Notes on Sula Sgeir and North Bona, with List of Birds. 59 



of Seaforth in the form of meal packed in sheep-skins, and 

 sea-birds' feathers. The inhabitants seem to have met twice 

 or thrice daily in the chapel, and to have been Koman 

 Catholics. They had evidently become more pious since 

 Dean Munro's visit. 



Martin,! writing about the same date, gave a curious 

 account of the island and its inhabitants as related to him 

 by Mr Daniel Morrison, minister of Barvas in Lewis, who 

 then appears to have possessed it as part of his glebe, and 

 who had visited it in person. The minister mentions the 

 chapel as being in use by the natives, and that they kept it 

 very neat and clean. The houses he described as being 

 thatched wdth straw. The next account is that of Dr 

 MacCuUoch the geologist, who seems to have visited the 

 island in 1819. At the time of his visit there was only one 

 cottar family left. 



The Doctor, referring to Eona as it was about the year 

 1670, says : ^ " Some years have now passed since this 

 island was inhabited by several families who contrived to 

 subsist by uniting fishing to the produce of the soil. In 

 attempting to land on a stormy day all the men were lost 

 by the upsetting of their boat, since which time it has been 

 in the possession of a principal tenant in Lewis. It is. now 

 inhabited by one family only, consisting of six individuals 

 of which the female patriarch has been forty years on the 

 island. The occupant of the farm is a cottar, cultivating 

 it and tending 50 sheep for his employer, to whom he is 

 bound for eight years, an unnecessary precaution, since the 

 nine chains of the Styx could afford no greater security than 

 the sea that surrounds him, as he is not permitted to keep a 

 boat. During a residence, now of seven years, he had, 

 with the exception of a visit from the boat of the 

 ' Fortunee,' ^ seen no face but that of his employer and his 

 own family." 



In a note he also says, " On the appearance of our boat, 

 the women and children were seen running away to the 



1 Description of the Western Islands of Scotland, London, 1703, p. 19. 



'^ Op. cit., vol. i., p. 206. 



3 Then employed in cruising after the President in 1812. 



