THE HERDS OF PROTEUS 83 



and his family to look after them. Sandy, the 

 youngest of our boatmen, is in his own country 

 now, for he is a son of that very herd ; and 

 many a morning have he and his brother and 

 sister crossed the loch, and tramped two miles 

 across the hill on their way to the school at 

 Kilmartin, a sample of that energy in pursuit of 

 knowledge under difficulties which accounts for 

 the superior education of the Scotch in bygone 

 days. Next we pass the unused limekiln, which 

 the ladies formerly used as a dressing-room when 

 enjoying a dip one, I remember, complained 

 bitterly of a cow having fallen into her dressing- 

 room and so on past Goat Island (no longer 

 a haunt of seals) to Eil-an-righ. As we pass 

 along, the fern and the ripening rowan berries 

 glitter in the sun, the buzzard soars round the 

 peak above, heron and gull flap lazily past, and 

 screaming terns hover and plunge into the water, 

 rising with glittering herring fry in their beaks. 

 Curlews and oyster-catchers run along the shores, 

 and the hooded crows too are busy among the 

 seaweed. Cormorants spread out their wings, 

 drying themselves on the rocks ; while we are 

 accompanied by a perfect convoy of guillemots, 

 swimming and diving around us fearless of harm. 

 More than one seal has shown his head within 

 shot of us, and after a prolonged stare lifted his 

 nose in the air and disappeared, to break the 

 water again perhaps three hundred yards off, 



