THE HISTORY OF the LIFE AND SURPRISING ADVENTURES OF

MR. DUNCAN CAMPBELL

CHAPTER ONE

MR. CAMPBELL'S DESCENT, FAMILY, BIRTH, ETC.

F the goodness and antiquity of the name and family of this gentleman, nobody can ever make any question. He is a Campbell, lineally descended from the house of Argyll, and bears a distant relation to the present duke of that name in Scotland, and who is now constituted a duke of England, by the style and title of Duke of Greenwich.

It happens frequently that the birth of extraordinary persons is so long disputed by different people, each claiming him for their own, that the real place where he first took breath grows at last dubious. And thus it fares with the person who is the subject of the following sheets; as, therefore, it is my proposal to have a strict regard to historical faith, so I am obliged to tell the reader that I can with no certainty give an account of him till after he was three years old, from which age I knew him even to this day. I will answer for the truths which I impart to the public during that time, and as for

his birth and the circumstances of it, and how the first three years of his life passed, I can only deliver them the same account I have received from others, and leave them to their own judgments, whether it ought to be deemed real or fabulous.

The father of our Mr. Duncan Campbell (as these relate the story) was from his infancy of a very curious inquisitive nature, and of an enterprising genius, and if he heard of anything surprising to be seen, the difficulty in practice was enough to recommend to him the attempting to get a sight of it at any rate or any hazard. It is certain that during some civil broils and troubles in Scotland, the grandfather of our Mr. Campbell was driven with his wife and family, by the fate of war, into the isle of Shetland, where he lived many years, and during his residence there, Mr. Archibald Campbell, the father of our Duncan Campbell, was born.

Shetland lies north-east from Orkney, between 60 and 61 degrees of latitude. The largest isle of Shetland, by the natives called the Mainland, is sixty miles in length, from south-west to the northeast, and from sixteen to one mile in breadth.

The people who live in the smaller isles have abundance of eggs and fowl, which contributes to maintain their families during the summer.

The ordinary folks are mostly very nimble and active in climbing the rocks in quest of those eggs and fowl. This exercise is far more diverting than hunting and hawking among us, and would certainly, for the pleasure of it, be followed by people of greater distinction, was it not attended with very

great dangers, sufficient to turn sport into sorrow, and which have often proved fatal to those who too eagerly pursue their game. Mr. Archibald Campbell, however, delighted extremely in this way of fowling, and used to condescend to mix with the common people for company, because none of the youths of his rank and condition were venturesome enough to go along with him.

The most remarkable experiment of this sort is at the isle called the Noss of Brassah. The Noss standing at sixteen fathom distance from the side of the opposite main, the higher and lower rocks have two stakes fastened in each of them, and to these there are ropes tied; upon the ropes there is an engine hung, which they call a cradle, and in this a man makes his way over from the greater to the smaller rocks, where he makes a considerable purchase of eggs and fowl; but his return being by an ascent makes it the more dangerous, though those on the great rock have a rope tied to the cradle, by which they draw it and the man safe over for the most part. Over this rock Mr. Archibald Campbell and five others were in that matter let down by cradles and ropes; but before they could be all drawn back again it grew dark, and their associates not daring to be benighted, were forced to withdraw, and Mr. Campbell was the unfortunate person left behind, having wandered too far, and not minded how the day declined, being intent on his game. He passed that night, you may easily guess, without much sleep, and with great anxiety of heart. The night, too, as he lay in the open air, was, to add to his misfortunes,

as boisterous and tempestuous as his own mind; but in the end the tempest proved very happy for him. The reader is to understand that the Hamburghers, Bremeners, and Hollanders, carry on a great fish trade there. Accordingly, a Holland vessel that was just coming in the sound of Brassah, was by this tempest driven into a creek of the rock, which nature had made into a harbour, and they were providentially saved from the bottom of the sea by a rock, from which, humanly speaking, they could expect nothing but destruction, and being sent to the bottom of that sea. As never could a man be taken hold of with so sudden and surprising a disaster, so nobody could meet with a more sudden and surprising relief than Mr. Campbell found when he saw a ship so near. He made to the vessel, and begged the Hollanders to take him in. They asked him what he would give them, "or," said the barbarous sailors, "we will even leave you where you are." He told them his disaster, but they asked money, and nothing else would move them. As he knew them a self-interested people, he bethought himself that if he should tell them of the plenty of fowls and eggs they would get there, he might not only be taken in a passenger, but made a partner in the money arising from the stock. It succeeded accordingly: when he proposed it, the whole crew were all at work, and in four hours, pretty well stored the vessel, and then, returning on board, set sail for Holland. They offered Mr. Campbell to put him in at his own island, but having a mind to see Holland, and, being a partner, to learn their way of merchandise, which he thought he might turn to

his countrymen's advantage, he told them he would go the voyage out with them, and see the country of those who were his deliverers, a necessary way of speech, when one has a design to soothe barbarians, who but for interest would have left him unredeemed, and, for aught they knew, a perpetual sole inhabitant of a dreadful rock, encompassed round with precipices, some three hundred fathom high. Not so the islanders (who are wrongly called a savage set of mortals); no, they came in quest of him after so bitter a night, not doubting to find him, but fearing to find him in a lamentable condition. They hunted and ransacked every little hole and corner in the rock, but all in vain; in one place they saw a great slaughter of fowls, enough to serve forty families for a week, and then they guessed, though they had not the ill fortune to meet the eagles frequently noted to hover about those isles, that they might have devoured part of him on some precipice of the rock, and dropped the remnant into the sea. Night came upon them, and they were afraid of falling into the same disaster they went to relieve Mr. Campbell from. They returned each to their proper basket, and were drawn up safe by their respective friends, who were amazed that one basket was drawn up empty which was let down for Mr. Campbell, and that there was not the least intelligence to be had concerning him, but the supposititious story of his having been devoured by eagles. The story was told at home, and with the lamentation of the whole family, and all his friends, he was looked upon to be murdered or dead.