he effects
of precipitate reformation. The floor is covered with ancient
grave-stones, of which the inscriptions are not now legible; and without,
some of the chief families still continue the right of sepulture. The
altar is not yet quite demolished; beside it, on the right side, is a
bass-relief of the virgin with her child, and an angel hovering over her.
On the other side still stands a hand-bell, which, though it has no
clapper, neither presbyterian bigotry, nor barbarian wantonness, has yet
taken away. The chapel is thirty-eight feet long, and eighteen broad.
Boswell, who is very pious, went into it at night, to perform his
devotions, but came back, in haste, for fear of spectres. Near the
chapel is a fountain, to which the water, remarkably pure, is conveyed
from a distant hill, through pipes laid by the Romish clergy, which
still perform the office of conveyance, though they have never been
repaired, since popery was suppressed.

We soon after went in to dinner, and wanted neither the comforts nor the
elegancies of life. There were several dishes, and variety of liquors.
The servants live in another cottage; in which, I suppose, the meat is
dressed.

Towards evening, sir Allan told us, that Sunday never passed over him,
like another day. One of the ladies read, and read very well, the
evening service;--and paradise was opened in the wild.

Next day, 18th, we went and wandered among the rocks on the shore, while
the boat was busy in catching oysters, of which there is a great bed.
Oysters lie upon the sand, one, I think, sticking to another, and
cockles are found a few inches under the sand.

We then went in the boat to Sondiland, a little island very near. We
found it a wild rock, of about ten acres; part naked, part covered with
sand, out of which we picked shells; and part clothed with a thin layer
of mould, on the grass of which a few sheep are sometimes fed. We then
came back and dined. I passed part of the afternoon in reading, and in
the evening one of the ladies played on her harpsichord, and Boswell and
Col danced a reel with the other.

On the 19th, we persuaded sir Allan to lanch his boat again, and go with
us to Icolmkill, where the first great preacher of Christianity to the
Scots built a church, and settled a monastery. In our way we stopped to
examine a very uncommon cave on the coast of Mull. We had some
difficulty to make our way over the vast masses of broken rocks that lie
before the entr