features.
Between us and the sea lies Eilean Chaisteil, a rocky trap islet, about
half a mile in length by a few hundred yards in breadth; poor in
pastures, but peculiarly rich in sea-weed, of which John Stewart used,
he informed me, to make finer kelp, ere the trade was put down by act of
Parliament, than could be made elsewhere in Eigg. This islet bore, in
the remote past, its rude fort or dun, long since sunk into a few grassy
mounds; and hence its name. On the landward side rises the island of
Eigg proper, resembling in outline two wedges, placed point to point on
a board. The centre is occupied by a deep angular gap, from which the
ground slopes upward on both sides, till, attaining its extreme height
at the opposite ends of the island, it drops suddenly on the sea. In the
northern rising ground the wedge-like outline is complete; in the
southern one it is somewhat modified by the gigantic Scuir, which rises
direct on the apex of the height, _i.e._, the thick part of the wedge;
and which, seen bows-on from this point of view, resembles some vast
donjon keep, taller, from base to summit, by about a hundred feet, than
the dome of St. Paul's. The upper slopes of the island are brown and
moory, and present little on which the eye may rest, save a few trap
terraces, with rudely columnar fronts; its middle space is mottled with
patches of green, and studded with dingy cottages, each of which this
morning, just a little before the breakfast hour, had its own blue
cloudlet of smoke diffused around it; while along the beach, patches of
level sand, alternated with tracts of green bank, or both, give place to
stately ranges of basaltic columns, or dingy groups of detached rocks.
Immediately in front of the central hollow, as if skilfully introduced,
to relieve the tamest part of the prospect, a noble wall of
semi-circular columns rises some eighty or a hundred feet over the
shore; and on a green slope, directly above, we see the picturesque
ruins of the Chapel of St. Donan, one of the disciples of Columba, and
the Culdee saint and apostle of the island.

One of the things that first struck me, as I got on deck this morning,
was the extreme whiteness of the sand. I could see it gleaming bright
through the transparent green of the sea, three fathoms below our keel,
and, in a little flat bay directly opposite, it presented almost the
appearance of pulverized chalk. A stronger contrast to the dingy
trap-rocks around which it lie