nch. If you speak to
a ship-captain, you are certain to get the utmost civility and
politeness. It is true that most of them have several sets of
vocabularies: to passengers they are urbane and choice of speech; but
they have, within easy reach, another set of phrases, which they find of
service in addressing delinquent mariners.

A student of Virgil in making the trip I have alluded to above, would
run the risk of recalling the passage in which the poet suggests that
the big island of Sicily was at one time connected with the mainland,
but that some huge convulsion of nature disjoined the twain and allowed
the Mediterranean to come roaring in a channel between. The scenery of
Western Scotland stirs the imagination to suppose that some similar
catastrophe permitted the sea to mangle the fair uniformity of a
prehistoric coast, submerge the low-lying lands, and leave a great
number of islands lying in lonely fashion out in the watery waste.
Heavy weather, truly, it must have been ere Coll, Tiree, Rum, and Eigg
were sundered from the mainland by the Atlantic flow.

All the islands I mention (save Tiree) can be seen from the deck of the
_Gael_ during the earlier part of the daily passage of that boat from
Oban in the summer season. Tiree is off the main tourist track, but a
few antiquarians are now finding it worth their while to go and dig
there for relics of byegone civilisation. A friend of mine, a zealous
and erudite F.S.A., has spent many a pleasant holiday in Tiree, and has
come back with loaded trunks of valuable prehistoric remains. Certain
artists go out to the island regularly in order to transfer to canvas
some of Nature's most impressive aspects of cloud, wave, and crag. Nor
let me forget the doughty members of the _Faith Mission_, who evangelise
this and others of the outer isles, and sing such sweet melodies to the
natives as would melt any "Wee Free" heart, let alone an ordinary heart
of stone. Tiree has long been famous for its schools and for its
intelligent inhabitants; as a consequence, the libraries have been
enthusiastically welcomed in its townships, and are regarded by the
teachers there as a new and valuable adjunct of education. I have often
heard it said that Tiree produces more ministers than any other
district, of like population, in the Celtic part of Scotland. The Duke
of Argyll does not allow any licensed house on the island, but he has
not as yet suppressed the _Fingal_ and the parcels post.