TAIT'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE FOR 1847. VOLUME XIV. EDINBURGH: SUTHERLAND & KNOX; SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, & CO., LONDON; AND JOHN CUMMING, DUBLIN. MDCCCXLVII. TAIT'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE. JANUARY, 1847. A VISIT TO AUCH MELVICH. BY SIR THOMAS DICK LAUDER, BART. THE site of the little township of Auch Melvich, | low rocky hillocks which shut it in from Loch in Sutherland, is, perhaps, one of the most sin- Roc, to the south, opened a passage for its evagular of the many spots which have been occupied cuation in that direction, and thus rendered its by thriving hamlets and villages around the ex- broad surface easily available for cultivation, by tensive coasts of that interesting country. It is the inhabitants of the cottages among whom it in the district of Assynt; and although we shall was lotted out, so that it now forms the most imattempt to describe it to the best of our power, portant and valuable part of their little agriculyet we have no great hope of doing so with such tural domain. success as to place it very vividly before the imagination of our readers. It consists of a considerable cluster of cottages, flanking either side of narrow, tortuous, irregular ways, which, as yet, cannot very well claim the title of streets, and which run hither and thither over a gently swelling, sandy piece of ground, chiefly covered with bent grass. This slopes easily towards the north into a flat, formed of the same white calcareous sand, all of which has been accumulated by the wind drifting it inwards from the shelly shore of a bay which bounds it in that direction. To the west the hamlet is sheltered from the sea by a range of high grounds, running from this bay on the north to the entrance of Loch Roe on the south. These present rugged, rocky points to the ocean; and their eastern side, towards the hamlet, affords a perfect sample of the general face of the Assynt country, being very irregular in its surface, and covered with rounded blisters of primitive rock, rising all over it in numerous knolls, and having the intervening hollows all cultivated, in patches of oats, bear, and potatoes, so that not even the smallest portion of soil, of a few feet square, is left without culture. These bright green spots, which are of the most whimsical shapes, some of them being like polypi, and others like stockings, or shirts, or other more unmentionable articles of apparel, give a most extraordinary appearance to the general face of the hill side, whilst they speak well for the industry of the people by whose hands they were erected. To the east of the hamlet the mountain rises in a bold craggy steep, where Nature bids defiance to the efforts of man to put any trace of his dominion upon it. To the south of the hamlet there lies a considerable mossy flat, of a circular form, surrounded by the features we have described. This is the dried alveus of a Sutherland. fresh-water lake, which occupied it until within these few years back, when the Duke of Sutherland, by cutting, at his own expense, through the VOL. XIV.NO. CLVII. Nothing can be more wild, or romantic, than the approach to this retired but populous little place, from the open sea. We had the good fortune to go thither, in company with the noble proprietor himself, whose sole enjoyment, during his annual residence of some months in Sutherland, consists in devoting his time to visiting every village, hamlet, and, we may almost say, cottage, in his widely-extended territories. When we had the honour of meeting him, some little time ago, at Loch Inver, he had already been through all the townships on his northern coasts, doing good wherever he went, and he was now engaged in the same work of love and benevolence with regard to those of his western coasts. Although now somewhat advanced in life, and, we regret to say, with health and a frame by no means very robust, the anxiety and solicitude he displays in inquiring, personally, into the wants of his people, and the pleasure he takes in making provision for all their little requirements, leads him to undergo fatigue upon these occasions which might be supposed to be greatly beyond his strength. When bent on such errands, he not only appears indefatigable, both in boating and in walking, but he seems to care little for stormy weather or weeping skies, and, defended by an oilskin coat, he sits in the stern of his boat, bounding over the billows, or he makes his way over the rugged hillocks and boggy ground, in defiance of all such impediments, and with an activity hardly to be expected from his years. We mean to give a short sketch of that visit to Auch Melvich, in which we accompanied him, for, simple as the narration may be, we are led to believe that it may be gratifying to the philanthropist; and it affords a fair specimen of his daily life during the whole of the time he spends in Having sailed from Loch Inver in a little yacht, we got into the boat, and rowed into the small haven of Bad-na-brad, just within the southern |