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This is an old Highland treaty made upon a very memorable occasion. Maclean, the son of John Gerves, who recovered Col, and conquered Barra, had obtained, it is said, from James the Second, a grant of the lands of Lochiel, forfeited, I suppose, by some offence against the state.
Some time, in the obscure ages, Macneil of Barra married the Lady Maclean, who had the Isle of Col for her jointure. Whether Macneil detained Col, when the widow was dead, or whether she lived so long as to make her heirs impatient, is perhaps not now known.
"A few barra' loads o' gravel would put it rite," continued the other, "it ain't fair on the hosses, and it ain't fair on the backers, 'arf a quid I dropped on that mucky bit o' grown'. Last Doncaster meetin' I was sayin' the very same thing to Lor' Lonsdale over the Doncaster Course. I met him, man to man like, outside the ring, and he handed me out a cigar.
Twelve miles from Baddeck we passed through the Barra Strait, or the Grand Narrows, a picturesque feature in the Bras d'Or, and came into its widest expanse. At the Narrows is a small settlement with a flag-staff and a hotel, and roads leading to farmhouses on the hills.
Certain friends of the family undertook to communicate with clergymen, near the seashore, who were supposed to be in a position to facilitate our escape, while we proposed to visit Gougane Barra and Ceimeneagh, and, if practicable, Killarney, before we returned to learn the success of their applications.
"He said, a strange thing," murmured Noel; "that they were all a little mad." "He is a man of queer genius Barra; you should see some of his earlier pictures. Mad is not quite the word, but something is loosened, is rattling round in them, they have lost proportion, they are being forced in one direction.
After we had rested some weeks in Barra, we arranged our plans for further explorations in the interior of the country. Mr. Wallace chose the Rio Negro for his next trip, and I agreed to take the Solimoens. My colleague has already given to the world an account of his journey on the Rio Negro, and his adventurous ascent of its great tributary the Uapes.
I embarked at Barra on the 26th of March, 1850, three years before steamers were introduced on the upper river, in a cuberta which was returning to Ega, the first and only town of any importance in the vast solitudes of the Solimoens, from Santarem, whither it had been sent, with a cargo of turtle oil in earthenware jars.
"Moi!" said Barra, lifting his heavy hairy hand. "I paint puddles, star-bombs, horses' ribs I paint holes and holes and holes, wire and wire and wire, and water long white ugly water. I paint splinters, and men's souls naked, and men's bodies dead, and nightmare nightmare all day and all night I paint them in my head."
Ofeig was to give his daughter a portion in cash, for neither would reckon anything for his lands in Norway. Soon afterwards Thrand was betrothed to the daughter of Thormod Shaft. Both the maids were to remain plighted for three years. Then they went on fighting expeditions in the summer, remaining in the Barra Isles during the winter.
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