If only John Keats on his visit to Oban in 1820 had left us a sonnet our cup would have been full, but our wild uncouth scenery inspired little poetry in that English wight.

And that was a little difficult to understand, for from David Hutcheson’s monument such magnificence was disclosed as surely must have touched to fugitive response that most magnificent and sensuous of poets. Across the firth lay Mull of the mountains: Dun da Chaoithe (the hill of the two winds) over William Black’s lighthouse; Mainnir nam Fiadh (fold of the deer); Sgurr Dearg (the red sgurr); Creach Bheinn (ben of the plunder); Ben Buy (the yellow ben), to far Ben Mor (the great ben) veiled in mist; all ranging from about 2,500 to over 3,000 feet. Southward the Firth of Lorn, to the Isles of the Sea in its glittering waters. Northward, the long island of Lismore (the big garden), with mountainous Morven of the legends and the songs rising behind. Beyond Lismore, the bright light on Loch Linnhe, leading to dark Glencoe. And east of us Oban—and all Argyll.

There is a magnificence that can be terrifying. A vastness, a grandeur, so removed from the conception of an inwrought jewelled creation, that perhaps one can dimly understand the reaction of so sensitive a mind as Keats’s. Even over Mull, on this fine evening, great shafts of slanting light penetrated dark caverns, and as one gazed, the dark and the light reformed, so that one saw without ever quite catching the moments of change: vast fade-outs and fade-ins as imperceptible in transition as they were inexorable in effect. But when sun and wind and cloud and rain set themselves to project on sea and mountain their best effort at a gloom fantasia, the stage-thoughts of ten thousand human minds could be drowned in the tail-end of its distant shower. Not used to it, the human mind must rebel. Used to it, it can at least gaze, and possibly appreciate, and even—for adventure is life—criticise.

On this lovely evening, with the Torranan Rocks like laughter in our minds, we came down to the well and filled our buckets. From the fisherman’s boat, blue smoke was ascending. He was cooking his evening meal. Later, we found that he lived on this boat all alone, winter and summer, occasionally shifting over from one side of the bay to the other. During the time we were there we spoke to him frequently, and found him courteous and helpful, but did not care to intrude on his privacy, though I should have liked to have found the conclusions he had arrived at concerning life, explicit or implicit. Undoubtedly he had solved the problem for himself. On the second day he left us and went across to the Oban side by Pulpit Hill, and we wondered, with remorse, if our near presence had disturbed him. But in the evening he came back, his big sail of many patches and small holes bellying in the light breeze, anchored by the rock, and sent aloft his smoke. The contrast between his way of living and that of those of a tall-masted white yacht, with a string of fifteen portholes, indicated no doubt the progress of civilisation, but somehow not conclusively. His was a solitary life, but obviously neither morbid nor alone. When he wanted company, he commanded it, and spoke to his guests in a fine resonant Gaelic. But to our gross eyes in the darkening, his company was invisible.