as the endless variety of the dancing waves to
illuminate its dark pillars with a never-ending flash of gems, as the
waters dash against its walls in storms, or lap lovingly round them in
the summer sunlight.

Fingal's Cave is one of many fringing the cliffs of the little island of
Staffa, off the coast of Mull, in Scotland. These caves are all formed
of what learned people call basalt, which means rocks moulded by the
action of fire. Basalt contains a good deal of an opaque glassy
substance, and its colour may be pale blue, dark blue, grey, brown, or
black. This rock has a special faculty for building columns with
(usually) six sides, but the form varies as much as the colour. These
pillars are divided at fairly equal distances into lengths, just as
stone pillars in a cathedral are generally built, and, wonderful to say,
the joints, when closely examined, are found to be of the cup-and-ball
pattern, on which our own bones are put into their sockets.

Basalt is usually hard and tough, and it is supposed, though with no
certainty, that the regularity of the columns is the result of the
contraction of the rock in cooling after undergoing great heat.

The name Staffa is a Scandinavian word meaning 'Pillar Island,' and no
doubt its wonders have been known from very remote times. It is quite
near the island of Iona, one of the earliest settlements of the
Christian missionaries from Ireland.

[Illustration: Fingal's Cave Staffa.]

A little distance from the shore is the tiny island of Bouchallie, or
the Herdsman, which is entirely composed of basaltic rocks of great
beauty; and from this islet a colonnade of pillars leads to the entrance
of Fingal's Cave. The mouth of the cave is forty-two feet wide, the roof
is fifty-six feet above, and the length of the cavern is two hundred and
twenty-seven feet.

All down the sides pillars line the walls, and from above hang the ends
of pendant columns. Below is the clear blue water, where even at low
tide there is a depth of eighteen feet.

Sir Walter Scott was so impressed with this marvel of Nature, that he
wrote:

'Where, as to shame the temples decked
By skill of earthly architect,
Nature herself it seemed would raise
A Minster to her Maker's praise.'

Certainly no service that human tongues could utter could surpass in
impressiveness the strains raised to the glory of the Creator by the
waves as they enter this temple of His own building, and toss al