Release date is 2025-09-01

Al Haines

"A summer in Skye, Volume 2 (of 2)" by Alexander Smith is a travelogue written in the mid-19th century. It traces a reflective journey across the Isle of Skye, blending lyrical landscape description with portraits of island life, customs, and class relations among lairds, tacksmen, cotters, and fishermen. The narrator dwells on place, memory, and change, moving between scenic wonder and social observation. The opening of this volume immerses the reader in Skye’s antiquated atmosphere, then sketches the paternal, clanlike household of Mr M’Ian—a tacksman who keeps rent-free cotters, dispenses porch‑door justice, and binds the community through old obligations—before contrasting him with “the Landlord,” a wealthy, India-hardened reformer who manages tenants directly, runs a “penal” crofting scheme on reclaimed “black land,” and oversees a plain but purposeful school. A storm and flood frame the narrator’s departure, leading to a vivid, stage-by-stage journey—Isle Oronsay, Broadford, Sconser, Sligachan, Portree, Skeabost’s island graveyard—with a robust defense of the smoky Highland hut against urban misery. At the Landlord’s, we see affectionate chaos of pets, Gaelic deputations, village visits, levées at turf walls, and the schoolroom’s earnest geography and sums, all revealing a strict yet benevolent social experiment. The section closes with a drive toward Dunvegan via Orbost: legends at the Fairy Bridge, clan feuds (Trompon and Eigg), the sight of Macleod’s Tables and Maidens, an incongruously modern house set in a haunting coastal landscape, and ruins that echo the clan’s dwindling grandeur. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Originally published: London: Alexander Strahan, 1865