258 AFTER DEER 



as stately as on the neighbouring Staffa, it must be 

 remembered that this cavern is devoted to domestic, 

 not to ecclesiastical purposes. The apartment is 

 spacious, the roof is lofty, there is soft carpeting of 

 firm, white sand, and rare thing in caves -there is 

 an infinitely better system of ventilation, and a far 

 freer draught for your smoke, than in any of the 

 neighbouring cottages. Your fuel and furniture come 

 from the drift-wood that lies tossed up everywhere 

 against the foot of the cliffs ; for those troubled seas 

 are dotted thick with black points on the wreck charts. 

 You may picture the fate of the luckless seaman, 

 struggling in the grasp of the waves, when you see 

 how the massive ironwork of the shivered rudder that 

 helps to form your table has been dragged and twisted 

 by the water as if it were a weak strand of wire. Nor, 

 if you resign yourself to melancholy reflection of the 

 sort, are the especial associations of the cavern much 

 fitted to enliven you. For it is the chosen resting- 

 place of the Hebridean dead, whom island piety or 

 superstition fondly consigns to the sacred earth of 

 Columba's blessed isle, and many a queer funeral 

 company has held grim revelry in the " cave of the 

 corpses." But, steeled by use perhaps against im- 

 pressions like these, our animated after-dinner chat 

 flows on as little disturbed by gloomy fancies as in 

 all probability was the mirth of an Egyptian banquet 

 by the familiar skeleton. And we cast ourselves 

 hopefully on our beds of bracken while the fresh 

 heaped drift-wood crackles on the blazing logs. 



