islet to Alsnacraig, it is one bold, desolate range of cliff of lias, spotted with belemnite; and the inland ways are equally wild. In the eye of Boswell, "the road hence to Loch Buy is the most terrific spot of the Highlands." But Samuel Johnson and James Boswell were senseless to natural beauty; they came to see and be seen, not to admire; so the sentence is a high compliment to Mull. We believe there is not even a hut until we reach Moy House, and the ruin of Loch Buy; but it is a splendid range of deep perpendicular cliffs, and velvet platforms, and ribbon falls, streaming in watery weather down every cliff gully. It is worth a special visit, when

"louder sings the western blast

On rocks of Inimore."

It will be a scene of utter desolation.

Even now the

very sea birds seemed to wheel away as if it were “a place accurst," like that lake of asphaltum fatal to every wing that flutters over its waters. We listen-there is no sound but the wailing of the wind and the plash of the billows on rock and shore. And there is a tissue of wild romance, too, around this Inimore, or Enimore, very sacred and very profane. Yonder is the Nuns'

Cave, a refuge of the Holy Sisterhood in days of persecution, when they were expelled from Iona. As memorials we find rude crosses carved on the rock.

There, beneath the cliffs of Inimore, are those eccentric Carsaig arches, among the quaintest rocks in all the Hebrides, and none to look on them. And the profane legend; but we will sketch the moving picture, one as

dark as ever haunted the pages even of Highland history.

There, on the wild rock, with deep and ominous scowl, stands the grim Mac Lean of Loch-Buy, his fierce orbs glaring over a prostrate slave, who had just been writhing under the infliction of the bloody lash. One instant the feudal tyrant turns his back on his victim, when the half-dying gillean leaps on his feet with almost superhuman spring, and tears away the fair and blooming child that was folded within the arms of Mac Lean-his only boy-the heir of all his wealth, and his castle, and his honours. With the child on his shoulder he clears yon deep and dark fissure over the Carsaig Arches-the lightning's flash that gleamed across the zenith was not more instantaneous than that wondrous leap-and the Gillean in a second stands, holding the boy aloft, on the highest pinnacle of the cliffs of Inimore, pointing his lank fingers to the angry flood that runs boiling at their feet. In vain the trembling chieftain implores and threatens in a breath the costliest guerdon, the extremest torture; the savage, glaring wildly, howls forth his conditions. There is but one sacrifice that can restore the boy to the bosom of his father. The proud lord must bare his back to his meanest vassal, to be scored with the lash still reeking with the base blood of the gillean. The thought, even, is a deeper pang than death—but the boy is worshipped by the clan and the idol of his sire. On one moment hangs his life, aye, and the proud succession of the race. So the lash is dripping with base and feudal blood, and as along the furrow of the last cut gushes the purple blood of the thane, and the

quivering flesh is hanging in livid flakes, the gillean raises the child aloft in his arms, his white bosom stained by the streaming blood of the vassal, and with one dark scowl of vindictive triumph on the agonizing chieftain, and a yell as terrific as that of a frenzied afrit, leaps with the child five fathoms deep into the bosom of the Atlantic.

Looking oceanward from the rocks over the broad water rise the spectral Paps of Jura, that seem to grow at once out of the waves, for the northern flats are lost in the horizon. They are too distant for shadows, and so blue and filmy that they gleam like the cloud cones of another sphere. Colonsay and Oransay are dimly seen, and we look into the very jaws of Corrievrechan. Loch Buy (Buidhe, yellow) opens, and Moy House is like a white stud in its bay; beyond is Loch Spelvie; the green brow of Lismore is faint in the setting beam, and the reflected lights of Oban are sparkling their welcome in fine and perfect contrast to the shadowed cliffs of Mull.

"Each gives each a double charm,
Like pearls upon an Æthiop's armı.'

Another day-still northward, and the Sound of Mull is in our wake, and the swell of the Atlantic is now bursting on the bold point of Ardnamurchan, the cliffs of which the ocean has worn and chiselled into the deepest perpendicular fissures, yawning like the portals of a gnome's palace. The giant hills of Moidart, now towering over Loch a Nuagh, so completely identified with the fortunes of Charles Edward. Alas! poor wanderer! Here he

landed to fight and win, and having fought and-lost, here he re-embarked for France a hapless exile.

Then opens Loch Moydart, the debouche of Loch Sheil, divided merely by Glenfinnan from Loch Eil. Were this isthmus divided by flood, or the wearing down of the two lake burnies, the peninsula would be an islet, the more southern shores being Loch Linhe and the Sound of Mull. Such, indeed, is almost the whole western coast of Scotland, a group of islets in prospective. And no scenery in Scotland surpasses the connecting glens of these lochs-those especially from Loch Nevish, Loch Hourn, and Loch Duich. The blocks and the passes are very splendid, and a rich field of geology lies unexplored for the laborious student.

A piper comes on board, and the pibroch is quite in keeping with the scene.

There are now four islets on our bow, constituting one parish, three of them of extreme wildness. Το them there is no direct or certain conveyance. engage a special boat off Arisaig.

MUCK-MUIC-MUICHE, THE DAWN,

displays little of the picturesque or legendary.

EIG-EIGH, MOON (IRISH-EIG, NOTCH),

assumes a more eccentric character.

We may

But we are afloat, and it is, we learn, a sort of rule for sailors to call it Ban Mhor; and we believe there is an anathema on disobeying. The islet is three miles long, and yon tall broken column, the scuir of Eig, rises up in spectral majesty like the fluted pillar of

a Titan's temple. It is an unearthly object even in the sunlight, but a cloud is almost enveloping or overshadowing it. It is the pinnacle of a scuir, or bridge, one and a-half mile long, of pitch-stone porphyry, from which it rises 500 feet: its apex is, however, 1340 feet from the sea level. There were beneath this Ossianic pillar two stone cairns: one, that of St. Martin, the other of St. Mary; the first eighty-seven yards deep and seven broad and high. The second, the chink of a deep

dark cavern ; and here was enacted a tragedy as dismally cruel (save that there was some plea of retribution) as that of Glencoe.

There was a bevy of McLeods from Skye guilty of rudeness to some fair women in Eig. The McDonalds,