The Hebrides are but the shattered relics of an old land that had its mountain-peaks and its glens, its streams and lakes, and may have nursed in its solitude the red-deer and the eagle, but was never trodden by the foot of man. A glance at the map is enough to convince us of this. We there see islands, and peninsulas, and promontories, and deep bays, and long-retiring inlets, as though the country had been submerged and only its higher points remained above water. The conviction is impressed more strongly upon us by a visit to these shores. We sail through the windings of one of the "sounds," and can scarcely believe that we are on the bosom of the salt sea. Hills rise on all sides, and the water, smooth as a polished mirror, shows so pure and limpid that in the sunshine we can see the white pebbles that strew its bed many fathoms down. The eastern shore is often abruptly interrupted by long-receding lochs edged round with lofty mountains, and thus, where we had looked to see a deep heathy glen, with, perchance, a white tree-shaded mansion in the far distance, and a few dun smoking cottages in front, we are surprised to catch a glimpse of the white sails of a yacht, or the darker canvas of the herring-boats. We sail on, and soon a sudden turn brings us abruptly to the mouth of the sound. A bold headland, studded around with rocky islets, rises perpendicularly from the sea, bleak and bare, without a bush or tree, or the faintest trace of the proximity of man. The broad swell of the Atlantic comes rolling in among these rocks, and breaks in foam against the grey cliffs overhead. In tempests, such a scene must be of the most terrific kind. Wo to the hapless vessel that is sucked into the vortex of these breakers, whose roar is sometimes heard at the distance of miles! Even in the calmest weather the white surf comes surging in, and a low sullen boom is ever reverberating along the shore. We see the harder rocks protruding far into the sea, and often pierced with long twilight caves, while the softer ones are worn into deep clefts, or hollowed out into open bays strewed over with shingle. The sunken rocks and islets, scarcely showing their tops above water, were all evidently at one time connected, for, as we recede from the shore, we can mark how the process of demolition goes on. There is first the projecting ness or promontory, well-nigh severed from the mainland, but still connected by a rude arch, through which the swell ever gurgles to and fro. Then, a little farther from the shore, a huge isolated crag, washed on all sides by the surge, raises its grey lichen-clothed summit. A short way beyond, there is the well-worn islet whose surface shelters neither lichen nor sea-weed, but is ever wet with the dash of the waves. Further to the sea, the white gleam of the breakers marks the site of the sunken rock. Thus, in the space of a hundred yards, we may sometimes behold the progress of change from land to sea, and see