144 TARBET AND CAMPBELTON. 



rocks apparently barring access, the overhanging keep 

 of the ruined castle, the village, and the innumerable 

 fishing-boats choking up every nook and crevice, form a 

 scene singularly picturesque." But what is picturesque 

 is not always convenient. However, East Tarbert is, 

 and always has been, one of the chief ports for the Loch 

 Fyne fishers ; the other, on the west coast of the Mull, is 

 Campbelton.* 



About a hundred years ago Campbelton was of more 

 importance in this respect than Tarbert ; but as its 

 whisky-distilleries sprang up its fisheries went down and 

 though the latter are now prosecuted with considerable 

 . energy, they have not recovered their ancient prosperity. 



In 1863 a company was formed in Campbelton for 



* Mr. Black furnishes an animated description of the departure of the Loch 

 Fyne fishermen. "A fine sight it was," he says, "that setting out of the 

 herring-fleet in the yellow afternoon, with the bronzed and varnished hulls of 

 the boats shining like so many spots of brownish-red on the calm blue of the 

 lake. Here, too, were none of the tattered and pot-bellied fishermen of 

 Brighton, living on occasional hauls of mackerel and occasional shillings got 

 from visitors but crews of lithe and stalwart men, big-boned and spare- 

 fleshed, who plied the enormous oars with a swing and ease that told of 

 splendid physiques, hard exercise, and tolerably good living. The wind had 

 entirely gone down, and the various boats that left the harbour in straggling 

 groups formed a strange sort of picturesque regatta, their oars scarcely troub- 

 ling that still plain of blue. Here and there a brown sail hung half-mast high, 

 just in case a slight breeze might be got at the mouth of the bay ; but each 

 boat had its four enormous oars regularly rising and falling as they all drew 

 away from us. And we could hear the laugh and jest come across the still 

 water, as two of the boats would get within speaking distance ; and now and 

 again a verse of some shrill Gaelic song would float towards us, the notes of it 

 keeping time to the oars. The further the boats drew out towards the broad 

 bosom of the loch, the deeper grew their colour under the warm and level 

 light of the sun, until many of them seemed like rose-coloured buoys placed 

 far out on the smooth plain. And then, as they reached a line of darker 

 water on the loch, we could see them, one by one, run up the broad brown 

 sail to catch the light breeze. And while we sat still and wondered how they 

 would spend the long and dark night, and what songs would be sung by the 

 side of the stove, and whether rain would compel them to make the sail into 

 a tent, and what sort of take they would bring home with them in the cold 

 gray hours of the dawn, lo ! the boats had disappeared as if by magic." Mr. 

 Pisistratus Brown in the Highlands, pp. 41, 42. 



