pleasure these lonely folks derive from sucking' sweets^ that he takes a large supply with him every year.

In addition to enjoying a unique character for sobriety, St. Kilda can also boast the distinction of being the only inhabited part of the British Isles which has not been officially surveyed by Her Majesty's Ordnance Department.

Wo were told that some of the older people of the community knew the Bible by heart from cover to cover; but, being ignorant of the Gaelic tongue, we were unable to ])ut this remarkable assertion to the test. At the end of the seventeenth century the St. Kildans played jews'-harps, and danced to the music of the bagpipes, "which pleased them exceedingly "; but now they have neither music nor dancing, nor amusements of any sort. I innocently asked the minister one day what kind of games the children played. The old man smiled good- : " Nonenaturedly at my ignorance, and answered whatever; their parents would consider it frivolity to have them taught anything except climbing rocks, catching sheep, and such other things as will become necessary to them in after-life." The austerity of the doctrine inculcated by the Free Kirk of Scotland has been 1)lamed for this gloomy strictness; and, whilst acquitting the minister of anv bigoted abuse of reason, I am willing to believe a deal in the way of religious intolerance on the part of the terriljly earnest body he represents; for I once had the ill-fortime to listen to a theological dispute betwixt a nmnber of Free and Established Kirkers, which looked much like ending in employment for a surgeon, if not an undertaker.

AVhatever the cause, I can certainly testify to the fact that the St. Kildans do not now appreciate

the music of the pij)es; for whenever Sandy Campbell, the factor's gillie, started a refrain u})on an by the way, had been heardinstrument—which, by many a dying- Russian on the heights of Alma people scuttled out of our cottage like rats—the from a doomed ship. It is, I believe, an affectation in the South to cry down the sound of the its stir-pibroch; but to my hill-bred Yorkshire ears ring refrains when heard across a Highland loch or floating up a wild, craggy glen are simply grand, and I cannot imagine any man with a heart as big as a hay-seed who couldn't flght anything or anyl)ody to its music. I don't think it is generally known that, on the authority of Shakespeare, the bagpipes were at one time played in England. In olden times, pluck was considered even a o-reater virtue than it is to-dav in St. Kilda. This is proved by the fact that ever}^ young man who considered himself brave enough to deserve the fair, was obliged to give a public exhibition of his daring projecting piece of rockon the Lover's Stone—a with nothing except two hundred feet or so of thin air betwixt it and the waves below. As soon as all the islanders had assembled at the invitation of the love- sick youth, he walked out on to the very end of the crag, and standing upon the outer edge of it on his left heel i)ut his right to the toes of his left, and then stooped until he touched the toes of his right foot with the finger-tips of both hands. In this perilous position he was obliged to remain until those around him expressed themselves satisfied that he had vindicated his claim to manhood and fitness for a wife. At this period, an old writer says, the women thirteen or fourteenmarried very young—about

years of age—and "gave suck to their children for two years." My l)rother photographed the ancient Lover's Stone, but, unfortunately, a tantalising accident has robbed us of the chance of using the picture in the present work. I was telling my friend Captain McCallum, of Glasgow, about hearing the sea make a noise in the caves of St. Kilda one night, like the booming of distant cannon, when he laughed and told me that it reminded him of a great scare the people had some years ago. A woman woke up suddenly one night convinced that she could hear the big ffuns of the dreaded Sassenach or Saxon, of whom and, no doubt, with good reason—they formerly-stood in great awe. She at once aroused everybody in the village, and they all fled to the rocks, where they remained until daylight convinced them that they had had their slumbers broken by a false alarm. An enemy wishing to land on the island would, I am persuaded, have to go about his business very stealthily. Sandy Campljell, the abhorred piper, told me that he had visited the place seventeen years in succession as factor's gillie, and landed at all hours of the night, but never once got inside Village Bay without being seen by someone ashore. The dogs, many of which seem to be always left prowling about outside the houses at night, give the alarm, as I discovered when wandering about in the small hours of the morning studying bird-life and habits.

I could not g(;t aii' trustworthy information as to the nundjer of sheep and cattle owned by the members of the little island connnonwealth, as it was, or was fancied to be, in their interest to conceal the exact figures from llie factor. I should

say from what I saw whilst on 8oa, Borrera, and all over St. Kilda, that a thousand sheep and from twenty-five to thirty head of cattle would be a fairly correct estimate.

