n the tideway,
about fifty yards from the rocks. We were now at home,--the only home
which the proprietor of the island permits to the islanders' minister;
and, after getting warm and comfortable over the stove and a cup of tea,
we did what all sensible men do in their own homes when the night wears
late,--got into bed.

CHAPTER II.

The Minister's Larder--No Harbor--Eigg Shoes--_Tormentilla
erecta_--For the _Witness'_ Sake--Eilean Chaisteil--Appearance of
Eigg--Chapel of St. Donan--Shell-sand--Origin of Secondary
Calcareous Rock suggested--Exploration of Eigg--Pitchstone Veins--A
Bone Cave--Massacre at Eigg--Grouping of Human Bones in the
Cave--Relics--The Horse's Tooth--A Copper Sewing Needle--Teeth
found--Man a worse Animal than his Teeth show him to have been
designed for--Story of the Massacre--Another Version--Scuir of
Eigg--The Scuir a Giant's Causeway--Character of the
Columns--Remains of a Prostrate Forest.

We had rich tea this morning. The minister was among his people; and our
first evidence of the fact came in the agreeable form of three bottles
of fine fresh cream from the shore. Then followed an ample baking of
nice oaten cakes. The material out of which the cakes were manufactured
had been sent from the minister's store aboard,--for oatmeal in Eigg is
rather a scarce commodity in the middle of July; but they had borrowed a
crispness and flavor from the island, that the meal, left to its own
resources, could scarcely have communicated; and the golden-colored
cylinder of fresh butter which accompanied them was all the island's
own. There was an ample supply of eggs too, as one not quite a conjuror
might have expected from a country bearing such a name,--eggs with the
milk in them; and, with cream, butter, oaten cakes, eggs, and tea, all
of the best, and with sharp-set sea-air appetites to boot, we fared
sumptuously. There is properly no harbor in the island. We lay in a
narrow channel, through which, twice every twenty-four hours, the tides
sweep powerfully in one direction, and then as powerfully in the
direction opposite; and our anchors had a trick of getting foul, and
canting stock downwards in the loose sand, which, with pointed rocks all
around us, over which the current ran races, seemed a very shrewd sort
of trick indeed. But a kedge and halser, stretched thwartwise to a
neighboring crag, and jammed fast in a crevice, served in moderate