TRAVELLERS TO COLL - PART V

The Last Episode by W.R. McKay

The long story of visitors to Coll began with Roman seamen. They were followed by farmers from Scandinavia, inquiring Tiree ministers and Skye doctors, English literary celebrities accompanied by Ayrshire minders, Scots political economists and then government inspectors. The most recent group can best be described as journalists and tourists. The most well-known of these was Sir Henry Rider Haggard. As well as being the author of She, Allan Quatermain, and other stirring tales of African adventure, Rider Haggard was for a while interested in agriculture. While he was writing a series of articles on that theme for a monthly paper, he visited Coll for ten days in September 1898, as the guest of the laird, who was a personal friend.

Some of the things which caught his eye had been commented on by many of his predecessors - the cranesbill in the Castle field, for example, and the starlings. Other things were quite new. There was now a good road directly to the Castles, fringed by telegraph poles. The visitor made an easy journey past Kilbride, "a farmstead building of substance, with its back turned to the ocean for protection": a sawmill driven by a water-wheel, surrounded by baulks of timber washed out of wrecks - could it be Acha?: and finally reached his destination at the new Castle, "a three-storied naked looking building."

Rider Haggard did not, however, spend much time on the sights of Coll. He was interested in the farming. It was abundantly clear that Coll was suffering sorely from the agricultural depression which had hit the UK as a whole. "Thirty or even twenty years ago, it was more highly farmed than it is now; it used to be a prosperous place. . . [But now] the cheeses that it produces can barely hold their own in the market against the imported Dutch and American article." The export of calves had all but ceased, the prices they fetched were so low. Rider Haggard did not enter the political argument about the more general background. He recognised that, even apart from the depression, depopulation had gone too far, but he did not believe that the people had been deliberately forced to go. In his view, the population in the earlier years of the century had come to exceed the capacity of the land to support it, and emigration was inevitable.

Rider Haggard is more than a witness to agricultural decline. He is also the representative of a new economic phenomenon, the tourist. In his day, this largely meant shooting. He found game in great profusion, snipe, partridge, red grouse, hare, duck, woodcock, wild geese, and golden plovers. "The green plovers were so plentiful they were not shot." Rider Haggard's journey to Coll, nearly ninety years ago, puts BR to shame. He left Euston at 9.30 in the evening, and was in Oban at 8.30 the next morning. MacBrayne's come out of the comparison rather better. The passage then took seven hours. The problems associated with leaving Coll in 1898 sound very familiar. The Fingal failed to appear. Rider Haggard was darkly warned of those who had visited the village three times a week for a fortnight before being taken off. Some local optimists mentioned that in the days of sail it could be six weeks before the packet could call. In the end, of course, the boat was only hours late.

A generation later, in midwinter 1933, Halliday Sutherland arrived in Coll off the Lochearn. Finding lodgings with some difficulty, he soon set about visiting most of the island. He came upon the doctor and his brother, both skilled amateur botanists, stocking a rock garden at their new house with exotic plants. Then he made his way east, and saw from the top of Windy Gap" a strange country, the like of which I had never seen before. . . Highland scenery in miniature." But it was exactly what John Walker had commented on in the 1760's, the small rocky hills with green patches interspersed. Eventually he found himself at Sorisdale, where there were a dozen houses, only two of which were not in ruins. An old couple there regretted the loss of the inshore fishing to the steam trawlers, and the mass emigration of the young folk. The old lady maintained a traditional craft by carding and spinning wool dyed with seaweed, but it had to be exported to Helmsdale for weaving.

The very last visitor in this long procession we have described is Elizabeth Stucley, who toured the West of Scotland in 1955 in a converted ambulance, trying to follow in the footsteps of Boswell and Johnson. The ambulance could not come over to Coll, and so Mrs Stucley was obliged to make use of the school taxi and the lorry which took milk from the East end to the cheese factory at Breachacha. On the way, she found what she described as the "off-the-road crofts" - presumably Hyne, Friesland and the others - terribly lonely and gloomy. "Imagination boggles at the idea of passing a winter in such places." Much more hospitable was the hotel, with its linen bleaching on the grass in front, the whale's vertebra by the front door, an enormous map of the island "with every rock marked", and one of the biggest domestic baths she had ever washed in. The hall had just been completed, and there was to be a dance and whist drive. While the village was awash with rumours about the Lochinvar's damaged propellor, a frustrated Mrs Stucley promised to mend a dress which had been made for the dance, washed and left on a fence to dry, only to be eaten by the beasts. But - once more - rumours about the demise of the ferry were exaggerated: the boat duly appeared, and the visitors left, complaining that what Coll really needed was a new pier which would make the uncomfortable journey to the ferry by rowing boat unnecessary.

The pier and the easy trans-shipment of cars are now reality. The great majority of visitors are now holidaymakers. What will be the next development in the ever-changing pattern of visitors to Coll?