Volume 3 - Electric Scotland

226 LOCH RKRNF.RA.
tions of the red and white granite, and gneiss, and of
the black hornblende of which they are formed. My
seamen were soon obliged to resign the pilotage, as be-
yond their powers; and the task of course devolved on
my hand. Impudence is a very useful virtue, as my Lord
Bacon avers, and as I had experienced in more places
than Loch Eribol ; acquiring by it, from my Captain and
his crew both, a confidence that gave me access to a
thousand places which I must otherwise have been con-
tent to abandon. Surprising as it may appear, there was
not a pilot to be found in Scotland who was acquainted
with one tenth part of the western coast. Of course,
every step was, at first, a step of fear and difficulty, of
doubt and remonstrance; and I soon foresaw that our
expedition would shortly come to a close for want of a
little courage. Mackenzie's chart did something; and a
few fortunate conjectures about headlands and islands,
with one or two successful anchorages at the outset, soon
raised me to the rank of pilot for the Western Islands;
not more surprised at the metamorphosis, than my betters
have sometimes been at their sudden transformation into
bishops, generals, and secretaries of state.
I may venture to say this, because it implies no boast-
ing; since, according to the Phrenologists, it was the
bump and not the man which did the business. The
same bump which, as I remarked in the last letter,
teaches the gannet to find his way through the fog- to his
sprawling infants in St. Kilda, which guided the Royal
Crummie from St, James's to Holyrood House, which
directs the annual swallow from Egypt to the cottage
eaves of his remote birth, which causes the benighted
traveller to throw the reins on the neck of his unerring-
steed, which is the compass of the stork and the pole
star of the faithful pigeon, that bump is also the organ of
pilotage. By that the Indian traverses the vast expanse