ffit6 tf voyage to tJje Hehrides. April \1, 



dience of the greatest sensibility. The memory of 

 those two old men whom we have heard, surprised 

 all the party. 



i^th July, Wind bound. Visited another har- 

 bour in the boats. Dined on board the cutter ; — the 

 gentlemen of the island of the party. Visited also 

 what is called a subterraneous house ; it is four feet 

 high,i:hree feet wide, about sixteen or twenty feet 

 deep, built with common stones, and covered witk 

 ■flag stones or pavement. It cati only have been a 

 repository for goods. It enters in the face and near 

 ■the top of a bank. Its only merit is its antiquity r, 

 for such a place might be made at any time for forty 

 Shillings. Not so with the Danifh tower we saw on 

 a former day in our way ,to Loch Bracadale ; — this 

 is a large stupenduous work, of big iliaped stones, 

 without cement, and now demolifhed to within eight 

 or ten.feet of the ground. Its dimensions fifty feet 

 in diameter, the usual dimensions of those doons.or 

 . dhunejs, with which every corner of the Highlands a- 

 /bounds, the walls about twelve feet thick, no win- 

 dows in any of them, and this had not the hollow 

 spiral pafsages found in the most of them. Within, 

 it is divided into five compartments, with stone par- 

 titions yet extant, — z. verj^ puzzling circumstance, 

 and peculiar to this. There is a circular compart- 

 ment in the middle, the divisions of the other four 

 are radii from the centre of this circle. The unifor- 

 mity, as well as size and form of these buildings., ex- 

 cite curiosity, and almost defy conjecture. The 

 learned antiquarian Dr Thorkelin says they are no 

 lefs common in Norway. He imagines them to 



