After tea we walked down to the l)each to watch the natives bring their provisions ashore. The men conveyed the l)ags of meal and flour from the steamer to tlu; ro(;ks in their boat, whilst the women performed the i'ar more arduous task of carrying them on their backs up llie steep path to llie cottaires.

Each family consumes in a year nine bolls of oatmeal and Hour, averaging out at owq Imnired and twenty pounds per head per annum; which is, according to the factor, twenty-eight per cent, more than the Hebridean ordinary crofter sup^^lies himself and his family with.

We slung our liannnocks in two up})er rooms of the empty cottage, and turned in at midnight prepared to bid extravagantly for slec}); but, alas! just as I was dropping off, I heard a resounding bump on the floor and an indistinct muttering in the next apartment. It was our friend, Mr. John Young, who being somewhat rotund of form, had fallen out of his bed of string, which unfortunately had not been shapen for turning-over in. The next night we turned a long form with a high back face to the wall for his accommodation, and thereafter he slept in a kind of crevice from which there was no means of accidental escape. We arose early the following morning, and, it being the Sabbath Day, we prepared for service. Eleven o'clock came round, but there was not a sign of anybody astir on devotions bent. We waited with patient curiosity until half-past twelve, when an old ship's bell, erected on the top of a wall near the church, began to summon worshippers to the House of Prayer by a weird out-of-place kind of tinkle, tinkle, tinkle. In our ignorance we supposed that time was a little out of joint on the island, but afterwards learnt that the indulgent minister, Mr. Fiddes, had considerately given his little flock an hour and a half's grace out of compassion for them, on account of their extra toil and exertion in landing their provisions the previous day. The church, which is also used as a day-school,

slopes considerably from the door at wlucli the people enter to the end at which the pulpit or rostrum stands. The floor, except just beneath the feet of the worshippers, where there is a loose scaffold board, consists entirely of Mother Earth. The aisle is roughly laid with cement, put down by the minister s own hands. We were told a good story about a sup])ly of cement sent to St. Kilda for this purpose by some generous donor. The citizens of Village Bay are never in a hurry, and after the "bags of dust" arrived at the island, they put them down outside the church to wait. Wheu an inquiring friend turned up the following summer and asked how they had got on wdth the floor-laying, they told him that the "bags of dust" had by a miracle all turned into lumps of rock before they had had time to use them.

The service was conducted in Gaelic, and consisted of reading the Scriptures, singing the Psalms, prayer, and a very long sermon, all of wdiich I flatter myself I sat under for the space of an hour and a half without lowering an eyelid, although I understood not a single word uttered. The collection was taken in two boxes, aflixed to long handles. With these the platemen easily gathered the harvest of coppers as they Avalked up the aisle, without pusliing in front of the congregation or bothering anybody for assistance in getting the boxes \^ and down the pews. They were primitive, l)ut exceedingly sensible kind of l)oxcs.

As soon as the minister had left, the women all filed silently out of church before a num stirred from his place. I was greatly pleased with this custom, thinking it to be a courteous deference shown to the fair sex of St. Kilda, whose industry and modesty render them entirely WM)rthy of it.

but have since learnt that it is a lingering relic of Roman Catholicism which is still in force on the Continent. In evidence of the religious fervour of the St. can, I suppose, to some Kildans—which Iextent be reckoned up by census methods — noticed that over seventy-live per cent, of the entire population were in church.

If Mr. Sands faithfully recorded what he saw at this place in the 'seventies, when the people went to church " with sorrowful looks, and eyes bent upon the ground like a troop of the damned being driven by Satan to the bottondess pit," and no one spoke to another above a whisper, or could look to the right or left without considering he had sinned, a very great improvement has taken place in the direction of reason and cheerfulness. Directly we got out of church, they all doffed their bonnets and shook hands with us, and such as were al)le to asked us how we were and chatted with us all the way up the path to our cottage.

All the houses in St. Kilda, excepting one of which more hereafter, are substantial one-storey stone structures with zinc roofs securely fastened down by iron bands. They contain two rooms, each of which is lighted by a small four-pane window. Although they have fair-sized chimneys, some of which are even surmounted by earthenware pots, they are generally full of smoke for same reason or other, which is, I think, to be sought in the peculiar conformation of the hills around them. They are far ahead in point of comfort and con-veniences of nearly all the crofters' dwellings I have been into in Harris, Uist, and other Hebridean

Isles. As the stranger walks along the path in front of the houses, he is struck by three things—the

strong smell of Fulmar oil, the plenitude of birds' wings and feathers on the midden heaps, and the numbers of birds' eggs that adorn nearly every window.

