It was a voyage of astonishing and, to me, wholly novel beauty. The islands which we passed, or at which we stopped, wore all the colors of all the grape clusters of the world, until these were dimmed by slowly approaching twilight, when we found ourselves at rest in the harbor of Tobermory in Mull. We waited there for more than an hour, while leisurely boats floated out to us, laden with sheep and cattle, which were gradually got on board in exchange for some other cargo. Then, with hardly a ripple, our vessel was again in motion, its bows pointing to the mouth of Loch Salen opposite. By and by, in the dimness of the translucent evening, our vessel stopped once more--I could not tell why or wherefore, till a splash of oars was heard and some bargelike craft was decipherable emerging out of the gloom to meet us. Into this, as though in a dream, a number of sheep were lowered; and we, resuming our course, found ourselves at last approaching a small rocky protrusion, on which a lantern glimmered, and which proved to be Salen pier.
Gallic accents reached us, mixed with some words of English. With the aid of adroit but hardly distinguishable figures, I found myself stumbling over the boulders of which the pier was constructed, and realized that a battered wagonette, called "the machine," was awaiting me. A long drive among masses of mountain followed. At last a gleam of waters was once again discernible. The road, rough and sandy, ran close to little breaking waves, and then, in the shadow of woods and overhanging rocks, numerous lights all of a sudden showed themselves. The machine with a lurch entered something in the nature of a carriage drive, and I found myself on the threshold of Dorlin--a lodge of unusual size, which seemed to be almost wading in the water. When the door opened I was greeted by an odor of peat smoke. An old London butler conducted me up a flight of stairs, and I was presently in a drawing-room filled with familiar figures. Besides my host and hostess and their then unmarried daughters, were Lady Herbert of Lee, Lord Houghton, the Verulams, and the most delightful of priests, Father Charles Macdonald, famous as a fisherman, inimitable as a teller of stories, and great-grandson of fighters who had died for Prince Charlie at Culloden. One guest at Dorlin, who had left just before my arrival, was the then Lord Lorne, and I was told by Lady Howard that the boatmen who had helped him to land--Catholic Macdonalds all of them--had been heard saying to one another that "not so very long ago no Campbell would have dared to set foot in the Macdonald country." Not far away there were still living at that time two old ladies--Macdonalds--whose small house was a museum of Stuart relics, and who still spoke of the Pretender with bated breath as "the King."