In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

43 6 R Iona Generally speaking, in Fionnphort the locals turned out to be as interested in Boswell and Johnson as just about everyone else I had encountered so far. The notable exception was the gentleman behind the counter at the local bookstore. He spoke brightly of the two, though he added a caution about some of the “not so nice” things Johnson had to say about the Scots. It was more than amazing to find a bookstore in Fionnphort, a community which might number two hundred people but probably had fewer. I didn’t notice it when I arrived the evening before, but there it was, about two houses away from my B&B, a can’t-miss stop on the walk to the ferry. It carried a terrific selection of Scottish books as well as some groceries and, most significantly, whisky. When will bookstores in the States begin to offer the same level of amenities? I resolved to buy several books when I returned from Iona in the evening, but for the moment I had to rush to the ferry for the early morning’s first trip, and the weather wasn’t going to make it easy. John, my host, a “recovering fisherman,” warned me that the winds were nearing gale force 5, moving toward twenty-five miles an hour, and the onemile crossing through the strong currents of the Sound of Iona was subject to cancellation when the wind-pushed waters made this brief trip too perilous . The wind was indeed very brisk and cold, waves were sloshing up, and the whitecaps were running hard as I looked out toward grayish, low-slung Iona in the distance. The ferry wasn’t very big and was positioned next to a jetty. The bow ramp pressed into a concrete ramp at the toe-deep edge of the water, and I walked rather daintily up it, my shoes getting damp, and climbed up into the small passenger lounge, which was really just a bench seat on the port side. After a minute or two the ramp was pulled up and the 44 Whisky, Kilts, and the Loch Ness Monster ferry departed, already beginning to sway as the captain turned into the wind. I was terribly excited about Iona and, frankly, getting a little edgy about the trip across the Sound. Boswell was especially excited by his arrival on Iona (then known as Icolmkill). For a change he and Johnson had had a rather smooth journey by boat, skirting the western coast of Mull (and missing completely what would be Fionnphort today). Their boat was unable to get close to the landing , so Johnson and Boswell were carried ashore, as Johnson wrote: “Our boat could not be forced very near the dry ground, and the Highlanders carried us over the water.” It would have been quite a chuckle to have observed several people struggling to negotiate the bulky Johnson over the water—but that’s apparently not what happened. Boswell later wrote that when the party landed, he and Sir Allan Maclean were carried on their crew’s shoulders to dry land, but Johnson “sprang into the sea and waded out.” Either story produces delightful images, but neither may give us the full account. The editor of the latest (2007) edition of Boswell’s and Johnson’s writings on the trip, Ronald Black, has a bit more information about Johnson’s actions, which were regarded as highly eccentric by everyone who heard about them. He includes remarks from a radio broadcast in 1936 or 1937 by the Rev. Dr. Coll MacDonald (it hardly gets more Scottish than that) which tell us that the incident was long remembered: Johnson was a massive, burly man, big-bellied and talkative. He was so short-sighted that he jumped out of Maclean of the Inch’s galley before her stem had ploughed a furrow in the sands of Port Ronan. He was wet up to the thighs, and poor Boswell paid for the calamity. The huge old man exploded in rage and started berating and bullying him. “I have been tormented like the Apostle Paul by the tumult of waves and placed in danger of my life amidst the dark vales and horrid peaks of this uncouth land. Should this wetting bring upon me a fatal disease, pray take care that my corpse rot in London’s soil, and by no means amongst the savage chiefs and plunderers of the Highland clans.” Yes sir, nothing like...

Share