Among the Western Isles two of small size have attained a distinguished celebrity--Staffa and Iona. Three times a week in the summer season, a large and miscellaneous crowd is disembarked upon each of them from Macbrayne’s steamboat, which, starting from Oban in the morning, makes the round of Mull, and returns in the evening. If any one desires that the spell of these two islets should fall fully upon him, let him avoid that way of seeing them. They should each be visited in quietude, and with ample time to enjoy them. There is a ferry from the Mull shore to Iona, and in the Sound a stout boat or smack may usually be obtained for the voyage to Staffa. [Sidenote: IONA] I once spent a delightful week in Iona, where a comfortable inn serves as excellent headquarters for the stay. There was a copy there of Reeve’s edition of Adamnan’s _Life of Saint Columba_. Reading the volume where it was written, and amidst the very localities which it describes, and where the saint lived and died, one gets so thoroughly into the spirit of the place, the present seems to fade so far away, and the past to shine out again so clearly, that as one traces the faint lines of the old monastic enclosure, the mill-stream and the tracks which the monks must have followed in their errands over the island, one would hardly be surprised to meet the famous white horse and even the gentle Columba himself. But, apart from its overpowering historic interest, Iona has the charm of most exquisite beauty and variety in its topography. Its western coast, rugged and irregular, has been cut into bays, clefts, and headlands by the full surge of the open Atlantic. Its eastern side is flanked by the broad, smooth, calm Sound, which, where it catches the reflection of a cloudless sky, rivals the Mediterranean in the depth of its blue; while towards the north, where the water shallows over acres of white shell-sand, it glistens with the green of an emerald. Then, as if to form a fitting background to this blaze of colour, the granite of the opposite shores of Mull glows with a warm pink hue as if it were ever catching the reflection of a gorgeous sunset. For wealth and variety of tints, I know of no spot of the same size to equal this isle of the saints. [Sidenote: STAFFA]