owever, and making but little way. A few vessels
attempted following us, but, after an inefficient tack or two, they fell
back on the anchoring ground, leaving the Betsey to buffet the currents
alone. Tack followed tack sharp and quick in the narrows, with an
iron-bound coast on either hand. We had frequent and delicate turning:
now we lost fifty yards, now we gained a hundred. John Stewart held the
helm; and as none of us had ever sailed the way before, I had the
vessel's chart spread out on the companion-head before me, and told him
when to wear and when to hold on his way,--at what places we might run
up almost to the rock edge, and at what places it was safest to give the
land a good offing. Hurrah for the Free Church yacht Betsey! and hurrah
once more! We cleared the Kyle, leaving a whole fleet tide-bound behind
us; and, stretching out at one long tack into the open sea, bore, at the
next, right into the bay at Broadford, where we cast anchor for the
night, within two hundred yards of the shore. Provisions were running
short; and so I had to make a late dinner this evening on some of the
razor-fish of Rum, topped by a dish of tea. But there is always rather
more appetite than food in the country;--such, at least, is the common
result under the present mode of distribution: the hunger overlaps and
outstretches the provision; and there was comfort in the reflection,
that with the razor-fish on which to fall back, it overlapped it but by
a very little on this occasion in the cabin of the Betsey. The
steam-boat passed southwards next morning, and I was joined by my friend
the minister a little before breakfast.

The day was miserably bad: the rain continued pattering on the skylight,
now lighter, now heavier, till within an hour of sunset, when it ceased,
and a light breeze began to unroll the thick fogs from off the
landscape, volume after volume, like coverings from off a
mummy,--leaving exposed in the valley of the Lias a brown and cheerless
prospect of dark bogs and of debris-covered hills, streaked this evening
with downward lines of foam. The seaward view is more pleasing. The deep
russet of the interior we find bordered for miles along the edge of the
bay with a many-shaded fringe of green; and the smooth grassy island of
Pabba lies in the midst, a polished gem, all the more advantageously
displayed from the roughness of the surrounding setting. We took boat,
and explored the Lias in our immediate neighborhood ti