OLD LAMPS, AND NEW. 23 



eve of the twentieth century, it is still possible to 

 find a man sitting on Friday night in a rude semi- 

 underground house lighted only by the primitive 

 stone lamp of his forefathers of prehistoric times ; 

 arid still more so, perhaps, to reflect that the same 

 man may on the following Sunday so far link the 

 distant past with the present as to be sitting in 

 church with a dicky and tie on, and a copy of the 

 Bible printed in Gaelic on a book-rest before him. 

 Yet such is the case. 



When the St. Kildans go to Borrera to pluck 

 the sheep or catch birds, they stay in a semi- 

 underground hut which I shall describe hereafter 

 containing a lamp of the Stone Age still in use. 



We were able to trace the history of illumin- 

 ation at St. Kilda with a fair degree of complete- 

 ness. First of all we saw the stone lamp on 

 Borrera, then an iron one from which the illus- 

 tration on p. 22 was made, and lastly a cheap 

 paraffin abomination which, when alight, consider- 

 ably increased the horrors of darkness. Its small, 

 foul smelling flame was burning dimly within a 

 smoke-blackened globe unrestricted by anything in 

 the nature of a chimney. 



We noticed that the natives were fearfully in- 

 quisitive, but scrupulously honest. Martin, who 

 visited the " lone isle" just two hundred years 

 ago, says that the inhabitants " use swimming and 

 diving, and are very expert in both." To-day, 

 according to Mackenzie, not a single man or 

 woman enters the water unless it be by accident. 

 He relates that when he first began to visit the 

 place as factor, he went down to the Bay one 

 morning to have a swim. So unusual was the 

 sight that the entire population rushed down to the 

 beach to watch him. This led to an extremely 



