32 MEMOIR OF GEORGE WILSON. CHAP. II. 



was cold and occasionally wet, till we rounded the headland 

 of Bute. The gale then freshened considerably ; the wind 

 blowing on the side of the vessel made it reel and toss very 

 wildly, and the spray was swept over us by the rude gust. 

 I could not go below ; I should at once have become sick ; 

 so I sat it out on deck. There was something very wild in 

 the night, quite dark, the vessel pitching very much, and 

 the billows breaking in foam upon her; still there was a 

 peculiar beauty in the sky, which could never have been 

 seen in the effulgence of sunlight. Long, long after the 

 sun had set, he sent up a dim flood of light on the edge 

 of a cloud which overshadowed the west, and the appear- 

 ance of the one still subdued line of light mirrored in the 

 wave was peculiarly beautiful and wholly new to me ; and 

 the time passed rapidly on in watching the moon labouring 

 in the sky, in fitful gleams, now shining out, and now 

 behind a dense cloud which she fringed with her light. 

 We arrived at Brodick, the most easterly of the two villages 

 of Arran, at nine, and immediately disembarked. We were 

 landed on the beach, and set out for the village at a little 

 distance ; but soon we were brought to a stand by a great 

 stream which ran right across our path. The army of some 

 great conqueror could not be more astonished at a river 

 like the Amazon or Orinoco, than we were at this impass- 

 able barrier. I was just about to walk straight through it, 

 when a stout handsome Highlander came wading through, 

 and carried us across, one by one, upon his broad shoulders. 

 When Mr. Campbell and I had been ferried over, we stood 

 laughing at the strange perplexed look of those whose turn 

 had not yet arrived. I was strongly reminded of the descrip- 

 tion given by the classical poets of the grim disappointed 

 look of the ghosts who could not afford to pay Charon the 

 small coin he charged for ferrying them over the Styx. Rair 



