‘In those days the Saint, with twelve disciples, his fellow-soldiers, sailed across to Britain.’[168] Such is the short and simple statement of Columba’s earliest biographer. Adamnan gives us the additional information that it was ‘in the second year after the battle of Culdremhne, that is, in the year 563, and in the forty-second of his age, that Columba, resolving to seek a foreign country for the love of Christ, sailed from Scotia, or Ireland, to Britain.’[169] In the same year, which is again marked by Adamnan as being two years after the battle of Culdremhne, we find him living in Britain with King Conall, son of Comgall,[170] the successor of that Gabhran who had met his defeat and death in the battle with the powerful king of the Picts in 560. The territories occupied by the Scots of Dalriada had in consequence been much restricted, and for the time probably did not extend much beyond the peninsula of Kintyre, and perhaps Cowal, for while his predecessors are termed _Ri Alban_ by the old annalist Tighernac, Conall bears the title of _Ri Dalriada_ only. His chief seat appears at this time to have been at a place which the annalist calls Delgon, or Cindelgend, in Kintyre; and it seems to have been situated on the west coast of Knapdale.[171] The curious cave chapel at Cove, on Loch Caolisport, which tradition says was Columba’s first church in Scotland before he sailed to Iona, is probably connected with his residence with King Conall.[172] Columba seems to have followed the mode usual at the time of commencing a missionary work, by exhibiting the Christian life in its purity and self-denial, as well as by preaching the Word; and accordingly Bede tells us that he converted the Pictish nation ‘by example as well as by the Word.’[173] His first object therefore would be to obtain the grant of some island suitably situated for his purpose, where he could found one of those primitive Celtic monasteries in which alone it was at the time possible to lead the Christian life. The island selected for the purpose was that small island which is separated from the great island of Mull by a narrow channel, and which bore the name of _Ia_ or _Hii_, now called Iona.[174] It has been made a subject of controversy whether Columba received the donation of this island from Conall, the king of Dalriada, or from Brude, the king of the Picts; and a rather profitless discussion has followed upon it. The principal authorities are, on the one side, the old annalist Tighernac, and on the other, the Venerable Bede; but although the latter historian preceded the former by at least three hundred years, it is maintained that Tighernac was likely to be better informed. In recording the death of King Conall in 574, he adds that ‘it was he who immolated the island of Ia to Columcille.’[175] Bede’s account, however, is very circumstantial. He says, on his first mention of the island of Hii, ‘which island belongs indeed to the realm