They make cheese from a mixture of cows' and ewes' milk; but I must confess that it was to me poor, tasteless stuff, lacking salt or tlavour.

and the St. Kildans have a pai'ticiilarly primitive and, I might add, extravagant method of capturing them which I had the good fortune to see in operation. A sick man had expressed a fancy for some broth made from a piece of Soa lamb, and, as we were "foino^ to work the island with camera and note-book, we took a dog or two in the l^oat with us. These dogs had their fangs broken, and by the aid of their Ijarefooted masters, who sprang from rock to rock with great nimbleness and not a little excitement, literally ran down one of the timid creatures. As the sheep raced madly round the little island, they came close past where I stood, and the way they bounded from crag to crag, and skipped in single file along dangerous ledges, was simply astonishing. My brother set up his camera and tried to photograph them as they passed him in full career, but the com2)arative slowness of his apparatus, an instantaneous shutter, and the great speed at which the animals were travelling, produced nothing but elonofated marks of confusion a":ainst the g-reat grey rocks on the negative. He did, however, succeed in making a picture of a lamb caught by one of the dogs and held until its master came upon the scene. This barbarous method of catching the sheep invariably ends in some of the terrified creatures o-oino- over the cb'ifs and beino-swept away by the fierce tides iiowing in those quarters. The factor told me that he had volunteered to supply the people with nets, in order that they might catch the shee]) with more liumanity and less waste of life, l)ut his offer was declined. The}' preferred the good old metliods that supplied forms of enter-plenty of danger and excitement—two tainment very dear to the impulsive Celtic lunu-t.

The loss occasioned by sheep being* blown over the cliffs is considerable, but in Soa this is to a great extent compensated by the remarkable fecundity of the animals. Macaulay says that he was told a single ewe added nine sheep to the flock in thirteen months. " She had brought three lambs in the month of March, three more in the same month the year after, and each of the iirst three had a young one before they had been thirteen months old." Clipping-shears are unknown in St. Kilda, and the wool that does not drop off or cannot be pulled off the backs of the sheep is cut away with j^ocket-knives.

My friend Mackenzie told me that the people wanted to cross the original breed of Soa sheep with Scotch black-faced ones, but that MacLeod, of MacLeod, the proprietor, had very naturally objected, and taken the island over himself. He said that when folks talked of half-a-crown as being the remarkably low figure at which a whole sheep might be purchased in the Antipodes, they little dreamed that there were peoj)le in the British Isles paying only the same price for the best and sweetest mutton in the world, as MacLeod only charges the St. Kildans two shillings and sixpence for each sheep they take away from Soa to kill.

Whilst passing round the back of St. Kilda one day in a boat I noticed a curious heap of stones on a grass-clad ledge far down the face of the awesome cliff; and as the collection looked, too regular for a mere accidental gathering I asked how it came there, and was told that the wee cairn had been piled up by a man who was lowered by means of a long rope every autumn on to the handbreadth of rock with a sheep which he left to browse on

the few niouthfiils of luscious grass for three or four days. That any sane being should risk so mueli for so little seemed to me incredible.

Captain McCallum told me an amusing anecdote about a poor old woman who accompanied her kins-men on a journey from 8t. Kilda to Harris in the days when they used to visit the latter place in their large l)oat. On the occasion in (juestion night fell before a landing was effected, and when they did succeed in getting ashore it was on an unknown })art of the coast. In searching for some kind of habitation the old woman accidentally got separated from her companions, and fell in with an object of supernatural Ijrilliancy at which she a lighthouse. It being a sultrymarvelled greatly-night the keeper had left the door open, that he might benefit by the improved ventilation. The old woman mounted the tower stairs in great awe, and when she came into the presence of the attendant and the dazzling brilliancy of his lanterns' rays she fell on her knees and began to address him as the Almighty. The man was, on his part, so startled that he concluded the aged 8t. Kildan was some hag from the nether regions, to which he bade her get back in language more forcible than ])olite. is said to have hap- A somewhat similar thing pened near London in the early days of ballooning, when an aeronaut alighted in a ])loughed field at Coulsdon, in Surrey. A labourer who happened to be working close by at the time was so overcome with fear at the unusual sight that when asked the name of the place by the man who had dropped from the clouds, he fell on his knees and replied: " CouMon, if you please, God Almighty!"

The Hi. Kildans enjoy a })lentiful supply of I will leave poor old Martingood watei-: how good

to tell, for, altlioiigli I am a teetotaler, he drank far more than I either could or would. He says " Of the well of Qualities or Virtues I drank twice, an English quart each time." I do not think there can be any question as to the nobility of a man's thirst who can swallow so much cold water, of whatsoever quality, at a single draught, and this singular feat half inclines me to believe in our author's theory, dealt with earlier in this chapter, anent the declining capacities and endurance of the human race, for "the present generation comes short," certainlv, of his in its thirst for cold water. He further adds that " the inhabitants of Harris find it (the water of the well of Qualities) effectual against windy colics, gravel, and headaches "; but, being troubled with none of these disorders during it, I had no opportunity of putting-my stay close to its efficacy to the test. The inhabitants of this remote rock are, aquatically speaking, still further blessed; for, according to the same enthusiastic authority, there is another fountain on the island, the water from which ' ' will wash linen without soap as well as other water will with it,"

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