Whether they mistrust each other in Hirta or not I do not know, but I was somewhat surprised

WOODEN LOCK.

DETAILS OF LOCK.

to find that in a community where crime is unknown they had ingeniously-constructed wooden locks on all their cowhouse doors. The fact that the cow-houses were once dwelt in by the people themselves cannot be accepted as a satisfactory explanation, inasmuch as they have—instead of utilising the old locks for their dwelling-houses—made new ones, although oak and other kinds of hard wood are

particularly scarce on the island. The locks and keys are made entirely of wood, save for the two or three nails holding together the parts of the former. I bought one as a curiosity, and the illustrations on the opposite page will to some extent explain its construction. A small piece of hard w^ood working ujj and down a perpendicular kind of box inside the lock drops into a mortise in the bolt, and effectually prevents it from being withdrawn until the hidden perpendicular bolt, for such it may be described, has been raised bv the kev, which is fashioned so as to fit into a part of it. There can be no manner of doubt, I think, that St. Kilda was inhabited close upon, if not quite, a thousand years ago; for in digging out and restoring an miderground dwelling known amongst the natives as the " fairy house," which had been only partially explored and to a great extent destroyed by a previous visitor, we came across the objects represented on the following-page. The particulars about the choicest of our tinds have been kindly supplied to me by my friend Dr. Anderson, Curator of the National Museum of Antiquities, Edinburgh, Avhither they w^ere sent by the chief, MacLeod, who owns the island, and who generously insisted upon defraying the entire cost of excavating and restoring the subterranean dwelling. The iron spear-head on the right hand side of the picture is a weapon of war belonging to Viking times, and is in all probability a thousand years old. The conical- shaped stones belong to the same period, and were used, it is thought, as net sinkers or loom weights. They were cracked and split, a condition due no doidjt to some extent to the kind of stone

from which they had been made, but probably exaggerated ill the case of one of them (which we were obho-ed to tie toorether with strino- before it could be photographed) by the fact that it had been heated, as it bore traces of having lain in the remains of a peat fire. The St. Kildans said that these stones were used in former times for putting into the foot of a stocking and dashing out the brains of invading enemies, some of whom called to kidnap able-bodied men to serve in their ships in place of hands washed overboard during stormy weather.

We found a lot of fragments of earthenware vessels half an inch thick, and so blackened on the outsides as to lead us to suppose they had been placed on a fire for cooking purposes. They were in all probability made on the island and used in the Viking times. Such vessels were manufactured and used all over the Western Isles of Scotland, from a very early period down to the time when the steamers brought Staffordshire ware into fashion.

The other implements figuring in the picture consist of hammer-stones, whetstones, rubbing-stones, or grain-crushers, and hollowed stones which may have been used as lamps. Curiously enough one of the lamp- stones we found was almost exactly similar in size and shape to one still in use on Borrera.

The entire credit of properly investigating and restoring this interesting home of primitive man belongs to our friend, Mr. John Mackenzie, jun., who takes a great deal of interest in the history of the place. Some idea may be gathered of the condition of this strange relic of bygone days from the picture taken of it before we commenced digging, and the fact that four or five feet from the entrance the ])assage was completely blocked up with earth and stones, which were overgrown with

ANTIQUITIES FROM UNDERGROUND DWELLING.

J 6 WITH NATURE AND A CAMKBA.

ferns of the most delicate green tint I have ever seen. As I was anxious to possess some of these undamag-ed, I wriggled my way inside and secured a few, which are now growing in my little Hertfordshire garden.

The dwelling is something in the form of a huge drain, some thirty or forty feet in length, four feet in height, and three in Avidth, with a passage of somewhat similar capacity, but only about nine or ten feet in length, running at right angles to it on the left hand side, and about half way from the entrance. This is, I believe, supposed to have formed the bedchamber of the people who inhabited the rude house, the entrance to which commands an excellent vicAV of Village l^ay. This last fact was, no doubt, of great importance, in order that the people might have early knowledge of the approach of enemies. Neither had tlu^ owners of this underground mansion been unmindful of tiie benefits of some sort of sanitary arrangement, for Ave found a drain beneath the floor, made, no doubt, to carry off the slops from their crude eartheuAvare boAvls. We also came across a lot of limpet shells and bones of sheep and birds of various kinds.

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