, are of the handiest and most seaworthy kind, so that the dangers of the coasting expeditions were minimised. There are adventures of an exciting kind to tell, but these can find no place in our already exhausted space.

The Shetlands presented to the surveyors once more the hard work and hard living they had so long undergone, the scant society and vexatious and perilous coast-work. The kindly natives, however, did all they could to make the stay of their strange visitors as pleasant as possible, and many agreeable memories of the expedition remain.

In concluding a necessarily brief article on a large subject, we trust that the impression has not been conveyed that the hardships described were treated by the men as though they deserved commiseration. This would be far from the fact. A trouble, a difficulty, a danger passed, fell at once into the limbo of history; the humorous, the grotesque side of each adventure alone remained. They are now surveying 'fresh woods and pastures new' in some of England's fairest counties. They fight their battles o'er again' with zest, but without complaint, and indeed appear to have a lingering fondness for the recollections associated with their long campaign near home.

A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF. CHAPTER VIII.

'Ir is not because of this only, papa-I wanted before to speak to you. I was waiting in the loggia for you-when Constance came.'

'What did you want, Frances?-Oh, I quite acknowledge that you have a right to inquire. I hoped, perhaps, I might be spared to-night; I am rather exhausted-to-night.'

Frances dropped the hand which she had laid upon his arm. 'It shall be exactly as you please,

papa. I seem to know a great deal—oh, a great deal more than I knew at dinner. I don't think I am the same person; and I thought it might save us all, if you would tell me as much as you think I ought to know.'

She had sat down in her usual place, in her careful little modest pose, a little stiff, a little prim-the training of Mariuccia. After Constance, there was something in the attitude of Frances which made her father smile, though he was in no mood for smiling; and it was clear that he could not, that he ought not to escape. He would not sit down, however, and meet her eye. He stood by the table for a few minutes, with his eyes upon the books, turning them over, as if he were looking for something. At last he said, but without looking up: 'There is nothing very dreadful to tell; no guilty secret, though you may suppose so. Your mother and

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into her eyes. Her heart beat loudly, yet softly, against her young bosom. She had known it, so that she was not surprised. The surprise had been broken by Constance's careless talk, by the wonder, the doubt, the sense of impossibility, which had gradually yielded to a conviction Her feeling was that she would like to go now, without delay, without asking any more questions, to her mother. Her mother! and he hadn't thought before how much that meant to a girl-of her age!

that it must be so.

Mr Waring was a little disconcerted by having no answer. Of course it meant a great deal to a girl; but still, not so much as to make her incapable of replying. He felt a little annoyed, disturbed, perhaps jealous, as Frances herself had been. It was with difficulty that he resumed again; but it had to be done.

"Your mother and I,' he said, taking up the books again, opening and shutting them, looking at the title-page now of one, now of another, 'did not get on very well. I don't know who was in fault-probably both. She had been married before. She had a son, whom you hear Constance speak of as Markham. Markham has been at the bottom of all the trouble. He drove me out of my senses when he was a boy. Now he is a man, so far as I can make out it is he that has disturbed our peace again -hunted us up, and sent Constance here.-If you ever meet Markham-and of course now you are sure to meet him-beware of him.' Here he made a pause again, and looked with great seriousness at the book in his hand, turning

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the leaf to finish a sentence which was continued on the next page.

I beg your pardon, papa,' said Frances; I am afraid I am very stupid. What relation is Markham to me?'

He looked at her for a moment, then threw down the book with some violence on the table, as if it were the offender. He is your stepbrother,' he said.

'My-brother? Then I have a brother too?' After a little pause she added: 'It is very wonderful, papa, to come into a new world like this all at once. I want-to draw my breath.'

