28 HAPPY HUNTING-GROUNDS 



Here we were met by the whale-boat, which, with 

 its sturdy and obliging boatmen, we had hired from 

 Sir John for the term of our tenancy, as well as the 

 stable establishment, consisting of a pair of good horses, 

 a strong waggonette, and an old buck-board imported 

 from Canada, where it had seen service at the time 

 of the Red River expedition. The little harbour is 

 too shallow for anything bigger than a fishing-boat, 

 so our steamer left its anchorage in the open road- 

 stead, and steamed back to Islay as soon as our party 

 and the luggage had got into the boat. Happily 

 the wind was favourable, and in some ten minutes 

 we landed on the pier where the waggonette was 

 waiting to take us to our destination. There are 

 two roads by which Killoran House can be reached 

 from the harbour. One, across the island to Machrins 

 and round between the north end of the coast and 

 the chain of three lochs, is nearly four miles in length, 

 while the other is under two ; but the shorter road 

 traverses a desperately steep brae, and with a heavy 

 load little time is lost, and some strain upon the horses 

 saved, by adopting the longer route. Some of our 

 party drove round with the luggage, and some strolled 

 up the brae past a circle of prehistoric stones, which 

 is only one* of the many interesting primeval remains 

 with which the island abounds. There are cromlechs 

 and circles, relics of the stone age and of remote anti- 

 quity ; there are ancient middens where bones of red 

 deer and of the extinct great auk reveal the former 

 existence of a now vanished fauna. Two buried boats 

 with the skeletons of horse and Viking, with the broken 

 axe and sword of the latter, were exhumed to bear 

 their testimony to the raids of the old Norwegian sea 



