l light as well as the
eastern. On the Skerryvore Rock is a lighthouse erected by Alan
Stevenson, raised amid much difficulty, but which was as urgently
needed as any around the coast. The Skerryvore Rock, although not
altogether submerged, stretches over a distance so considerable that
wrecks upon it were as common as they were awful. In the year 1814,
the Commissioners of Northern Lights visited the reef, accompanied by
Sir Walter Scott, who declared that it was not equalled for loneliness
and desolation, even by the Eddystone or Bell Rock. It was resolved to
build a lighthouse, but the resolution was not carried into effect
until 1834.

Mr. Alan Stevenson, to whom the honourable but difficult work was
entrusted, began by building places to shelter the men; but these
buildings were swept away by a storm in the winter of the same year.
In the following early summer, the undaunted workers began again, and
completed an erection of three storeys by September. It was forty feet
above the rock; and here Mr. Stevenson and his men waited for the
weather, or rested from their labours. The whole of the working season
of 1849 was spent in excavating the foundation, to do which required
two hundred and ninety-six charges of gunpowder. Mr. Stevenson has
written an account of the Skerryvore Lighthouse, and he says that,
during the first month which he and his men spent in their curious
home, they suffered considerably from inundations. Once, for a
fortnight, they were unable to hold communication with the mainland,
and they saw "nothing but white plains of foam as far as the eye could
reach." One night he was aroused by the breaking of a tremendous wave
over the barrack, and all the men on the floor below uttered a terrible
cry, and sprang from their beds. They believed that they were in the
sea; and their thankfulness at finding it was not so, may be better
imagined than described.

The foundation-stone of the Skerryvore Lighthouse was laid by the Duke
of Argyle. The men who worked at it had need to be enthusiastic, for
they rose at half-past three in the morning, and frequently continued
toiling for thirteen or fourteen hours a day. This so wearied them,
that they did not know how to keep awake; and Mr. Stevenson says they
frequently went off in a profound slumber while standing or eating
their meals. This solid building was finished in 1844, and its light
is visible at the distance of eighteen miles.

There is a