Alasdair Gray - Unlikely Stories Mostly

And this is a true example of that charm, fascination, inchantment and infernal assistance of men’s imaginations by the gold of the Spanish conquerors, which makes many believe they may become magnates and grandees with no more labour than is needed to purchase a royal patent, fit a ship, navigate a passage, and plunder an astonished people by the power of artilleriendal assault. The followers of such adventurers may indeed reap good harvest abroad, but only by digging and planting, (in fear of the natives they have dispossessed) what could be cultivated at home with better advantage to themselves and their country. It is the greater readiness of Scottishmen to adventure abroad, rather than develop what we have, that is our nation’s ruin. By which I am reminded, that I have a certain harbour or bay, in goodness equal to the best in the world, adjacent to a place, which is the head town of the Shire; the shire and town being of one and the same name with the harbour or bay; whose promontaries on each side, vulgarly called Souters, from the Greek word σωτηρες, that is to say, Salvatores or Savers, from the safety that ships have when once they are entred within them, having had that name imposed on them by Nicobulus the Druyd, who came along with my predecessor Alypos in the dayes of Eborak, that founded York some 698 years before Ferguse the First; at which time that whole country, never before discovered by the Greeks, was named Olbion by the said Alypos.

This harbour, in all the Latine maps of Scotland, is called Portus Salutis ; by reason that ten thousand ships together may within it ride in the greatest tempest that is as in a calm by vertue of which conveniency some exceeding rich men, of five or six several nations, masters of ships, and merchant adventurers, promised to bring their best vessels and stocks for trading along with them, and dwell in that my little town with me, who should have been a sharer with them in their hazard, and by subordinating factors to accompany them in their negotiations, admitted likewise for a partner in their profit and advantages.

By which means, the foresaid town of Cromarty, for so it is called, in a very short space, would have easily become the richest of any within threescore miles thereof; in the prosecuting of which designe, I needed not to question the hearty concurrence of Aberdeen, which, for honesty, good fashions and learning, surpasseth as far all other cities and towns in Scotland, as London doth for greatness, wealth, and magnificence, the smallest hamlet or village in England.

Nor was I suspicious of any considerable opposition in that project from any town, save Invernasse alone, whose magistrates, to the great dishonour of our whole nation, did most foully evidence their own baseness in going about to rob my town of its liberties and privileges.

Yet was that plague of flagilators, wherewith my house was infected, so pernicious to that purpose of mine, that some of them lying in wait, as a thief in the night, both for my person and means, cannibal-like to swallow me up at a breakfast; they did, by impediting the safety of my travelling abroad, arresting whatever they imagined I had right unto, inhibiting others from bargaining, most barbarously and maliciously cut off all the directory preparatives I had orderly digested for the advantage of a business of such main concernment, and so condu-cible to the weal of the whole Island, to the great discouragement of those gallant forreners; of which that ever-renowned gentilman for wit and excellencie in many good parts, Sir Phillip Vernati by name, was one; who being of Italian parents, by birth a Dutchman, and by education expert in all the good languages of the Christian world, besides the Arabick and Sclavonian tongues, wherein he surpassed, had a great ascendent in counsel over all the adventrous merchants of what nation soever; whereof, without the foresaid lets of those barbarous obstructors, some by all appearance had so concurred with me, that by their assistance I would ere now have banished all idleness from the commons, maintained several thousands of persons of both sexes, from the infant to the decrepit age, found employments proportionable to their abilities, bastant to afford them both entertainment and apparel in a competent measure; educing from various multitudes of squameary flocks of several sizes, colours and natures, netted out of the bowels of the ocean both far and neer, and current of fresh water streams, more abundance of wealth than that whole country had obtained by such a commodity these many yeers past; erecting ergastularies for keeping at work many hundreds of persons in divers kindes of manufactures; bringing from beyond sea the skillfull’st artificers could be hired for money, to instruct the natives in all manner of honest trades; perswaded the most ingenious hammermen to stay with me, assuring them of ready coin for whatever they should be able to put forth to sale; addicting the abjectest of the people to the servitritiary duty of digging for coals and metals, of both which in my ground there is great appearance, and of the hitting of which I doubt as little, as of the lime and freestone quarries hard at my house of late found out, which have not been these two hundred years remarked; induced masters of husbandry to reside amongst my tenants, for teaching them the most profitable way, both for the manner and the season, of tilling, digging, ditching, hedging, dunging, sowing, harrowing, grubbing, reaping, threshing, killing, milling, baking, brewing bailing of pasture ground, mowing, feeding of herds, flocks, horse and cattel; making good use of the excrescences of all these; improving their herbages, dayries, mellificiaries, fruitages; setting up the most expedient agricolary instruments of wains, carts, slades, with their several devices of wheels and axle-trees, plows and harrows of divers sorts, freezes, winders, pullies, and all other manner of engines fit for easing the toyl and furthering the work; whereby one weak man, with skill, may effectuate more than fourty strong ones without it; and leaving nothing undone that, by either sex of all ages, might tend to the benefit of the labourer in applying most industriously the outmost of their vertue all the emoluments of country farms or manual trades. I would likewise have encouraged men of literature, and exquisite spirits for invention, to Converse With us for the better Civilizing of the country, and accommodating it with a variety of goods, whether honest, pleasant, or profitable; by vertue whereof, the professors of all sciences, liberal disciplines, arts active and factive, mechanick trades, and whatever concerns either vertue or learning, practical or theoretick, had been cherished for fixing their abode in it. I had also procured the residence of men of prime faculties for bodily exercises, such as riding, fencing, dancing, military feats musterin of mustering, imbattleing, handling the pike and musket, the art of gunnery, fortification, or anything that in the wars belongeth either to defence or assault, volting, swimming, running, leaping, throwing the bar, playing at tennis, singing, and fingring of all manner of musical instruments, hawking, hunting, fowling, angling, shooting, and what else mightany way conduce to the accomplishment of either body or minde, enriching of men in their fortunes, or promoving them to deserved honours

All these things, and many more, for export of the commodities of this Island to the remotest regions of the earth, import from thence of other goods, or transport from one forraign nation to another, and all for the conveniency of our British inhabitants, I would undoubtedly have ere now provided to the full, in being a Maecenas to the sckolar, a protector of the trades-man, and up-holder of the yeoman, had not the impetuosity of the usurer overthrown my resolutions, and blasted my aims in the bud.