34 WITH NATURE AND A CAMERA. 



became so serious that liis wife was heard chanting 

 over him, evidently in the belief that the time had 

 come to sing his })raises in the usual form of a 

 death dirge. She was a little too previous, how- 

 ever, for by a judicious administration of brandy 

 and bovril in small alternate doses, we set the old 

 fellow on his legs again in a few days. The 

 other case was that of a poor old maid wdio lived 

 all alone in an ancient straws-thatched hut close to 

 our cottage. I went with my friend Mackenzie one 

 morning to take her a cup of something com- 

 forting, and found her lying in a huge sort of box, 

 surrounded by two or three cats, wliicJi, even in St. 

 Kilda, are associated with old maids. In front of 

 the entrance to the box-like bedstead on which this 

 old woman was lying were four thick iiags driven 

 into the ground so as to form a rough kind of 

 square, in the centre of which smouldered a small 

 turf tire. Directly over this, and suspended from 

 the roof-tree, was a long, smoke-blackened chain 

 used for hanging kettles and cooldng-pots on. 



Whilst we were on the island a doctor came to 

 vaccinate the children, but so small was tlie faith 

 of the natives in Jenner's great discovery, that he 

 was obliged t(j take his departure without having 

 operated upon a single child. Perhaps they did 

 not understand that he had come in order to pro- 

 vent a repetition of the terrible disaster their for- 

 bears suffered in 1724, when an awful visitation of 

 small-pox swept aw^ay the entire adult male popida- 

 tion of the place wdtli tlie exception of four, wlio 

 were catching Gannets on Borrera or Soa at tlu^ 

 time of the outbreak. As there was nobody left 

 to man a boat and fetch them off, they remained 

 from August of one year to Whitsuntide of tlie next, 

 and thus escaped tlie ravages of ihv tei-rible scourge. 



