Transactions. 39 
From Southwick, beginning at the estuary of Southwick 
Burn, and tracing the coast round by Douglas Hall, Port o’ 
Warren, Barcloy Head, and onward to the Scaur and estuary of 
the Urr, the parish for a third of its circumference is bounded 
by the sea. On this side of the parish, therefore, the sea-side, 
the people had no neighbours with whom they could associate 
with and form connections, and with England they had little or 
no communication. 
At a time indeed anterior to that to which my paper relates, 
they had very close communication with the Isle of Man, but it 
was of an illicit and contraband character. At that time there 
was a regular smuggling traffic carried on between the two 
places, and there were men living in the parish when I came to 
it fifty years ago who remembered it and possibly profited by it. 
Captain John Crosbie, Laird of Kipp, himself a seafaring man, 
had a cellar under the floor of his dining-room, approached by a 
secret trap-door, which the carpet covered, and which was doubt- 
less designed for the safe custody of such commodities. I myself 
have seen him go down through the trap-door in question, and 
bring up a bottle, whether of wine or spirits I cannot remember. 
There is a similar cellar under the dining-room floor of the 
manse, approached also by a trap-door, and concealed in the same 
manner. On the rocky coast leading from Port o’ Warren to 
Douglas-Hall there are several caves and deep fissures in the 
rocks, admirably fitted for the concealment of contraband goods, 
until such time as removal could be safely effected. And on the 
other side of Port o’ Warren, in the rocks leading to what is 
called the Cormorants’ Dookers’ Bing, there are other caves and 
fissures, larger and deeper, which can only be approached at low 
water, and then only by wading. One on the Torr or Douglas- 
Hall shore is known as the Srandy Cave, a name significant of 
the use to which it was put. On the Island of Heston, which 
lies at the mouth of the Urr, less than a mile from the Colvend 
shore, there are also caves and fissures, larger, I am told, than 
those on the Torr or Boreland Heughs. This is the island 
which the author of the spirit-stirring fiction of “The Raiders” 
calls “ Rathan.” 
Colvend, as everyone knows who has lived in the parish, and _ 
as the least observant sees at a glance, is intersected by rocky 
ridges and strewed with boulders, so much so that Mr M‘Diarmid 
of the Courier characterised the parish as the “ Riddlings of 
