I wish you would send me your vouchers of all your Jamaica debts I
could go easily from here to there. If I cannot get money I can get
rum, which sells and will sell, at a great price in this place. I can
only stay there a few months."
Nor must we forget the jolly pic-nics the barons held there some eighty
years ago. [329]
On quitting these silent halls, from which the light of other days had
departed, and from whence the voice of revelry seems to have fled forever,
I re-crossed the little brook, already mentioned, musing on the past. The
solitude which surrounds the dwelling and the tomb of the dark-haired
child of the wilderness, involuntarily brought to mind that beautiful
passage of Ossian, [330] relating to the daughter of Reuthamir, the
"white-bosomed" Moina: - "I have seen the walls of Balclutha, but they
were desolate. The fire had resounded in the halls, and the voice of the
people is heard no more. The thistle shook there its lonely head; the moss
whistled to the wind. The fox looked out of the windows, the rank grass of
the wall waved round its head. Desolate is the dwelling of Moina, silence
is in the house.... Raise the, song of mourning, O bards! over the land of
strangers. They have but fallen before us:
