The necessary arrangements with the Duke of Argyll’s tenants at the _Ross_ of Mull (in which district North Bay is situated) having been already made, no time was lost in erecting the wooden Barrack; and, in seven days after our arrival, the masons and quarriers entered their new habitation under the charge of Mr Charles Stewart, whom I left as foreman of the North Bay works. Mr Stewart and his party, following the example of diligence thus set to them, were not less expeditious in proceeding with the work which had been assigned to them; and by the beginning of August a range of barracks, capable of accommodating forty persons, had been erected, a landing wharf had been built, and various storehouses had been provided, although the quarry had to be opened, and the blocks of stone required for those various works were still _in situ_ at the time of our landing at North Bay three months before. The landing wharf is placed on a small projecting face of rock in a depth of 12 feet at high water of ordinary spring tides. It presents a face of 40 feet in length, and was provided with wooden fenders for the protection of the vessels loading stones. Landward of it a considerable space was levelled, by cutting and filling, to serve as a yard for storing the quarried materials, so as to be ready for shipment. The quarry itself was opened in the face of a hill, so steep as almost to deserve the name of a cliff; but advantage was taken of a deep gully which intersected it and in it an inclined plane was formed communicating directly with the landing-place. This gully was partly cleared by excavation of the rock and partly, where necessary, its inequalities were smoothed down by filling it with stone shivers; and along its bed thus prepared, longitudinal sleepers of timber were laid, to which _edge-rails_ were attached. At the top of the incline two iron drums or barrels were set, and round them were wound, in opposite directions, the chains by which the trucks or wagons, loaded with stones from the quarry, were lowered to the wharf below. A powerful break apparatus was attached to those barrels, to check the velocity of the descending wagons, which was also in part counteracted, by making their gravity act as a power to raise the empty wagons in the same manner as is usually practised in coal-mines.