INTRODUCTION. 



principal lightkeeper at Kyleakin, observed a sailing boat 

 struck by a squall off the lighthouse, and its occupants (two 

 men) thrown into the water. The tide was running fast, 

 and as there was no time to lose, they rushed down to the 

 shore, and, getting into a boat, rowed out to where they 

 saw one man struggling in the water, and, after taking him 

 on board, rowed after the upturned boat, which had the 

 other man clinging to it, and saved him also. 



In closing my short Introduction I cannot do better 

 than refer to a visit paid to the Bell Rock Lighthouse by 

 some fifty members of the British Association in 1850, and 

 give a few quotations from a speech made by Dr Robin- 

 son, of Armagh, at a general meeting of that Association 

 held in Edinburgh shortly afterwards, when he moved a 

 vote of thanks to the Commissioners of Northern Lighthouses 

 for their courtesy in conveying the party arid showing them 

 over the Lighthouse. He said he had been led to an object 

 which, almost from the days of his childhood, engrossed his 

 attention, and which he had ever regarded as one of the 

 wonders of the world. 



"When I visited that marvellous, beautiful structure, 

 rising up in its strength and loneliness out of the deep, I 

 found that though the sea was calm and the wind was still, 

 yet there was quite enough of danger in the enterprise of 

 approaching it. Under these circumstances it enabled the 

 mind to call up for itself the terrors which must in former 

 years have beset those who were unhappily entangled in 

 that wilderness of rocks, which that noble structure now 

 crowns as a beacon. ... It was impossible not to feel 

 admiration for the beneficent courage and the mechanical 

 skill of the late distinguished engineer, Robert Stevenson. 

 . . . When I thought of the extraordinary resources, both of 

 wealth and talent, that must have been accumulated to over- 



