It was in 563 that St. Columba crossed over from Ireland to north Britain, with the wonted twelve companions. He established himself in the island of Hii, the Iouan island, now called Iona. In 565 he went to the mainland, crossed the central ridge of mountains, and made his way to the residence of the king of the northern Picts, near "the long lake of the river Ness," not far from Inverness. Here he found much the same kind of paganism as Patrick had found in Ireland. The king's priests and wise men, here as in Ireland, went by the name of Druids, _Magi_ in Latin, and professed to have influence with the powers of nature. Here he worked for some nine or ten years with great success, beginning with the defeat of the Druids in their attempt to prevent his coming, followed soon after by the baptism of the king, who appears to have been a monarch of great power and wide rule. Then Columba devoted himself to his island monastery; and it grew under his hands and those of his immediate successors, till its fame reached all lands. Columba died in 597, the very year in which Ethelbert was converted to Christianity. Thirty-seven years after Columba's death, his successors did that for the Northumbrian Angles which the successors of Augustine had failed to do. We shall make a very great mistake if we ridicule or under-rate the power of the pagan priests, to whom these stories make reference. Classical mythology treats the gods of Greece and Rome as intensely important beings: and their priests were dominant. We must assign a like position to the gods and the priests of our pagan predecessors. When Apollo was consulted in Diocletian's presence, an answer was given in a hollow voice, not by the priest, but by Apollo himself, that the oracles were restrained from answering truly; and the priests said this pointed to the Christians. And when the entrails of victims were examined in augury on another of Diocletian's expeditions, and found not to present the wonted marks, the chief soothsayer declared that the presence of Christians caused the failure. Just such scenes were enacted, with at least as much of tragic earnestness, when Patrick worsted the Druid Lochra in the hall of Tara, or when Columba baffled the devices of Broichan, the arch-Druid of Brude, the Pictish king.