GUILLIAM. 245 



and when boatmen bring them to appear as if rising 

 out of the middle of the ravine, and see at the same 

 time the Gaelic chapel of Cromarty in the line of 

 the Inlaw, another conical hillock near the southern base 

 of Ben Wyvis, they are on the fishing ground. The 

 position of the bank is also ascertained by the depth of 

 the water and the nature of the bottom. The soundings 

 on the north side vary from twelve to eighteen fathoms, 

 on the south from twenty -five to thirty, while the depth 

 of the bank does not average more than ten fathoms, 

 and the bottom, which on the one side is sand, and on 

 the other mud, is a hard gravel, and in some places a 

 smooth level rock covered with sea-weed. The breadth 

 of the ridge does not exceed half a mile, but its length 

 is nearly thrice as much. A greater quantity of herrings 

 have been caught on this bank than upon any other of 

 equal extent on the coast of Scotland. There have been 

 repeated instances of fishings prosecuted on Guilliam, 

 for the space of a whole week, at the average rate of 

 eight hundred barrels per day ; and it has become so 

 famous among Moray Frith fishermen, that they are re- 

 garded as meaning the same thing when they express 

 their wish for a prosperous season, or for a week's fish- 

 ing on Guilliam. It is sufficiently strange that several 

 thousand barrels of herrings should be caught in the 

 course of a week, on a bank whose extent of surface does 

 not exceed one-half of a square mile, and still more so, 

 that near the close of such a week, the fish appear in as 

 great a body upon it as they do at the commencement. 

 When the herrings make a lodgment on Guilliam, the 

 fishings are invariably good ; when, after making a short 

 stay on it, they proceed farther up the frith, the 

 quantity caught is immense, and salt and cask commonly 

 fail the curers before the fish leave the coast ; but when 



