sideways, it
assumes, as described by M'Culloch, the form of a perpendicular but
ruinous rampart, much gapped above, that runs for about a mile and a
quarter along the top of a lofty sloping talus. Viewed endways, it
resembles a tall massy tower,--such a tower as my friend, Mr. D.O. Hill,
would delight to draw, and give delight by drawing,--a tower three
hundred feet in breadth by four hundred and seventy feet in height,
perched on the apex of a pyramid, like a statue on a pedestal. This
strange causeway is columnar from end to end; but the columns, from
their great altitude and deficient breadth, seem mere rodded shafts in
the Gothic style; they rather resemble bundles of rods than
well-proportioned pillars. Few of them exceed eighteen inches in
diameter, and many of them fall short of half a foot; but, though lost
in the general mass of the Scuir as independent columns, when we view it
at an angle sufficiently large to take in its entire bulk, they yet
impart to it that graceful linear effect which we see brought out in
tasteful pencil sketches and good line engravings. We approached it this
day from the shore in the direction in which the eminence it stands upon
assumes the pyramidal form, and itself the tower-like outline. The
acclivity is barren and stony,--a true desert foreground, like those of
Thebes and Palmyra; and the huge square shadow of the tower stretched
dark and cold athwart it. The sun shone out clearly. One half the
immense bulk before us, with its delicate vertical lining, lay from top
to bottom in deep shade, massive and gray; one half presented its
many-sided columns to the light, here and there gleaming with tints of
extreme brightness, where the pitchstones presented their glassy planes
to the sun; its general outline, whether pencilled by the lighter or
darker tints, stood out sharp and clear; and a stratum of white fleecy
clouds floated slowly amid the delicious blue behind it. But the minuter
details I must reserve for my next chapter. One fact, however,
anticipated just a little out of its order, may heighten the interest of
the reader. There are massive buildings,--bridges of noble span, and
harbors that abut far into the waves,--founded on wooden piles; and this
hugest of hill-forts we find founded on wooden piles also. It is built
on what a Scotch architect would perhaps term a pile-_brander_ of the
_Pinites Eiggensis_, an ancient tree of the Oolite. The gigantic Scuir
of Eigg rests on the