It is eight miles from Storr to Stanchel, or Loch Staffin. More than midway, the little tarn of Mialt or Mia Ghail, drops its burnie over the fine rock of Craig na Peill," the Rock of the Kilt," and after a very short subterranean course hurries headlong over the cliff out to sea. It is a sort of Staubach, dropping rather in light spray than water, and forming an arc from a rock 300 feet high; boats may be rowed behind it.

If in this wide region we are benighted or weatherbound, we must rest at this Stanchel in our dilemma; we may chance to get buttermilk, or what is called by Martin, "oon troth"-curds and whey; sweet milk, "lac blighe or easoc;" meal, butter, and treacle, and a bannock, we must hail as a feast for an emperor in Skye.

We essayed in vain to light upon the Reni croich, or saffron-coloured shirt; but there are relics of the Highland sandal—the brogue; then the white plaid, tied by a belt round the waist of the peasant girls, is it not the arisad, in the olden time worn by the proud laird's lady? but, like the Ottoman, the high-born Gael in fashionable life has now completely adopted the debased costume of the Sassenach, and has discarded the scarlet cloth adorned with silver buttons, or the brooch of Cairngorm.

In Loch Staffin opens a cavern, Uamh na Oir, the "Cave of Gold." Fladda lies in the bosom of the loch, and further north, the costal cliffs of Altivaig, from which we have a very splendid view of Skye. The conchologist will decide that the nerita found in Loch Staffin indicates the tertiary strata.

And now we are sixteen miles from Portree; about

one mile and a-half from the beach opens another miracle of geology-the Quiraig, ciraig, crested ground. There is no real beauty in the Quiraig; it is a misshapen group of eccentric blocks and pinnacles piled in confusion, riven and fissured, and standing about like petrified spectres. The mountain base is a thousand feet from the

level of the sea. The chief curiosity is the oval green table in the centre of this chaos, one hundred feet by sixty, and more than a hundred feet in height. It is buttressed by slight columnar walls, with deep clefts, of dark umber and purple, and there is one tall isolated cone standing like a seneschal at the portal of a banquet hall. The

Quiraig in moonlight would be unearthly-in a storm awfully sublime. From the table we look abroad over the ocean, and across to the westernmost islets—over the Minch. Beneath us are the eccentric islets of the northeasterly point. Fladda Huna, with its four satellite blocks, and its crowning cromlech, once a Druid's temple, and now the haunt of the puffin, Fratercula Arctica. Further off, Bhord Mhor Mhicleod, the great diningtable of McLeod, rises like a platform amidst its rocks.

We may cross hence by a wild hill walk to Uigg (Uggerus, a Danish poet; vide Saxo-grammaticus), passing a very fine fall, and the majestic hill of Sgor Mohr, perhaps the most beautiful rock in Skye, if we regard its protean changes of hue and shadow: spires, and machicolation, and embattled walls, and green cones, are blended in the most eccentric and beautiful confusion. In a boat that can be moored here and there we may round Ru Hunish to Duin, and there will be displayed to us as much magnificent beauty as the longing of the wildest poet can desire. We look up to columnar cliffs more majestic than those of Staffa and the Causeway; and there is the pre-eminent charm of utter remoteness. Eider ducks, and gannets, and cormorants, and shags, and puffins, are floating, and diving, and winging in myriads around us, like the gowries of Peter Wilkins, and the stormy petrel, cypselus, or procellaria, is treading rather than swimming the water; and on the beach lie pebbles of the rarest calcedony— the "hectic stones" of Martin-and bright quartz; and the rarest zoolites are embedded in the rocks. The deep sea weeds of the Atlantic are flung around in pro

fusion; ulva and porphyra, and luminaria digitata of giant size, gemmed with its parasitic rhodomenia sobolifera, enormous chorda filium, whip-lashes, sea-laces, whip-cats, from a depth perhaps of forty feet, are hanging in profusion even on the mooring-rope of the boat; and on the rocks the finest fuci, immense bunches of crithmum, red and white. With these and other rarities, so rich is north-western Skye in the treasures of Nature's most secluded chambers, the artist and naturalist might revel in them, hand in hand, for a month.

Directly we round Ru Hunish we come on the ruined castle of Duntulm-Ealean or Ellan Tuilm (Tuilm, green hillock), in the olden time the stronghold of the

Vikinger pirates, prior to the invasion of Harfinger, and, in later times, of the Clan-Donnills-M'Donalds.

It is perched high on its rock amid the rolling waters, and close to it rises the Cnoc an Eirie, the Hill of Pleas ; Eirie, ransom, or fine for bloodshed—a sort of Tynwald or tiny Areopagus. And all this wilderness is surmounted by some of the most majestic columnar cliffs in Skye. The precipices of Ru Hunish loom out from Duntulm like a fairy scene; and we almost watch for a Polyphemus on the brow, and hope for a Galatea on the shore. We may waive mythology; "truth is stranger than fiction;" and we will rather listen to the aged crone who has just left her quern, and is now plying her distaff, and we may learn the legend of Duntulm from her withered lips.

There was once a wild scapegrace in Skye, named Elistean na Cleirich, or Uistean Macghilliaspuig Chlieirich, Hugh the Clerk, a sort of Hebridean Barnwell. Impatient for his reversion of lairdship, he essayed to pen two letters of very contrasted importthe one was to hoodwink his uncle, Donuill Gorm, with assurances of his devout attachment, the other to suborn a traitor vassal, and bribe him to the murder or the dispossession of his master. By one of those just decrees of Providence, the letters were misdirected and mis-sent. The vassal, lured by a costlier bribe, was sent to seize on Uilean, and drag him bound to Duntulm. He was heavily chained to rings in the dungeon of yonder tower, not to be slain by the hand-that were a boon too gracious-but to linger on to death by a course of protracted torture. He was not starved, but thirsted