A SUMMER RAMBLE AMONG THE HEBRIDES. 83 



John that the shieling had two other inmates, young women, 

 like the one so hospitably engaged in our behalf, who were 

 out at the milking, and that they lived here all alone for se- 

 veral months every year, when the pasturage was at its best, 

 employed in making butter and cheese for their master, worthy 

 Mr M 'Donald of KeilL They must often feel lonely when 

 night has closed darkly over mountain and sea, or in those 

 dreary days of mist and rain so common in the Hebrides, 

 when nought may be seen save the few shapeless crags that 

 stud the nearer hillocks around them, and nought heard save 

 the moaning of the wind in the precipices above, or the mea- 

 sured dash of the wave on the wild beach below. And yet 

 they would do ill to exchange their solitary life and rude 

 shieling for the village dwellings and gregarious habits of the 

 females who ply their rural labours in bands among the rich 

 fields of the Lowlands, or for the unwholesome back-room and 

 weary task-work of the city seamstress. The sun-light was 

 fading from the higher hill-tops of Skye and Glenelg, as we 

 bade farewell to the lonely shieling and the hospitable island 

 girl 



The evening deepened as we hurried southwards along the 

 scarce visible pathway, or paused for a few seconds to examine 

 some shattered block, bulky as a Highland cottage, that had 

 fallen from the precipice above. Now that the whole land- 

 scape lay equally in shadow, one of the more picturesque pe- 

 culiarities of the continuous rampart came out more strongly 

 as a feature of the scene than when a strip of shade rested 

 along the face of the rock, imparting to it a retiring charac- 

 ter, and all was sunshine beyond. A thick bed of white 

 sandstone, as continuous as the rampart itself, runs nearly 

 horizontally about midway in the precipice for mile after mile, 

 and, standing out in strong contrast with the dark-coloured 

 trap above and below, reminds one of a belt of white hewn 

 work in a basalt house-front, or rather for there occurs above 



