Portree

On October 2, 1773, Johnson and Boswell's tour of the Western Isles is still situated at Skye.  Boswell records an observation on the state of emigration from Skye: '...Mrs M'Kinnon told me, that last year when a ship sailed from Portree for America, the people onshore were almost distracted when they saw their relations go off; they lay down on the ground, tumbled, and tore the grass with their teeth. This year there was not a tear shed. The people on shore seemed to think that they would soon follow. This indifference is a mortal sign for the country...'


Walter Scott also published a book on the Western Isles, which was based on letters written by John MacCulloch, a Scottish geologist, to Walter Scott.  "The Highlands and Western Isles of Scotland" was published in 1824, based on correspondence between the years 1811 - 1821.  Included, is this description of the Portree area:

'The coast-line of Sky is almost every where rocky, and, very commonly, rude and wild. From Strathaird, all the way round by the west to Portree, it is, with a few exceptions in the lochs, a continued range of cliffs, ofteu rising to three, four, or even to six hundred feet; in a few cases, exceeding even this height. The remainder is rarely very high; but it is every where rocky, and interspersed with headlands and small bays or sinuosities. The rivers are of no note; and, excepting Coruisk, Loch Creich, and Loch Colmkill, there are no lakes that deserve a much higher name than pools. Loch na Caplich is the only one of those that is worthy of notice; and it is rendered so by containing that rare plant the Eriocaulon, known, as a British plant, here only, till I found it in Coll.

The north-east coast, from Portree, is a perfect storehouse of geology. It is not very good seamanship, I admit, to put all the ballast in one boat and all the sail in another; but having nearly foundered under the weight of my last literary and scientific cargo, I have determined to throw all the lumber overboard now, and to carry all the sail I can. Perhaps you may think me overmasted, and in want of a reef now and then; and I will therefore throw you in a hundred weight of ballast at present, as a great favour.'

Lady Grange on St. Kilda

September 19, 1773 was a Sunday, as is the case this year.  Johnson and Boswell continue on their tour of the Western Isles.  They are in Skye, visiting with the McLeod's of Dunvegan, talking of happenings in the region:

'After dinner to-day, we talked of the extraordinary fact of Lady Grange's being sent to St Kilda, and confined there for several years, without any means of relief. [Footnote: The true story of this lady, which happened In this century, is as frightfully romantick as if it had been the fiction of a gloomy fancy. She was the wife of one of the Lords of Session in Scotland, a man of the very first blood of his country. For some mysterious reasons, which have never been discovered, she was seized and carried off in the dark, she knew not by whom, and by nightly journies was conveyed to the Highland shores, from whence she was transported by sea to the remote rock of St Kilda, where she remained, amongst its few wild inhabitants, a forlorn prisoner, but had a constant supply of provisions, and a woman to wait on her. No inquiry was made after her, till she at last found means to convey a letter to a confidential friend, by the daughter of a Catechist who concealed it in a clue of yarn. Information being thus obtained at Edinburgh, a ship was sent to bring her off; but intelligence of this being received, she was conveyed to M'Leod's island of Herries, where she died.

Rachel Chiesley was the wife of James Erskine, Lord Grange, who was a Jacobite sympathizer.  Chiesley, who may have been unbalanced for many years, felt her husband was being unfaithful to her, and she accused him publicly of acting treasonably against the Hanoverian government.  This occurred in late 1731, and when Chiesley booked a coach to London in January 1732, Erskine, afraid she might cause more trouble, had her kidnapped.  She was later transported to the Monarch Isles, where she lived for two years, then to St. Kilda from 1734 - 1740.  She was moved to the Isle of Skye in 1740, and died there in 1745.
Walter Scott leaves a reference to Lady Grange in his Journal: 'January 20 [1829].—...Also a letter to Mrs. Professor Sandford at Glasgow about reprinting Macaulay's History of St. Kilda, advising them to insert the history of Lady Grange who was kidnapped and banished thither.'