Isle Maree, or Innis, or Inch, or Eilean Maree, is, as it were, the eye of Loch Maree. From either end of the loch it arrests the gaze of the spectator, and seems almost to look him in the face. Though one of the smallest of the islands, it is without doubt the most interesting. Not only does the story of the unfortunate prince and princess (Part I., chap, ii.) centre in it, but so also do the quaint superstitions connected with the wishing-tree, the little well resorted to for the cure of insanity, and the now discontinued sacrifices of bulls. Her most gracious Majesty Queen Victoria visited Isle Maree on the 16th September 1877. It was the Sabbath day, and Her Majesty graciously read a short sermon to her Gairloch gillies. She then fixed her offering in the wishing-tree, a pleasantry which most visitors to the island repeat, it being common report that a wish silently formed when any metal article is attached to the tree will certainly be realized. It is said that if any one removes an offering that has been fixed in the tree, some misfortune, probably the taking fire of the house of the desecrator, is sure to follow. The tree is now nearly dead. This modern fancy of the wishing-tree is very different from its original superstition, as will appear shortly. It seems certain that St Maelrubha, who brought Christianity into the district in the seventh century, permitted the Druidical sacrifices of bulls to be continued, and endeavoured to give them a Christian aspect. These sacrifices continued to as late a date as 1678. Latterly the sacrifices appear to have been connected with the resort to the island for the cure of insanity. Originally neither the legend of the prince and princess (Part I., chap. ii.), nor the sacrifices of bulls, had any connection with the cure of insanity. Later on versions of the traditional legend were promulgated, in which either the prince or the princess were made out to have become lunatic, evidently with the idea of connecting the story in some way, however remote, with the cure of insanity. The sacrifice of a bull became in the seventeenth century a preliminary to the proceedings for the cure of a lunatic, although in older days such a sacrifice had been entirely independent of anything of the sort. Probably the resort to the island for the miraculous cure of insanity, although, as has been remarked, unconnected with the legend or the sacrifices, dates back to the time of St Maelrubha. The practice was for the party to row several times round the island, the attendants jerking the lunatic thrice into the water; then they landed on the island, where the patient knelt before the altar, was brought to the little well, drank some of the holy water, and finally attached an offering to the tree. This process was repeated every day for some weeks. In modern times there is no altar, and the lunatic is brought only on one occasion to the island.