Adamnan, too, tells us of _Feargna_, or Virgnous, who, ‘after having lived for many years without reproach in obedience among the brethren, led an anchoretic life for other twelve years, as a victorious soldier of Christ, in the abode of the anchorites in Muirbulcmar.’[465] This was, he also tells us, in the island of Hinba, which can be identified with _Eilean na Naomh_, one of the Garveloch isles, and here, in this solitary isle where there is little to disturb them, we find the remains of this abode of the anchorites in connection with other remains which are evidently the foundations of an early monastic establishment. It consists of two circular dome-shaped buildings joined together, built of uncemented stone. The larger one is internally fourteen feet in diameter; the other, a part of the beehive roof of which still remains, is about a foot less. The two buildings communicate with each other by means of a square-shaped doorway through the points of contact, and the larger one with the outside by another doorway of a similar kind facing south-west.[466] The other form of this solitary life was one in which the inmate of a monastery withdrew from it altogether, and sought out some remote and desert spot or island in which he might pass the rest of his life in total solitude. Such retreats were called emphatically ‘Deserts.’ Of this desire, which with many became almost a passion, Adamnan gives us an instance in Cormac ua Leathan. Adamnan calls him ‘a truly pious man, who no less than three times went in search of a desert in the ocean, but did not find it;’ and he says Columba thus prophesied of him: ‘In his desire to find a desert, Cormac is this day, for a second time, now embarking from that district which lies on the other side of the river Moda, and is called Eirris Domno; nor even this time shall he find what he seeks, and that for no other fault than that he has irregularly allowed to accompany him on the voyage a monk who is going away from his own proper abbot without obtaining his consent.’[467] Again he tells us that Cormac made another attempt to discover a desert in the ocean, and Columba, who was then at the court of King Brude, says to the king in the presence of the ruler of the Orkneys, ‘Some of our brethren have lately set sail, and are anxious to discover a desert in the pathless sea. Should they happen, after many wanderings, to come to the Orkney islands, do thou instruct their chief, whose hostages are in thy hand, that no evil befall them within his dominions;’ and Adamnan tells us he did arrive in the Orkneys. On his third voyage, Cormac sailed for fourteen days and nights due north, before a south wind, without seeing land; and, when the wind changed to the north, he returned again to Iona,[468] without having in any of his three voyages succeeded in discovering such a ‘desert’ as he sought for. [Sidenote: Anchorites called _Deoraidh De_ or God’s pilgrims.]