people who had produced it, Whiggans. was distinctly seen with nine of his men, jeering the cutter's people and the gaugers, and laughing especially at the Brodick men's folly.

Finding that the cavern was not now defended by the smugglers, the master of the cutter ordered his men to enter it. They lighted their torches and entered, and the two gaugers followed them; the master and mate went in last. As they entered, the cavern seemed to enlarge its sides and roof, till, on advancing to the right, it resembled the inside of a large house and another entrance, which was well concealed from the outside by bushes and fragments of broken rocks piled up to prevent a disclosure, was found, on examination on the inside, large enough to admit half a dozen of men to enter abreast.

There was within the cave plenty

;

of wood; large beds of dried fern; two places for fire, one of which was under three rafters, or rather ash trees, in the form of a triangular cone, with a chain. from the vertex for hanging a kettle or pot on, and the cooking utensils were arranged at a little distance from the fire-place. On examining this cavern minutely, plenty of biscuit, spirits, salt, the bones of sheep, cows, and fowls, were found; but though no carcasses were hung up, there was little reason to doubt that many sheep and deer had been cut up there, since at one end of the cavern a number of sheep and deer skins were found, two of which seemed to have very lately been flayed from the carcasses.

There was an old frying-pan suspended from three sticks, and filled with a mixture of oil and tallow; and a pretty large piece of burnt linen hanging over its lip, left no room to doubt that

this was "the lamp of Fingal's cave." Pieces of sail-cloth, junks of rope, old shoes, old clothes, and a few broken. cutlasses, and rusty pistols, and dirks, and flasks of powder, and bags of slugs, and bullets, gave very ample proofs that the transitory visitants to this place were all men at war.

But on examining an anti-cave, which was lower, as to its basement, than the grand cavern by five or six feet, another chasm was discovered in the rock, and, on examination, it was found to lead to a smaller and more damp cave. On entering this place, there lay a number of human skeletons, and two mouldering corpses, one of which was that of a female; one of these had been decently covered with a blanket, the other with a piece of canvass, for a winding-sheet; and neither of the corpses, falling into decay, seemed to have perished through violence.

One of the sailors, in exploring this place, found a pretty large square piece of sheet lead, having sundry names engraved on it in Gaelic, which were supposed to be the names of the corpses and skeletons, especially as the dates opposite the names were various, corresponding, as the gaugers conjectured, pretty exactly with the decayed and perishing fragments of these daring outlaws.

Some of the cutter's men called this place "Fingal's church-yard;" but one of them (a Hamborough-head man) humorously called it "a chapel and church-yard for the devil's monks." In returning to the shore, the gaugers were not a little piqued that no brandy, or Geneva, and tea, had been found in the caves.

But the scenery of the place, and the reflections the account of it gave rise to in St. Clyde's mind, were a feast

of philosophical enjoyment, and matter of curious anecdote for future times, and more pleasurable company, than his late outlaw captain and crew had expected to furnish him with.

As the Ajax was again going to cruise in Loch Fyne, St. Clyde went on board her to be landed at Loch Gilpin, whence he intended to go to Mull.

Nothing material occurred during the voyage, except that the master, the mate, and the gaugers, and indeed the whole crew, blamed themselves for not pursuing the smugglers when they saw them on the cliffs opposite the cavern; and yet they thought, on a little reflection, that any further attempt to take such desperadoes, would only have given them labour without profit. The country they might have travelled, but the immense hills, the eternal snow, the facilities of escape which