34 WITH NATURE AND A CAMERA. 



became so serious that his wife was heard chanting 

 over him, evidently in the belief that the time had 

 come to sing his praises in the usual form of a 

 death dirge. She was a little too previous, how- 

 ever, for by a judicious administration of brandy 

 and bovril in small alternate doses, we set the old 

 fellow on his legs again in a few days. The 

 other case was that of a poor old maid who lived 

 all alone in an ancient straw-thatched hut close to 

 our cottage. I went with my friend Mackenzie one 

 morning to take her a cup of something com- 

 forting, and found her lying in a huge sort of box > 

 surrounded by two or ihree cats, which even in St. 

 Kilda are associated with old maids. In front of 

 the entrance to the box-like bedstead on which this 

 old woman was lying were four thick flags driven 

 into the ground so as to form a rough kind of 

 square, in the centre of which smouldered a small 

 turf fire. Directly over this, and suspended from 

 the roof-tree, was a long, smoke-blackened chain 

 used for hanging kettles and cooking-pots on. 



Whilst we were on the island a doctor came to 

 vaccinate the children, but so small was the faith 

 of the natives in Jenner's great discovery, that he 

 was obliged to take his departure without having 

 operated upon a single child. Perhaps they did 

 not understand that he had come in order to pre- 

 vent a repetition of the terrible disaster their for- 

 bears suffered in 1724, when an awful visitation of 

 small-pox swept away the entire adult male popula- 

 tion of the place with the exception of four, who 

 were catching Gannets on Borrera or Soa at the 

 time of the outbreak. As there was nobody left 

 to man a boat and fetch them off, they remained 

 from August of one year to Whitsuntide of the next, 

 and thus escaped the ravages of the terrible scourge, 



