70 A HUNDRED YEARS 



death of two wild swans and several roe, my mother 

 having persuaded Eley to make me little half-charged 

 wire cartridges loaded with BB shot and slugs. As I 

 grew older and became a better shot I was given a small 

 rifle, and ornithological expeditions of several days were 

 made to the Shiant Islands in a smack with a tent, etc. 



Never shall I forget the joy of those trips in lovely hot 

 days at the end of May or beginning of June. The 

 Shiant Islands are in the Minch about thirty miles from 

 Gairloch, and much nearer the shores of the Lews and 

 Harris. They were a revelation to us, not only on ac- 

 count of the myriads of sea-birds of every sort and kind 

 on them, but because their geological formation was quite 

 different from that of our mainland or that of the Long 

 Island, for they are composed of trap rock and are 

 basaltic, and show columns like Staff a and the Giant's 

 Causeway. 



On each of these expeditions to the Shiant, before 

 reaching them we ran into Loch Na Shealg (Loch Shell) 

 in the Lews, and landed at a big crofter township named 

 Leumrabhaigh (I believe the Sassenachs now spell it 

 Lemmerway). There we got a good supply of herring, 

 partly for our own consumption, but chiefly for bait 

 for our long lines, which the crew set and we lifted, in 

 the sort of horseshoe bay formed by the three islands, 

 though according to my recollection two of them are 

 joined together at low tide. What hauls of fish we got ! 

 Often there were cod and ling and huge congers on 

 almost every hook ; but the best of all in our eyes were 

 the Bradanan leathan (broad salmon, as the halibut are 

 called in Gaelic) . It is a rule among the fishermen that 



