A SUMMER RAMBLE AMONG THE HEBRIDES. 27 



hunger, and with no ultimate intention of eating them. Man 

 must surely have become an immensely worse animal than 

 his teeth show him to have been designed for : his teeth give 

 no evidence regarding his real character. Who, for instance, 

 could gather from the dentology of the M'Leods the passage 

 in their history to which the cave of Francis bears evidence? 

 We quitted the cave, with its stagnant damp atmosphere 

 and its mouldy unwholesome smells, to breathe the fresh 

 sea-air on the beach without Its story, as recorded by Sir 

 Walter in his " Tales of a Grandfather," and by Mr Wilson 

 in his "Voyage," must be familiar to the reader; and I 

 learned from my friend, versant in all the various island tra- 

 ditions regarding it, that the less I inquired into its history 

 on the spot, the more was I likely to feel satisfied that I 

 knew something about it. There seem to have been no 

 chroniclers in this part of the Hebrides in the rude age of 

 the unglazed pipkin and the copper needle ; and many years 

 seem to have elapsed ere the story of their hapless possessors 

 was committed to writing : and so we find it existing in 

 various and somewhat conflicting editions. " Some hundred 

 years ago," says Mr Wilson, " a few of the M'Leods landed 

 in Eigg from Skye, where, having greatly misconducted them- 

 selves, the Eiggites strapped them to their own boats, which 

 they sent adrift into the ocean. They were, however, res- 

 cued by some clansmen ; and soon after, a strong body of 

 the M'Leods set sail from Skye, to revenge themselves on 

 Eigg. The natives of the latter island feeling they were not 

 of sufficient force to offer resistance, went and hid themselves 

 (men, women, and children) in this secret cave, which is nar- 

 row, but of great subterranean length, with an exceedingly 

 small entrance. It opens from the broken face of a steep 

 bank along the shore ; and, as the whole coast is cavernous, 

 their particular retreat would have been sought for in vain 

 by strangers. So the Skye-men finding the island uninhabit- 



