The book Arran; - Cook Clan

242 THE BOOK OF ARRAN
and the Firth of Clyde was both the cradle of the steamboat
and magnificently endowed with health resorts. Arran had
already a standing curative reputation, based on its supplies
of goat's milk. An uncommon liquid, like an unusual plant
or a new mineral, is always exploited by scientific medicine.
As early as the middle of the eighteenth century its goats
were doing for Arran what a mineral water has done for
other places. The Glasgow Journal of 12th March 1759
contained this attractive advertisement :
' Good goat milk
quarters may be had this season in the island of Arran, in
a very commodious slated house, hard by the Castle of
Brodick, consisting of three very good rooms above stairs,
and two below, with a large kitchen, some bedsteads, chairs
and tables. This house will serve two small families, with
garden things at hand.' Follows the information as to the
Thursday packet-boat from Saltcoats, which has already
been quoted.^
But with the methods of travelling of that period any
such trip, either way, was something of an adventure. So
long as there were only sailing-boats, wholly dependent on
the wind, one had to be prepared for emergencies. A
succession of calm days might extend a journey from Brodick
to Renfrew for a week, as is still remembered with a shiver.
In one of the years just about the time steam was making
straight the crooked highways of the wind, a very young
lady, now old, left Brodick at 10 a.m. of a December day
to go to Glasgow for the New Year. The smack drifted
leisurely along under a breath of wind, and by dark was
off Saltcoats, where the passengers spent the night on deck.
A passenger's herrings and the sailors' potatoes boiled in
salt water were the fare on board. Next morning a steamer,
toiling up from Ayr, towed them into the Clyde, where
another night was passed in a river inn, ere at last Glasgow
was reached.
' Page 178, note.