6Y. Kilda from Without. 97 



Advanced politicians may study, in a pure demo- 

 cracy, the working of a code of game laws as absolute 

 and perhaps more rigidly enforced than in the most 

 aristocratic country in Europe, even the Minister, who, 

 until his retirement two years ago, was powerful 

 enough to put a stop to whistling in the island, and 

 to decree the observance of two sabbaths weekly, 

 being as dependent for his Gannets and Fulmars on 

 the good will of privileged families as any country 

 parson on the favour of the squire for a brace of 

 Pheasants. 



For doctors to investigate there is the cnatan-na- 

 gall the feverish epidemic cold, in some of its 

 symptoms very like influenza supposed to be peculiar 

 to the island, described again and again for more than 

 200 years : laughed at by travellers from Dr. Johnson 

 downwards, but none the less believed by the natives 

 to follow almost invariably the arrival of strangers. 



A more terrible mystery, still unexplained, is the 

 " Eight days sickness," the infantile lock-jaw, which 

 for years has carried off more than half the children 

 born in St. Kilda, commonly, as the name given to 

 the disease implies, on the eighth day after birth. 



Miss McLeod, of Dunvegan, the good spirit of 

 St. Kilda, thinking that unscientific nursing might 

 be the true explanation, sent over not long ago a 

 trained nurse. Great things were hoped from her 

 services, and Mr. Connell, who soon after visited the 

 island, wrote on his return that things " looked as if a 

 rift in the cloud had really made its appearance, and 

 that the high rate of infant mortality was to be a 

 thing of the past." Recent returns, sad to say, have 

 not justified the hope. In the first six months of 

 1891 three babies were born. Two of them died of 

 the " Eight-day sickness." 



