of Britain, being separated from it by a sound of no great size; but was, by the donation of the Picts who inhabit these districts of Britain, given over to the Scottish monks from whose preaching they had received the faith of Christ.’[176] These accounts, though involving an apparent contradiction, are not in reality inconsistent with each other. Before the settlement of the Irish colonists in Dalriada, the districts forming it were occupied by a Pictish population. The Scots extended themselves by degrees, and some time prior to 560 their possessions had probably reached, at all events, the islands of Mull and of Iona. The Dalriads were already Christians. Whatever they won for themselves was also won for the Christian Church; and there is reason to think that there was an earlier Christian establishment on the island. Still, because it was situated on the frontiers of the Dalriads and the Picts, when the former were driven back by Brude, the king of the Picts, in 560, this part of the country must have been lost to them in actual possession. They would, however, claim it as their right, and hope to regain it. When Columba came on the avowed mission of endeavouring to convert these Picts, the Dalriadic king would naturally point to Iona as a suitable position for his mission, and convey to him such right in it as he possessed. On the other hand, Bede does not anywhere say that it was given to him by the Pictish monarch, but that it was a donation from the Picts who inhabited the districts of Britain from which the island was separated by a narrow strait. These would naturally form the first fruits of the saint’s mission, and their donation would be one, not of the Pictish nation at large, but of the tribe of the land, which we know was an essential preliminary to the foundation of these monastic establishments in Ireland. Accordingly the ancient tract called the _Amra Choluimchilli_ describes Columba as ‘a noble one who sought seven _tuaths_, and definite for indefinite in it, or five _tuaths_ of Erin and two _tuaths_ in Alban.’[177] [Sidenote: Founds a monastery in Iona.]