ST. KILDA AM) ITS BIRDS. 881 



proper cleanliness, even after the later improvements in 

 their dwellings, such as cemented and boarded floors, 

 rendered them less liable to its inroads. 



Most people have heard of the " Stranger's cold ,? which 

 used to infect the whole population of St. Kilcla whenever 

 a boat's crew arrived from the mainland, even though the 

 strangers might be to all appearance free from it them- 

 selves. This fact is perfectly well attested by Martin (3), 

 Macaulay (4), and others; though now, owing to the much 

 greater frequency of communication with the mainland, 

 this phenomenon is no>t nearly so marked, the disease 

 having become more or less endemic in the place. It 

 shows clearly that the micro-organisms which produce 

 catarrh may exist in the nasal passages of individuals who 

 are not at the time obviously suffering from any affection 

 of this sort. And it furnishes an interesting illustration 

 of the susceptibility of an isolated community, like that 

 of the St. Kildans, to the diseases incidental to civilization 

 when these are introduced amongst them. The most 

 striking instance of this is seen in the terrible 

 epidemic of smallpox which depopulated the island early 

 in the eighteenth century (about 1724). It originated by 

 a native of Uist, who had settled in St. Kilda with his 

 family, going over to the " mainland," as the Hebridean 

 islands are called by the natives, to visit his relations. 

 There he contracted smallpox and died, but his clothes 

 were sent back to his family in St. Kilda, and the infec- 

 tion conveyed in them started the epidemic, There were 

 at that time twenty-five families in the island, and when 

 the epidemic subsided there were (to use the expressive 

 words of the tradition) only five houses out of which smoke 

 issued, all the members of the other twenty families having 

 perished, as well as several members of the surviving ones. 

 It happened that just before the outbreak, at the end of 



