88 PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY CF TIE 868A. 
busily employed in cutting blocks of stone in the quarries. 
Carpenters were diligently engaged in making wooden moulds 
for each lighthouse block wherewith to guage its exact mathe- 
matical figure. In April, a reinforcement of thirty-seven masons 
from Aberdeen arrived at Tyree—men expert in the difficult 
work of dressing granite—and, on April 30, the first visit was 
nade to the rock. To the great joy of all, the barrack con- 
structed in the previous season was found uninjured, though a 
mass of rock weighing about five tons had been detached from 
its bed and carried right across the foundation pit by the 
violence of the waves. In this barrack the architect and his 
party now took up their quarters, which from the frequent flood- 
ing of the apartments with water and from the heavy spray that 
washed the walls were anything but agreeable. ‘ Once,” says the 
gallant engineer,* “‘ we were fourteen days without communica- 
tion with the shore or the steamer, and during the greater part 
of that time we saw nothing but white fields of foam as far as 
the eye could reach; and heard nothing but the whistling of the 
wind and the thunder of the waves, which was at times so loud as 
to make italmost impossible to hear anyone speak. Such a scene, 
with the ruins of the former barrack not twenty yards from us, 
was calculated to inspire the most desponding anticipations ; and 
I well remember the undefined sense of dread that flashed on my 
mind, on being awakened one night bv a heavy sea which struck 
the barrack and made my cot swing inwards from the wall, and 
was immediately followed by a cry of terror from the men in the 
apartment above me, most of whom, startled by the sound and 
the tremor, sprang from their berths to the floor, impressed with 
the idea that the whole fabric had been washed into the sea.” 
This spell of bad weather, though in summer, well-nigh out- 
Jasted their provisions; and when at length they were able to 
make the signal that a landing would be practicable, scarcely 
twenty-four hours’ stock remained on the rock. The landing of 
the heavy stones from the lighters was a work of no small dif- 
ficulty, considering the slippery nature of the rock, and as the 
loss of one dressed stone would frequently have delayed the 
whole progress of the building, the anxiety was incessant. On 
July 4, the building of the tower really commenced. Six courses 
* Account of Skerryvore Lighthouse, by Alan Stevenson, Enyineer to the 
Northern Lighthouse Board. Edinburgh, 1848. 
