ladies sit staring out of the windows on the empty streets and
silent bay this dull and watery Sabbath night. I can almost fancy I hear
them sing--

"I am a-weary, a-weary;
Oh! would that I were dead!"

CHAPTER IV.
FROM OBAN TO GLENCOE.

A couple of days' heavy rain quite exhausted the gaieties of Oban, and it
was with no little pleasure that I heard the orders given to weigh the
anchor and get up steam. I shed no tears as I saw the last of the long
line of monster hotels, which rejoice when the Englishman, who has,
perhaps, never been up St. Paul's, and who certainly has never visited
Stratford-on-Avon, makes up his mind to turn his face northwards and do
the Western Highlands and Islands of Scotland. I believe the hotels are
excellent. I am sure one of them is--that kept by Mr. McArthur, who is
an artist, and whose son, a little lad of ten years, paints in a way to
remind one of similar achievements by Sir Thomas Lawrence; but it is much
to be regretted that so many of the best spots for pleasant views above
the town are marked off as private, and so shut out from the tourist
altogether. As possibly these brief notes may be read in Oban, I refer
to the fact, in order that the authorities of the place, ere it be too
late, may be reminded of the impolicy of killing the goose for the sake
of the eggs. There ought to be an abundance of pleasant walks and seats
around Oban to tempt the tourist to linger there. It is related of
Norman Macleod, as he stood on the esplanade, pointing to the town, the
bay crowded with yachts, the Kerrera reflected on the sea as in a mirror,
with the distant hills of Morven and Mull behind, that he exclaimed,
"Where will you find in the whole world a scene so lovely as this?" and
this was said after he had visited America, and India, and Palestine, and
the whole continent of Europe. I am not prepared exactly to endorse that
statement, but the language is natural to a Scotchman, who can see
nowhere a land so romantic as his own. Oban, with its fine hotels on the
front, with its beautiful bay, with its wooded or bare hills behind,
looks well from the water; but nevertheless I had tired of it, after
spending a couple of days contemplating its features from the deckhouse
of the yacht, bathed as they were in what in London we should call
unmitigated rain, but which here poetically is termed Scottish mist.

Well, as I have said, there was a shaking amongst the dry bones