'It is my fault that it comes upon you all at once. I never thought- You were a very small child when I brought you away. You forgot them all, as was natural. I did not at first know how entirely a child forgets; and then-then it seemed a pity to disturb your mind, and perhaps set you longing for-what it was impossible for you to obtain."

her mind was not sufficiently developed for retrospection. As she had taken him all her life without examination, she continued to take him. He was her father; that was enough. It did not occur to her to ask herself whether what he had done was right or wrong. Only, it was all very strange. The old solid earth had gone from under her feet, and the old order of things had been overthrown. She was looking out upon a world not realised-a spectator of something like the throes of creation, seeing the new landscape tremble and roll into place, the heights and hollows all changing; there was a great deal of excitement in it, both pain and pleasure. It occupied her so fully, that he fell back into a secondary place.

But this did not occur to Waring. He had not realised that it could be possible. He felt himself the centre of the system in which his little daughter lived, and did not understand how she could ignore him. He thought her silence, the silence of amazement and excitement and of that curious spectatorship, was the silence of reproach, and that her mind was full of a sense of wrong, which only duty kept in check. He felt himself on his trial before her. Having said all that he had to say, he remained silent, expecting her response. If she had given vent to an indignant exclamation, he would have been relieved; he would have allowed that she had a right to be indignant. But her silence was more than he could bear. He searched through the recesses of his own thoughts; but for the moment he could not find any further excuse for himself. He had done it for the best. Probably she would not see that. Waring was well enough acquainted with the human mind to know that every individual sees such a question from his or her own point of view, and was prepared to find that she would be unable to perceive what was so plain to him. But still he was aware that he had done it for the best. After a while the silence became so irksome to him that he felt compelled to break it and resume his explanation. If she would not say anything, there were a number of things which he might say.

It surprised him a little that Frances did not breathe a syllable of reproach. She said nothing. In her imagination she was looking back on these years, wondering how it would have been had she known. Would life ever be the same, now that she did know? The world seemed to open up round her, so much greater, wider, more full than she had thought of. She had not thought much on the subject. Life in Bordighera was more limited even than life in an English village. The fact that she did not belong to the people among whom she had spent all these years, made a difference; and her father's recluse habits, the few people he cared to know, the stagnation of his life, made a greater difference still. Frances had scarcely felt it until that meeting with the Mannerings, which put so many vague ideas into her mind. A child does not naturally inquire into the circumstances which have surrounded it all its life. It was natural to her to live in this retired place, to see nobody, to make amusements and occupations for herself; to know nobody more like herself than Tasie Durant. Had she even possessed any girl-friends living the natural life of youth, that might have inspired a question or two. But 'It is a pity,' he said, 'that it has all broken she knew no girls-except Tasie, whose girl- upon you so suddenly. If I ever could have hood was a sort of fossil, and who might almost divined that Constance would have taken such have been the mother of Frances. She saw a step- To tell you the truth, I have never indeed the village girls, but it did not occur to her to compare herself with them. Familiar as she was with all their ways, she was still a forestiere, one of the barbarous people, English, a word which explains every difference. Frances did not quite know in what the peculiarity and eccentricity of the English consisted; but she, too, recognised with all simplicity that being English, she was different. Now it came suddenly to her mind that the difference was not anything generic and general, but that it was her own special circumstances, that had been unlike all the rest. There had been a mother all the time; another girl, a sister, like herself. It made her brain whirl.

realised Constance at all,' he added with an impulse towards the daughter he knew. 'She was of course a mere child-to see her so independent, and with so distinct a will of her own, is very bewildering. I assure you, Frances, if it is wonderful to you, it is scarcely less wonderful to me.'

There was something in the tone that made her lift her eyes to him; and to see him stand there so embarrassed, so subdued, so much unlike the father, who, though very kind and tender, had always been perhaps a little condescending, patronising, towards the girl, whom he scarcely recognised as an independent entity, went to her heart. She could not tell him not She sat quite silent, thinking it all over, not to be frightened; not to look at her with that perceiving her father's embarrassment, thinking guilty, apologetic look, which altogether reversed less of him, indeed, than of all the wonderful their ordinary relationship; but it added a pang new things that seemed to crowd about her. She to her bewilderment. She asked hastily, by did not blame him. She was not, indeed, think- way of concealing this uncomfortable change, a ing enough of him to blame him; besides that question which she thought he would have no

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