64 TOUR IN SUTHERLANDSHIRE. 



facilities to enable me to go to see the island of Handa, 

 which is situated some four miles from Scowrie, and is 

 famous as the breeding-place of an immense number of sea- 

 fowl. After an hour's easy row and sail over the beautiful 

 bay of Scowrie, and skirting a range of most rugged rocks, 

 we approached the island. On the south side, where we 

 landed, it has the appearance of a fine green slope, with only 

 a range of low rocks immediately adjoining, and reaching in 

 long points into the sea. About these rocks we saw 

 thousands of sea-gulls and cormorants, and on the point that 

 projected farthest into the water sat a large white cat, 

 looking wistfully towards the mainland. As all the inhabi- 

 tants had left the island early in the spring for America, this 

 cat had probably remained behind, and had made her living 

 as she best might out of small birds, dead fish, &c. I could 

 not help being struck with the attitude of the poor creature 

 as she sat there looking at the sea, and having as disconsolate 

 an air as any deserted damsel. " She is wanting the ferry," 

 was the quaint and not incorrect suggestion of one of our 

 boatmen. Having run our boat into a small sandy creek, we 

 landed. Here, as everywhere round the coast, is a fishing 

 station of Mr. Hogarth's, if a hut, the summer residence of 

 two forlorn fishermen, can be called a fishing station. We 

 borrowed another coil of ropes from these men, and proceeded 

 to the northern side of the island, where the perpendicular 

 rocks form the breeding-place of the sea-fowl. The distance 

 across the island I should reckon at nearly two miles, and it 

 is a continued slope of green pasture. I passed several huts, 

 the former inhabitants of which had all left the place a few 

 weeks before; and, notwithstanding the shortness of the 

 time, the turf walls were already tenanted and completely 

 honeycombed by countless starlings, who seemed not the 

 least shy, but on the contrary kept their ground, and 

 chattered away as if they looked on me as an intruder on 

 what they had already established their right to. 



Leaving them in undisturbed possession, I continued my 

 way on to the north side, and in due time arrived on the 

 summit of the cliffs which stretch the whole length of the 

 island ; and there was a sight which would alone repay many 

 a weary mile of travel. Every crevice and every ledge of 

 the rock was literally full of guillemots and razor-bills, while 

 hundreds of puffins came out of their holes under the stones 

 near the summit of the cliffs to examine and wonder at us. 



