Field Meetings. 217 



first Christian tabernacle which existed in Scotland. But whether 

 St. Ninian began his labours actually on the coast of this most 

 southerly point of the country, or at the little town three miles 

 inland, there is no dubiety about the fact that in this remote 

 corner of the land he set up the standard of the Cross, more than 

 a century in advance of the advent of St. Columba at lona, and 

 that this was the starting-point of his missionary labours among 

 his heathen countrymen. And we can stand in the rough ca\'ern 

 on the shore of Luce Bay — lying mid-way between the burgh and 

 the seaport — with the unquestioning conviction that we are on a 

 spot hallowed by the actual presence of the pioneer apostle, who 

 sought in this cell of nature's making a retreat for meditation 

 and devotion. Nowhere in the kingdom is there a spot invested 

 with associations more sacred or more fitted to fire the historical 

 imagination than this narrow neck of land between the bays of 

 Luce and Wigtown. 



John Ruskin was a frequent visitor to the district, with 

 families in which he counted kinship, and which gave him (from 

 Wigtown town) the Joanna who was the companion of his later 

 years. In one of his " Fors " letters, written from Whithorn in 

 October, 1883, he indulges in some reflections on the Apostle of 

 the South and the fruits of his labours. He had just come from 

 the Scort country, and he writes : — 



" As the sum of Sir Walter's work at Melrose, so here 

 the sum of St. Ninian's at Candida Casa may be set down in few 

 and sorrowful words. I notice that the children of the race who 

 now for fifteen hundred years have been taught in this place the 

 word of Christ are divided broadly into two (dasses : one very 

 bright and trim, strongly and sensibly shod and dressed, satchel 

 on shoulder, and going to and from school by railroad; walking 

 away, after being deposited at small stations, in a brisk and inde- 

 pendent manner. But up and down the earthy broadway between 

 the desolate-looking houses which form the main street of Whit- 

 horn, as also in the space of open green which borders the great 

 weir and rapid of the Nith at Dumfries, I saw wistful, errant 

 groups of altogether neglected children, barefoot enough, tattered 

 in frock, begrimed in face, their pretty, long hair wildly tangled 

 or ruggedly matted, and the total bodies and spirits of them 

 springing there by the wayside like thistles — with such care as 



