The actual construction of the lighthouse had no very remarkable points of difference with the works of Smeaton or Rennie. Stevenson built a rather novel structure on the rock as a temporary barrack for the workmen. It consisted of a wooden tower perched upon a triangular framework, under which was an open gallery, the floor of which was removed at the end of each season, so as to allow free space for the passage of the sea during the storms of winter, but on which, during summer, they kept the stock of coals, the tool-chest, the beef and beer casks, and other smaller material, which they could not, even at that season of the year, leave on the rock itself. Next came the kitchen and provision-store, a six-sided apartment about twelve feet in diameter, and somewhat more than seven feet high, in which small space—curtailed as it was by the seven beams which passed through it—stood a caboose, capable of cooking for forty men, and various cupboards and lockers lined with tin, for holding biscuits, meal and flour, &c. The next storey held two apartments: one for Mr. Stevenson, in which he had his hammock, desk, chair and table, books and instruments. The top storey was surmounted by a pyramidal roof, and was lined with four tiers of berths, capable of accommodating thirty people. The framework was erected on a part of the rock as far removed as possible from the proposed foundation of the lighthouse tower; but in a great gale which occurred on the 3rd of November it was entirely destroyed and swept from the rock, nothing remaining to point out its site but a few broken and twisted iron stanchions, and attached to one of them a piece of a beam, so shaken and rent by dashing against the rock as literally to resemble a bunch of laths. Thus did one night obliterate the traces of a season’s toil, and blast the hopes which the workmen fondly cherished of a stable dwelling on the rock, and of refuge from the miseries of sea-sickness, which the experience of the season had taught many of them to dread more than death itself. A more successful attempt was subsequently made, and the second erection braved the storm for several years after the works were finished. “Perched forty feet above the wave-beaten rock,” says Stevenson, “in this singular abode, the writer of this little volume(58) has spent many a weary day and night at those times when the sea prevented any one going down to the rock, anxiously looking for supplies from the shore, and earnestly longing for a change of weather favourable to the re-commencement of the works. For miles around nothing could be seen but white foaming breakers, and nothing heard but howling winds and lashing seas. At such seasons most of our time was spent in bed; for there alone we had effectual shelter from the winds and the spray, which searched every cranny in the walls of the barrack. Our slumbers, too, were at times fearfully interrupted by the sudden pouring of the sea over the roof, the