2 THE CRUISE OF THE BETSEY. ; OR, 



month. But my friend, now afloat in his Free Church yacht, 

 had got a home on the sea beside his island charge, which, 

 if not very secure when nights were dark and winds loud, 

 and the little vessel tilted high to the long roll of the At- 

 lantic, lay at least beyond the reach of man's intolerance, 

 and not beyond the protecting care of the Almighty. He 

 had written me that he would run down his vessel from 

 Small Isles to meet me at Tobermory, and in consequence of 

 the arrangement I was now on my way to Mull. 



St Swithin's day, so important in the calendar of our 

 humbler meteorologists, had in this part of the country its 

 alternate fits of sunshine and shower. We passed gaily along 

 the green banks of the Clyde, with their rich flat fields glit- 

 tering in moisture, and their lines of stately trees, that, as 

 the light flashed out, threw their shadows over the grass. 

 The river expanded into the estuary, the estuary into the 

 open sea ; we left behind us beacon, and obelisk, and rock- 

 perched castle ; 



" Merrily down we drop 

 Below the church, below the tower, 

 Below the lighthouse top ;" 



and, as the evening fell, we were ploughing the outer reaches 

 of the Frith, with the ridgy table-land of Ayrshire stretching 

 away green on the one side, and the serrated peaks of Arran 

 rising dark and high on the other. At sunrise next morn- 

 ing our boat lay, unloading a portion of her cargo, in one of 

 the ports of Islay, and we could see the Irish coast resting 

 on the horizon to the south and west, like a long undulating 

 bank of thin blue cloud ; with the island of Rachrin famous 

 for the asylum it had afforded the Bruce when there was no 

 home for him in Scotland presenting in front its mass of 

 darker azure. On and away ! We swept past Islay, with 

 its low fertile hills of mica-schist and slate ; and Jura, with 

 its flat dreary moors, and its far-seen gigantic paps, on one 



