Mr John MacGillivray on the Island of St Kilda, 55 
ing large stones tied at each end. ‘They consist of but asingle 
apartment, entered by a very low doorway, on passing which 
the smell of fulmar oil from within, joined to the compound of 
villanous odours from the profusion of putrid carcasses of birds 
always lying about the doors, is sufficient to sicken any one 
but a St Kildian, possessed of even a moderate degree of ol- 
factory development. The interior is generally filled with 
smoke, which escapes by the door and accidental apertures in 
the roof, chimneys being regarded as a superfluous piece of 
luxury. The roof and whole interior of the hut are thickly en- 
crusted with soot, which, in wet weather espécially, is contin- 
ually dropping. No peat being found in St Kilda, turf is em- 
ployed as fuel, and the mouldering fire so supported is placed 
on the middle of the floor, while a pot-hook suspended from 
the roof dangles above it. Some agricultural implements, a 
quern, or hand-mill, bundles of ropes, a few articles of the 
rudest furniture, and long strings of the gullets of the Solan 
goose, filled with fulmar oil, stretched from wall to wall, com- 
plete the picture of the interior of a St Kilda hut, in one of 
which I passed two nights. 
The guern, or hand-mill, is still used in St Kilda, and each 
family grinds its corn as required for use. A flat stone, about 
a yard in diameter, furnished with a central upright pin, is 
fixed in the ground ; a round slab of smaller size is laid upon 
the other by means of a hole in the middle, and is made to re- 
volve upon the central pin byahandle. The process of grind- 
ing with this primitive kind of mill is extremely tedious and 
fatiguing, and will probably soon be superseded by some mo- 
dern invention. 
The St Kildians are well characterized by their extreme 
laziness, a habit, however, more than compensated for by their 
cheerful disposition, religious principles, and great hospitality. 
Without going so far as to agree with Martin in his extrava- 
gant delusions,* I yet believe that in comparatively few places 
* “The inhabitants of St Kilda are much happier than the generality of 
mankind, as being almost the only people in the world who feel the sweetness 
of true liberty : What the condition of the people in the Golden Age is feigned 
by the poets to be, that theirs really is. I mean in Innocency and Simplici- 
