Mr Har vie- Br owns Further Notes on North Jlona. 287 



accurately dressed, 2 feet long and 1} inch in the side. A 

 notch is neatly cut into the corner of the bar for each day of 

 the week, and then a deeper notch for Sunday, while for the 

 end of the month a cut is made from side to side of the bar. 

 The plan is simple, clever, and intelligible. The markings 

 begin on Friday, the 21st June 1884, and cease on Tuesday, 

 the 17th February 1885. Towards the end the notches are 

 less neatly and accurately made, indicating very clearly that 

 the deft fingers which fashioned the rest were becoming 

 weak and powerless to cut into the hard pine wood. These 

 notches are no less touching than instructive, and speak to 

 the eye and to the heart and the imagination with a pathos 

 all their own. Through a hole in the end of the calendar 

 is a looped cord by which to suspend the stick. It is 

 singular," concludes Mr Carmichael, " if nothing more, that 

 it was about the very time that Flora MacDonald began to 

 see her ' warnings ' that the last notch of tlie stick records 

 the cessation of the last life. These ' warnings ' became 

 so all-absorbing to her that she walked fifteen miles to the 

 friends of the exiled men about them ; " and Mr Carmichael 

 further relates that he himself interviewed a young man in 

 Edinburgh — Donald Morrison — who was on his way home 

 from Canada to see his people at Ness, and who related that : 

 A fortnight before he had received a letter from ISTess saying 

 that the friends of the men in Rona were in a state of ex- 

 treme anxiety concerning them in consequence of Flora 

 MacDonald's statements ; and when the said Donald Mor- 

 rison landed at Liverpool, he was greatly astonished at the 

 corroboration of Flora MacDonald's fears, or the coincidence, 

 if you will, between her statement and the friends of the men. 



I have to thank my friend, Mr J. J. Dalgieish, for a perusal 

 of several letters and copies of MSS. and extracts relating to 

 the island, but as these had already been made full use of by 

 Mr Swinburne, I do not think it necessary to quote from 

 them here again. 



The habit of sheep-stealing is still carried on by passing 

 ships or fishermen. In the summer of this year — 1885 — 

 both sheep and the oil barrels and the plenishings of the 

 house belonging to the dead men, consisting of tea, sugar, 



