A SUMMER RAMBLE AMONG THE HEBRIDES. 19 



before the breakfast hour, had its own blue cloudlet of smoke 

 diffused around it \ while along the beach, patches of level 

 sand, alternated with tracts of green bank, or both, give place 

 to stately ranges of basaltic columns, or dingy groupes of de- 

 tached rocks. Immediately in front of the central hollow, 

 as if skilfully introduced to relieve the tamest part of the 

 prospect, a noble wall of semicircular columns rises some 

 eighty or a hundred feet over the shore ; and on a green 

 slope, directly above, we see the picturesque ruins of the 

 Chapel of St Donan, one of the disciples of Columba, and the 

 Culdee saint and apostle of the island. 



One of the things that first struck me, as I got on deck this 

 morning, was the extreme whiteness of the sand. I could 

 see it gleaming bright through the transparent green of the 

 sea, three fathoms below our keel, and, in a little flat bay di- 

 rectly opposite, it presented almost the appearance of pulver- 

 ized chalk A stronger contrast to the dingy trap-rocks 

 around which it lies could scarce be produced, had contrast 

 for effect's sake been the object On landing on the exposed 

 shelf to which we had fastened our halser, I found the origin 

 of the sand interestingly exhibited. The hollows of the rock, 

 a rough trachyte, with a surface like that of a steel rasp, were 

 filled with handfuls of broken shells thrown up by the surf 

 from the sea-banks beyond ; fragments of echini, bits of the 

 valves of razor-fish, the island cyprina, mactrida?, buccinidse, 

 and fractured periwinkles, lay heaped together in vast abun- 

 dance. In hollow after hollow, as I passed shorewards, I 

 found the fragments more and more comminuted, just as, in 

 passing along the successive vats of a paper-mill, one finds 

 the linen rags more and more disintegrated by the cylinders ; 

 and immediately beyond the inner edge of the shelf, which 

 is of considerable extent, lies the flat bay, the ultimate reci- 

 pient of the whole, filled to the depth of several feet, and to 

 the extent of several hundred yards, with a pure shell-sand, 



