f)4 
Elizabethan collar ; and a circnlar Elizabethan collar held in 
a vertical jjosition -well represents the rock surface of this island. 
So uniformly is it girt with the plications of lofty pillars, 
that there are but two spots at which, in a circuit of perhaps 
two miles, it can be scaled. The feathered inhabitant, which 
rejoices in the happily-bestowed cognomen of “ Tammy Cheeky,” 
indulges very persistently in the gymnastic exercise of skipping 
from one fractured pillar-summit to another; it is only by 
assuming the function, with not a little of the concomitant assu- 
rance of the aforesaid bird, that the summit can be reached at 
one of these spots. Though falling far short of Stalfa, and 
especially of the north-east coast of Skye, in the diversified 
features of basaltic scenery, this island very much surpasses these, 
and indeed all the basaltic scenery of the west, in the altitude 
of its pillared cliffs, and especially in the gloomy vista produced 
by their regularly extended sweep. In this last feature there is, 
indeed, no locality in Scotland which even approaches in effect 
the grandly-curved colonnade which extends for more than 
half-a-mile along the north frontlet, of this island. The total 
height of the island is 523 feet, and the cliff edge is but 24 
feet below the summit ; from this grand altitude the shafts drop, 
sometimes with but a single joint, nearly plumb into the deep 
green water. 
As the eastern horn of the crescentic cliff projects boldly 
northward, it cuts off the rays even of the morning light, and 
throws both cliff-face and its pediment of waters into deep 
shade — with the occasional exception of a bastion-like cluster 
of grouped pillars, or perchance a chance-lit single shaft, which 
glints grandly from out the gloom, — five hundred feet of a streak 
of light set in the midst of darkness. 
When a boat is rowed into the deep shades of the western horn 
there is discovered a close-set range of incurved columns which 
surpass in chasteness of flexure and regularity anything of the 
kind which is to be seen in Staffa, and almost equal the clusters at 
the caves of Duntulm in Skye. Eully to appreciate basaltic scenery 
all its varieties should bo seen, and the stupendous scale of tliis, 
enables one the more to appreciate oven the model-like minuteness 
and formal regularity of the over-lauded Staffa. The vast difference 
in their dimensions must bo apparent when it is remembered that 
