THE HISTORY 



OF THE 



OUTER HEBRIDES. 



CHAPTER I. 



So Jar as is known, the first Greek writer who gave any 

 account of the British Islands was Pytheas, who was a con- 

 temporary of Alexander the Great, and our knowledge of 

 that account is chiefly derived from the writings of hostile 

 critics, notably Strabo, who regarded his descriptions as a 

 mass of fables. Pytheas mentions the Island of Thule, 

 which subsequently became so fruitful a source of specula- 

 tion to the geographers and historians of old. This island 

 has been variously identified with Iceland, the Shetlands, 

 and the Orkneys, while one topographer and antiquary, 

 Robert Gordon of Straloch, has stoutly maintained in a 

 dissertation on the subject, that the ancient Thule was no 

 other than the Island of Lewis ; an opinion which, Bishop 

 Leslie states, was held in his time (sixteenth century). The 

 fact seems to be that the ideas of the Greek and Roman 

 writers as to the whereabouts of Thule were of the vaguest 

 description, and that the name was applied indiscriminately 

 to the most northerly island known to them at different 

 historical periods. It is conceivable, therefore, that the 

 Island of Lewis may have been the earliest Thule of the 

 Greeks, and that with the extension of geographical know- 

 ledge, the name may have been subsequently applied to 

 Orkney, to Shetland, and finally to Iceland. 



The first to mention the Orcades (the modern Orkneys) 

 was Pomponius Mela, a Spanish writer who flourished 

 about the middle of the first century. He also refers to a 



