he site of
the tower was chosen. Perhaps it is by inheritance of blood, but I know
few things more inspiriting than this location of a lighthouse in a
designated space of heather and air, through which the sea-birds are
still flying. By 9 p.m. the return journey had brought them again to the
shores of the Kyle. The night was dirty, and as the sea was high and the
ferry-boat small, Soutar and Mr. Stevenson were left on the far side,
while the rest of the party embarked and were received into the
darkness. They made, in fact, a safe though an alarming passage; but the
ferryman refused to repeat the adventure; and my grandfather and the
captain long paced the beach, impatient for their turn to pass, and
tormented with rising anxiety as to the fate of their companions. At
length they sought the shelter of a shepherd's house. "We had miserable
up-putting," the diary continues, "and on both sides of the ferry much
anxiety of mind. Our beds were clean straw, and but for the circumstance
of the boat, I should have slept as soundly as ever I did after a walk
through moss and mire of sixteen hours."

To go round the lights, even to-day, is to visit past centuries. The
tide of tourists that flows yearly in Scotland, vulgarising all where it
approaches, is still defined by certain barriers. It will be long ere
there is a hotel at Sumburgh or a hydropathic at Cape Wrath; it will be
long ere any _char-a-banc_, laden with tourists, shall drive up to Barra
Head or Monach, the Island of the Monks. They are farther from London
than St. Petersburg, and except for the towers, sounding and shining all
night with fog-bells and the radiance of the light-room, glittering by
day with the trivial brightness of white paint, these island and
moorland stations seem inaccessible to the civilisation of to-day, and
even to the end of my grandfather's career the isolation was far
greater. There ran no post at all in the Long Island; from the
lighthouse on Barra Head a boat must be sent for letters as far as
Tobermory, between sixty and seventy miles of open sea; and the posts of
Shetland, which had surprised Sir Walter Scott in 1814, were still
unimproved in 1833, when my grandfather reported on the subject. The
group contained at the time a population of 30,000 souls, and enjoyed a
trade which had increased in twenty years sevenfold, to between three
and four thousand tons. Yet the mails were despatched and received by
chance coasting vessels at the r