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38 5 R Mull The appearance of the sun in the morning convinced me of one thing: it would be raining soon. And before I finished my first cup of tea, it was. Hard. Followed by blue skies less than a half hour later. I was headed to the Inner Hebrides, to the island of Mull, a trip Boswell and Johnson made in reverse on a small storm-tossed ferry, sitting on tree branches in the craft. I wasn’t eager to see how closely I could duplicate their experience, and fortunately the weather seemed quite tolerable for a journey across the firth. Thanks to The Rough Guide to Scotland, I knew Scotland has more than sixty inhabited islands, and nearly fifty of them have scheduled ferry service. The ferries are critical links between the islanders and the mainland, and in some cases, the only link. They bring not only passengers but also vital goods for residents and visitors. Small planes make trips to the islands, but it is the ferries that are the lifeblood of this sea-set nation. So naturally it is the ferries that are the subject of most of the whining. The reason why is that the ferry companies are virtual monopolies; they set the rates, they pick the destinations, they determine the service. They seem to annoy almost everyone. Either they charge too much or they don’t go here or there often enough. Or their service stinks. Or they’re slow. Or they just don’t listen to what people want. For the trip from Oban to the islands of the Hebrides, the monopoly is Caledonian MacBrayne (known as CalMac to everyone). I should report that in fairness I didn’t have any serious problems with CalMac other than regretting the high cost of taking my car on board and struggling to understand the onboard announcements, given the combination of passenger din and a vaguely Glaswegian accent coming over the ship’s PA. But I heard and read a bundle about the unhappiness of others, Mull 39 particularly on the Isle of Lewis where there were great public quarrels over Sunday ferry service. It’s hard to keep everyone happy, I know, and I was grateful to CalMac for getting me where I needed to go and back without capsizing, even as I acknowledged that that seemed a rather minimal requirement for a ferry journey. If the Scots are a reticent people, the ones on this ferry were atypical. They could hardly drink and chat fast enough, and most were eager to talk to an American, particularly an out-of-season visitor. Just about everyone who recognized my accent knew I was American and was eager to ask where I was from and what it was like there. They knew Atlanta from the Olympics, but no one had been there. They thought New York was “dirty” and San Francisco “gorgeous.” They liked the South, and one elderly gentleman was so excited and admiring of Robert E. Lee that I thought it inappropriate to remind him that Lee had passed. One man told me he had an American car—a Jeep. “It’s broken,” he said. “Been broken. Terrible car. Bugger Chrysler.” He must be smiling now. It was a smooth forty-five-minute cruise to Mull, passing Duart Castle on a high promontory, a sight Boswell also noted, facing the Sound of Mull, I arrived at the very small ferry stop of Craignure on the southeast side of the island. Boswell and Johnson arrived and departed from a much higher point on the northeast, at the town of Tobermory, another thirty minutes away by ferry. They spent a rainy time here. Johnson called Mull “a most dolorous country.” And indeed it can seem distressingly dark. Barren. Bleak. Unwelcoming. In rainy weather the treeless moorlands are aggressively dank and black. Getting around on the island can be difficult, for almost all of it is negotiated by single-track road. In the eighteenth century it was much worse. John Keats lived a short life perhaps because he chose to come to Mull. The twenty-three-year-old English poet visited the island in the summer of 1818, writing, “We have had a most wretched walk of 37 miles across the island of Mull. I have a slight sore throat.” Arguably the sore throat would escalate into the consumption that would kill him in only three more years. Boswell and Johnson were relieved to arrive on...

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