TOPOGRAPHIC NOTICE OF THE SKERRYVORE ROCK. From the great difficulty of access to the inhospitable rock of Skerryvore, which is exposed to the full fury of the Atlantic, and is surrounded by an almost perpetual surf, the erection of a Light Tower on its small and rugged surface has always been regarded as an undertaking of the most formidable kind. So discouraging was the consideration of expense, and the uncertainty of the final success of such a work, that the Commissioners of the Northern Lighthouses, after successfully completing the arduous and somewhat similar work on the Bell Rock, were induced to proceed with other operations of less magnitude, but probably, in some respects, of no less utility; and to delay the construction of the Skerryvore Lighthouse till the present time, although the Act of Parliament authorising its erection was obtained so long ago as 1814. The cluster of Rocks, of which that called the Skerryvore is the largest, has ever been a just cause of terror to the mariner. Its dangers have long been known, and the means of removing these dangers, by converting its dark horrors into a cheering guide for the benighted mariner, have often occupied the attention of the Lighthouse Board, and especially of my predecessor in the office of their Engineer, with whom it was a constant subject of interest, from its similarity to his own work on the Bell Rock. The first landing that my Father, in the course of his annual voyages round the coast, as Engineer of the Northern Lighthouse Board, effected on Skerryvore, was in the year 1804. In 1814, he visited it a second time, while accompanying a committee of the Commissioners on a tour of inspection to the Lighthouses all round the coast, from the Frith of Forth to the Clyde. On that occasion, Sir Walter Scott was of the party, and we find in his diary the following record of his impressions at the time, expressed in the terse and humorous language by which this interesting relic of the poet is characterised; and as the hasty observations of that great man seem worthy of a place in a work descriptive of the means which have been taken to obviate the dangers to which he refers, no apology seems necessary for introducing it in this place.