SUMMER ISLES. GENERAL DESCRIPTION. 83 



THE SUMMER ISLES.* 



THESE form a considerable, though a scattered group, 

 lying off the entrance of great Loch Broom. Including 

 the small with the large, they amount to about thirty ; but 

 of these, only nine or ten are of sufficient size to be 

 occupied as pastures, while one alone, Tanera more, is 

 inhabited. 



Tanera more is about two miles in length and one 

 in breadth, and, independently of a farm, contains a 

 fishing establishment with extensive smoking houses, now 

 rendered useless, like others on this coast, by the long 

 continued desertion of the herring shoals. It presents 

 an irregular and rocky surface, rising to the height of 400 

 or 500 feet. 



The other islands are all similarly rocky, but of much 

 less elevation ; nor do they present any circumstances 

 worthy of particular notice; being uniformly bare, and 

 void of picturesque beauty, unless where their rocky, and 

 often high shores, are wrought into caverns and points 

 by the incessant breaking of the sea. The variety and 

 frequency of this class of objects throughout the western 

 coast, almost destroys the interest first excited by their 

 novelty and effect. The voyager who has passed through 

 the arches of Cape Wrath, and has visited the innumerable 

 specimens of gloomy and grand scenery presented by the 

 caves of Whiten head and Loch Eribol, will scarcely turn 

 his boat aside again, even to view the towering pinnacles of 

 Rochill and the Ru Storr. 



* The reader must consult the large Map of Scotland for the position 

 of these islands, as they could not be introduced within the limits of the 

 general Map which accompanies this work. That map will indeed be 

 often useful on other occasions in reading this work, and it is evident 

 that no reduction of it, here admissible, could have answered the same 

 purpose. 



