78 Mr. C. Dixon on the 



out the place where his father lost his footing and was dashed 

 from the giddy height into the boiling sea below. I climbed 

 over the exact spot, which seemed to me one of the most 

 unlikely places in the cliffs for such an accident to happen. 

 The great ambition of a St.-Kildan is to excel as a crags- 

 man, to become a successful fowler ; in fact until a man 

 has performed certain feats of daring in the cliffs he never 

 ■wins a wife ! The man who fails to scale the beetling Stack 

 Biorrach is said never to win a St.-Kildan maiden^s heart. 

 Even the ladies of St. Kilda are expert fowlers, devoting their 

 attention chiefly to the Puffins and to the management of the 

 snares. Sea-birds form the staple food of the people of this 

 remote island ; the Puffin, the Fulmar, and the Gannet are 

 the favourites. These birds are caught in enormous numbers 

 and salted down for future use, the feathers and oil being 

 exported. Great numbers of Puffins are simply plucked, 

 split open, and dried, being hung in strings across the ceilings 

 of the cottages and taken down as required. A mummified 

 Puffin is one of the dainties of St. Kilda ! Sands records 

 that upwards of eighty-nine thousand Puffins alone were 

 caught by the St.-Kiidans in 187G. 



Much has been said concerning the difficulty of landing 

 and the anchorage at St, Kilda. The only place at which a 

 landing is attempted is on the rocky shore below the manse, 

 and boats require the most skilful management, even in the 

 finest weather, for there is always more or less swell and surf. 

 During the whole time of my stay there was a considerable 

 swell incessantly breaking on the shore, the spray often 

 dashing thirty feet or more up the cliffs, especially on Doon. 

 In fiict, so bad was the swell that I was prevented from land- 

 ing on any of the adjoining islands and ^'stacks,'-" with the 

 exception of Doon, which a few hours' comparative lull 

 afforded me an opportunity of visiting. The heavy seas that 

 from time to time break over St. Kilda are almost past 

 credence ; in some winters the spray dashes over cliffs several 

 hundred feet high ; the wild Atlantic waves, with their two- 

 thousand mile roll, threatening to overwhelm these rocky 

 isles that impede their progress. During fine weather the 



