Page:Footsteps of Dr. Johnson.djvu/266

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208

TALISKER BAY.

keeper for a moment looked uneasy, but with a few strong strokes of the oars the worst was past, and we were out of the broken waters, and in full sight of the little bay with its beach of great black stones, its rugged and steep headlands, and its needle rocks, with one of the sunniest of valleys for its background. Johnson thought it "the place, beyond all he had seen, from which the gay and the jovial seem utterly excluded; and where the hermit might grow old in meditation without possibility of disturbance or interruption."

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VIEWS AT TALISKER.

To us on that fine June day, with the haze lying on the hills, it was as if

⁠"We came unto a land
In which it seemed always afternoon."

One sight, to which I had long looked forward, I missed. It was no longer "a land of streams." There was no spot where

⁠"The slender stream
Along the cliff to fall and pause and fall did seem."

Boswell had counted "fifteen different waterfalls near the house in the space of about a quarter of a mile." "They succeeded one another so fast," said Johnson, "that as one ceased to be heard another began." This one thing was wanting on that beautiful afternoon which we spent in this delightful spot. The voice of the cascades was still. There were no waterfalls streaming down

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