A SUMMER RAMBLE AMONG THE HEBRIDES. 25 



forated by a hole still bearing the mark of the cord that had 

 hung it to the wall ; and beside the stave lay a few of the 

 larger, less destructible bones of the child, with what for a 

 time puzzled us both not a little, one of the grinders of a 

 horse. Certain it was, no horse could have got there to have 

 dropped a tooth, a foal of a week old could not have pressed 

 itself through the opening ; and how the single grinder, evi- 

 dently no recent introduction into the cave, could have got 

 mixed up in the straw with the human bones, seemed an enigma 

 somewhat of the class to which the reel in the bottle belongs, 

 I found in Edinburgh an unexpected commentator on the mys- 

 tery, in the person of my little boy, an experimental philo- 

 sopher in his second year. I had spread out on the floor the 

 curiosities of Eigg, among the rest, the relics of the cave, in- 

 cluding the pieces of earthen jar, and the fragment of the por- 

 ringer ; but the horse's tooth seemed to be the only real cu- 

 riosity among them in the eyes of little BilL He laid instant 

 hold of it ; and, appropriating it as a toy, continued playing 

 with it till he fell asleep. I have now little doubt that it 

 was first brought into the cave by the poor child amid whose 

 mouldering remains Mr Swanson found it The little pellet 

 of gray hair spoke of feeble old age involved in this whole- 

 sale massacre with the vigorous manhood of the island ; and 

 here was a story of unsuspecting infancy amusing itself on 

 the eve of destruction with its toys. Alas for man ! " Should 

 not I spare Nineveh, that great city," said God to the angry 

 prophet, " wherein are more than six thousand score persons 

 that cannot discern between their right hand and their left T 

 God's image must have been sadly defaced in the murderers 

 of the poor inoffensive children of Eigg, ere they could have 

 heard their feeble wailings, raised, no doubt, when the stifling 

 atmosphere within began first to thicken, and yet ruthlessly 

 persist in their work of indiscriminate destruction. 



Various curious things have from time to time been picked 



