CHAPTER II 



THE ISLAND OF COLONSAY 



I ALWAYS had a hankering after Colonsay long before 

 I ever visited its shores. It was visible as a dim cloud 

 on the horizon as one looked over the whirlpool of 

 Coirevreachan between Jura and Scarba from many of 

 the high points round Poltalloch. But, although the 

 distance was not very great as the crow flies, it re- 

 quired a daring pilot and a favourable tide, to face the 

 dangers of the gulf with its galloping rush and roaring 

 whirlpool even in a steam yacht, and the voyage round, 

 either southward through the Sounds of Jura and 

 Islay, or northward round the end of Scarba and the 

 Garvelloch leaving Mull on the port helm, was rather 

 an undertaking. The anchorage was notoriously diffi- 

 cult and risky ; in fact in anything like an easterly gale 

 even the mail-boats were, it was said, often unable to 

 land their cargo and passengers. More than once 

 when my brother-in-law, John Wingfield Malcolm, 

 afterwards the first and only Lord Malcolm of Pol- 

 talloch, but then member for Argyllshire, sailed in the 

 Guillemot to visit that Ultima Thule of his constitu- 

 ency, he came back disappointed, having found the 

 weather too uncertain to risk landing and leaving the 

 yacht outside in the open roadstead. So it befell that 

 it was not until 1898 that my desire was gratified. 

 That year I was looking out for a small moor in 



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