One of the most curious sea-inlets in the Outer Hebrides is the passage known as the Sound of Harris--a tortuous channel between the Long Island and North Uist, strewn with islets and rocks, and giving a passage to powerful tides. The navigation of this Sound is extremely intricate, and needs good weather and daylight. On one of my cruises to St. Kilda the open sea had been rather rough, but once inside the archipelago, the water became rapidly smooth, showing only the swirl and foam of the tidal currents that sweep to and fro between the Minch and the Atlantic. At the eastern end of the Sound stands the nearly perfect ancient church of Rodil--an interesting relic of the ecclesiastical architecture which followed that of the Celtic church. [Sidenote: WEST HIGHLAND CASTLES] As one moves about among the Western Highlands and Isles, now so peaceful, and in many places so sparsely peopled, it is difficult to realise the conditions of life there two or three centuries ago, when the population was not only more numerous, but was subdivided into clans, often at feud with each other. Of these unhappy times many strikingly picturesque memorials remain in the castles perched on crags and knolls all along the shores. Most of these buildings were obviously meant mainly for defence, but some suggest that the chiefs who erected them sought convenient places from which to attack their neighbours, or to sally forth against passing vessels. Each of them, strongly constructed of local stone, and of lime which must often have been brought from a distance, might have seemed designed to be A forted residence ’gainst the tooth of time And razure of oblivion. But almost without exception they are now in ruins. The tourist who would try to picture to himself what these fortalices meant, should sail through the Sound of Mull and note the succession of them on either side, from Duart at the one end to Mingarry at the other. Dunvegan, in Skye, the ancient stronghold of the Macleods, which still remains in good preservation and inhabited, affords an idea of the aspect of the more important of these strengths in old times. But many of them were little more than square keeps, strong enough, however, to withstand sudden assault, and even to endure a siege, as long as provisions held out.