again and walked barefoot as soon as
they had left the town behind--and ancient mariners, with a very
fish-like smell. On Sunday the churches were full, and at the Free
Church, where the service was in Gaelic, the crowd was great. In a
smaller church I heard a cousin of Norman Macleod--a fine, burly
man--preach a powerful sermon, which seemed to me made up partly of two
sermons--one by the late T. T. Lynch, and the other by the late Alfred
Morris. I strayed also into a U. P. church, but there, alas! the
audience was small. In Stornoway, as elsewhere, the couplet is true--

"The free kirk, the poor kirk, the kirk without the steeple,
The auld kirk, the rich kirk, the kirk without the people."

On the Monday morning we turned our faces homeward, and as the weather
was fine, we passed outside Skye, and saw Dunvegan Bay, of which
Alexander Smith writes so much; passing rocky islands, all more or less
known to song, and caves with dark legends of blood, and cruelty, and
crime. One night was spent in Bunessan Bay, where some noble sportsmen
were very needlessly, but, _con amore_, butchering the few peaceful seals
to be found in those parts; and a short while we lay off Staffa, which
rises straight out of the water like an old cathedral, where the winds
and waves ever play a solemn dirge. In its way, I know nothing more
sublime than Staffa, with its grey arch and black columns and rushing
waves. No picture or photograph I have seen ever can give any adequate
idea of it. "Altogether," writes Miss Gordon Cumming, "it is a scene of
which no words can convey the smallest idea;" and for once I agree with
the lady. It is seldom the reality surpasses your expectations. As
regards myself, in the case of Staffa I must admit it did.

The same morning we land at Columba, or the Holy Isle. The story of St.
Columba's visit to Iona is laid somewhere in the year A.D. 563. He, it
seems, according to some authorities, was an Irishman, and from Iona he
and his companions made the tour of Pagan Scotland; and hence now
Scotland is true blue Presbyterian and always Protestant. Here, as at
Staffa, we miss the tourists, who scamper and chatter for an hour at each
place, and then are off; and I was glad. As Byron writes:--

"I love not man the less, but nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be or have been before,
To mingle with the universe, and feel
Wh