tion, served as our compass. We next premised | time, and found nearly eight barrels of fish. how far our boat had drifted down the frith I observed when hauling that the natural heat with the ebb-tide, and how far she had been of the herring is scarcely less than that of carried back again by the flood. We then quadrupeds or birds; that when alive its sides turned her bows in the line of the current, and are shaded by a beautiful crimson colour which in rather less than half an hour were, as the it loses when dead; and that when newly lead informed us, on the eastern extremity of brought out of the water, it utters a sharp faint Guilliam, where we shot our nets for the third cry somewhat resembling that of a mouse. We time. had now twenty barrels on board. The easterly har, a sea-breeze so called by fishermen, which in the Moray Frith, during the summer months and first month of autumn, commonly comes on after ten o'clock A.M., and fails at four o'clock P. M., had now set in. We hoisted our mast and sail, and were soon scudding right before it. Soon after sunrise the mist began to dissipate, and the surface of the water to appear for miles around roughened as if by a smart breeze, though there was not the slightest breath of wind at the time. "How do you account for that appearance?" said I to one of the fishermen. "Ah! lad, that is by no means so favourable a token as the one you asked me to explain last night. I had as lief see the Bhodry-more." 'Why, what does it betoken? and what is the Bhodry-more?" "It betokens that the shoal have spawned, and will shortly leave the frith; for when the fish are sick and weighty they never rise to the surface in that way;-but have you never heard of the Bhodry-more?" I replied in the negative. "Well, but you shall." "Nay," said another of the crew, "leave that for our return; do you not see the herrings playing by thousands round our nets, and not one of the buoys sinking in the water? There is not a single fish swimming so low as the upper baulks of our drift. Shall we not shorten the buoy-ropes, and take off the sinkers?" This did not meet the approbation of the others, one of whom took up a stone, and flung it in the middle of the shoal. The fish immediately disappeared from the surface, for several fathoms round. "Ah! there they go," he exclaimed, "if they go but low enough ;four years ago I startled thirty barrels of light fish into my drift just by throwing a stone among them." The whole frith at this time, so far as the eye could reach, appeared crowded with herrings; and its surface was so broken by them as to remind one of the pool of a waterfall. They leaped by millions a few inches into the air, and sunk with a hollow plumping noise, somewhat resembling the dull rippling sound of a sudden breeze; while to the eye there was a continual twinkling, which, while it mocked every effort that attempted to examine in detail, showed to the less curious glance like a blue robe sprinkled with silver. But it is not by such comparisons that so singular a scene is to be described so as to be felt. It was one of those which, through the living myriads of creation, testify of the infinite Creator. About noon we hauled for the third and last The story of the Bhodry-more, which I demanded of the skipper as soon as we had trimmed our sail, proved interesting in no common degree, and was linked with a great many others. The Bhodry-more1 is an active, mischievous fish of the whale species, which has been known to attack and even founder boats. About eight years ago, a very large one passed the town of Cromarty through the middle of the bay, and was seen by many of the townsfolks leaping out of the water in the manner of a salmon, fully to the height of a boat's mast. It appeared about thirty feet in length. This animal may almost be regarded as the mermaid of modern times: for the fishermen deem it to have fully as much of the demon as of the fish. There have been instances of its pursuing a boat under sail for many miles, and even of its leaping over it from side to side. It appears, however, that its habits and appetites are unlike those of the shark; and that the annoyance which it gives the fisherman is out of no desire of making him its prey, but from its predilection for amusement. It seldom meddles with a boat when at anchor, but pursues one under sail, as a kitten would a rolling ball of yarn. The large physalus whale is comparatively a dull, sluggish animal; occasionally, however, it evinces a partiality for the amusements of the Bhodry-more. Our skipper said, that when on the Caithness coast, a few years before, an enormous fish of the species kept direct in the wake of his boat for more than a mile, frequently rising so near the stern as to be within reach of the boat-hook. He described the expression of its large goggle eyes as at once frightful and amusing; and so graphic was his narrative that I could almost paint the animal stretching out for more than sixty feet behind the boat, with his black marble-looking skin and cliff-like fins. He at Properly, perhaps, the musculous whale. length grew tired of its gambols, and with a One of the boatmen's stories, though some- which the occupations of the fisherman mingle with the sublime scenes of the Moray Frith. But this description I will not attempt. Your readers must have already anticipated it. If not, let them picture to themselves the shores of a seaport town crowded with human figures, and its harbour with boats and vessels of trade. Let them imagine the bustle of the workshop combining with the confusion of the crowded fair! You, Mr. Editor, who have seen Holbein's "Dance of Death," would perhaps not question the soundness of the imagination that would body forth so busy a scene as the dance of commerce. Sailors, fishermen, curers, mechanics, all engaged, lead up the ball amid heaps of fish that glitter to the sun, tiers of casks and pyramids of salt. Hark to the music! It is a wild combination of irregular sounds,the hammering of mechanics, the rolling of casks, the rattling of carts, and the confused hum of a thousand voices. HAIDEE.1 Juan and Haidee gazed upon each other With swimming looks of speechless tenderness, By the immortal wish and power to bless. Mix'd in each other's arms, and heart in heart, Why did they not then die?-they had lived too long Years could but bring them cruel things or wrong; Love was born with them, in them, so intense The first two cantos of Don Juan appeared in 1819; neither author's nor publisher's name was given on the and proclaimed by the critics. The work was roundly But the authorship was at once divined title page. abused for its immorality, but all acknowledged its marvellous power, and the brilliant gems of poetry which thickly studded the production throughout— they were the stars which gave their light to good and reason, that his personality was always identified with bad impartially. Byron complained often, and with the heroes of his imagination. Of the purpose of Don Juan, he said, it was "to remove the cloak which the The scenes exhibited on the shores of manners and maxims of society throw over their secret Cromarty, during the busy season of the fishing, sins, and show them to the world as they really are." the above. that may be safely read by those whose Notwithstanding, it is only selected portions, such as judgment has not obtained complete control of passion. |