If Iona seems to be profaned by a crowd of gaping tourists (I always crossed to the west side of the island on steamboat days), Staffa, on other grounds, no less requires solitude and leisure. The famous cave is undoubtedly the most striking, but there are other caverns well worthy of examination. The whole coast of the island indeed is full of interest, from the point of view both of scenery and of geology. It combines on a small scale the general type of the cliffs of Mull and Skye, with this advantage that, as the rocks shelve down into deep water, they can be approached quite closely. My first visit was made in a smack, which I found anchored at Bunessan, in Mull, and from which I got a boat and a couple of men, who pulled me slowly round the whole of the shore, stopping at every point which interested either myself or my crew. My eyes were intent on the forms and structure of the cliffs; theirs were directed to the ledges where they saw any young cormorants crowded. They scrambled up the slippery faces of rock, and seizing the birds, which were not yet able to fly, pitched them into the bottom of the boat. These captures, however, were not made without some loss of blood to the huntsmen, for the birds, though they had not gained the use of their wings, knew how to wield their beaks with good effect. I was told that young cormorants make excellent hare-soup, and for this use the men took them. A less legitimate cause of stoppage was found in the desire to pull up the lobster creels, of which we saw the corks floating on the surface of the water. Several pots were examined, and I am sorry to say that, in spite of a mild protest on my part against this act of piracy on the open sea, some of the best of their contents were abstracted. The boatmen could not understand why I should decline to share in the spoil. Two or three years ago I landed on Staffa with the captain and officers and a few of the crew of the Admiralty surveying vessel, ‘Research.’ Some forty years had intervened between the two landings. I found the place to be no longer in its primitive state of wild nature. Ropes and railings and steps had been placed for the comfort and convenience of the summer crowd--a laudable object, no doubt, but I prefer to remember these cliffs when they showed no trace of the presence of the nineteenth century tourist. From the west side of Skye the chain of the Outer Hebrides can be seen in one long line of blue hills rising out of the sea at a distance of some five and twenty miles. The outlines of these hills had long been familiar to me before I had an opportunity of actually visiting them. In later years, thanks to the hospitality of my friend Mr. Henry Evans, of Ascog, I have made many delightful cruises among them in his steam yacht ‘Aster,’ of 250 tons, and have been enabled to sail Round the moist marge of each cold Hebrid isle. [Sidenote: STANDING STONES OF CALLERNISH]