PRIMITIVE DWELLINGS. 81 



when endeavouring to entangle a victim. Several 

 times an angry Tammy Norie seized the noose in 

 his beak and dragged at it until he so lessened the 

 size of the circle as to make me despair of ever 

 getting it over his head. Each failure amused the 

 natives immensely, and they laughed heartily at 

 my expense. However, this only increased my 

 determination, and after a deal of perseverance I 

 succeeded in capturing a bird, to the great delight 

 of my spectators. 



So successful are the St. Kildans at this kind 

 of sport that Angus Gillies once bagged to his 

 own rod no less than six hundred and twenty 

 Puffins in a single day. 



In the course of our wanderings on the island 

 we came upon the half-underground dwellings in 

 which the men and women live when they visit 

 the place to pull the wool off their sheep or snare 

 and pluck birds. They are odd kind of houses 

 very dark, uncommonly damp, and weird to a degree 

 and seem as if they had owed their existence to 

 the first glimmerings of human intelligence. In 

 shape and general appearance they are much like 

 a cleit half -buried in the steep hill-side. 



There is a small doorway, through which those 

 using the house are obliged to creep on hands and 

 knees ; the fire-pit is half-in and half-out of the 

 house, and the place is illuminated by a stone lamp. 

 I examined this remarkable relic of antiquity with 

 considerable interest, and it appeared to me to 

 have been carefully chosen for its peculiar acci- 

 dental shape rather than made. It had a hollow in 

 the middle for the reception of oil, and a narrow 

 crevice or gutter running upwards from it to one 

 end for the accommodation of the wick. It was 

 blackened with smoke, and the damp stood upon it 

 G 



