Staffa rose momently in its majesty before us! After all the descriptions which we had read, and the views we had seen of this singular little island, we were struck with delighted astonishment at its aspect. It is, in fact, one great mass of basaltic columns, bearing on their heads another huge mass of black stone, here and there covered with green turf. We sailed past the different caves--the Boat Cave and the Cormorant Cave, which are themselves very wonderful; but it was Fingal's Cave that struck us with admiration and awe. To see this magnificent cavern, with its clustered columns on each side, and pointed arch, with the bleak precipices above it, and the sea raging at its base, and dashing and roaring into its gloomy interior, was worth all the voyage. There are no words that can express the sensation it creates. We were taken in the boats on shore at the northeast point, and landed amid a wilderness of basaltic columns thrown into almost all forms and directions. Some were broken, and lay in heaps in the clear green water. Others were piled up erect and abrupt; some were twisted up into tortuous pyramids at a little distance from the shore itself, and through the passage which they left, the sea came rushing--all foam, and with the most tremendous roar. Others were bent like so many leaden pipes, and turned their broken extremities toward us. We advanced along a sort of giant's causeway, the pavement of which was the heads of basaltic columns, all fitting together in the most beautiful symmetry; and, turning round the precipice to our right hand, found ourselves at the entrance of the great cave. The sea was too stormy to allow us to enter it, as is often done in boats, we had therefore to clamber along one of its sides, where a row of columns is broken off, at some distance above the waves, and presents an accessible, but certainly very formidable causeway, by which you may reach the far end. I do not believe that any stranger, if he were there alone, would dare to pass along that irregular and slippery causeway, and penetrate to the obscure end of the cave; but numbers animate one another to anything. We clambered along this causeway or corridor, now ascending and now descending, as the broken columns required, and soon stood--upward of seventy of us--ranged along its side from one end to the other. Let it be remembered that this splendid sea cave is forty-two feet wide at the entrance; sixty-six feet high from low water; and runs into the rock two hundred and twenty-seven feet. Let it be imagined that at eight or ten feet below us it was paved with the sea, which came rushing and foaming along it, and dashing up against the solid rock at its termination; while the light thrown from the flickering billows quivered in its arched roof above us, and the whole place was filled with the solemn sound of the ocean; and if any one can imagine to himself any situation more sublime, I should like to know what that is.