in the transport of the goods; but the inhospitable nature of the country, and the remoteness of Tyree from the ordinary steam-boat traffic, made the adoption of some such plan unavoidable. Amongst other inconveniences which attended the store, not the least may be reckoned the frequent importunities, on the part of the native labourers whom we employed, to be permitted to purchase provisions at the workyard; but that was never acceded to, except in cases where dearths (which are of frequent occurrence in the island) rendered the call irresistible. Had their entreaties easily prevailed, we should soon have had the whole population of Tyree as our regular customers at the Store. ~Hynish Quarries.~ The quarries at Hynish, as already stated, were by no means productive. The great proportion of the materials which had been quarried, was found to be applicable only to the building of the pier and the inclosing walls, and to the various erections in the workyard; and not more than _one-tenth_ of the whole could be dressed as blocks for the Tower. During the numerous occasions on which I had been driven by stress of weather to the neighbouring coasts, I had visited the quarries around Oban and in various parts of Morven and Mull. When so forced to leave what I might more especially call my _post_, I had an opportunity of seeing the quarries at Ardentallen near Oban, which contain the old red sandstone strongly impregnated with clay. That stone is by no means suitable for the _face-work_ of a marine building, in such a situation as the Skerryvore; while the comparatively small quantity of _hearting_ which could be admitted into such a work, made it inexpedient to seek such materials at so great a distance. In this way, the Ardentallen quarry seemed completely excluded from the field. At another time, in passing through Inverary, I devoted a day to the examination of the quarries which had lately been opened at that place and in which a beautiful porphyry is wrought; but I saw no appearance of very large blocks, or, at all events, nothing that could favour the expectation of a considerable supply. But after carefully weighing the matter, the great masses of granite at the Ross of Mull finally determined my choice in favour of that locality; and the Duke of Argyll having, with the greatest liberality, ratified his predecessor’s grant of liberty to the Lighthouse Board to quarry stones from any part of the Argyll estates, it was resolved to take measures early in the spring of 1839 for opening quarries at North Bay, in Mull, where an excellent station for shipping had been discovered, close to the place where we saw the most promising appearance of rock. This measure seemed the more indispensable, as the last part of the quarry _terred_[18] or laid bare at Hynish, had greatly disappointed our expectations. The unworkable nature of gneiss rock also and its extreme uncertainty with regard to quality, farther concurred to make a change most desirable.