Nature and Art, December 1, 1886.] 
BA.BR A, IN THE OUTER HEBRIDES. 
199 
that they would not feed;” another for “drying 
l-opes, and frightening cows,” nearly £400 ; and 
another for “cows that slipped their calves, and 
calves lost,” upwards of £400. So that it would 
appear that all the cattle on the island went to see 
the wreck, and that all these cows were enceinte, 
and. in such a precarious state at one and the same 
time, that the wreck coming ashore brought on a 
premature delivery, and caused their offspring to 
die. This would not be believed in a novel, and 
yet it is a stern fact. Perhaps the worst feature 
of all was the way in which the survivors are 
reported to have been treated ; they were, as was 
stated in the press truthfully, in many instances 
pitilessly plundered by the cottars of what little 
they had contrived to save and bring ashore, and it 
has been alleged, it is to be feared with truth, that 
in many cases, fingers of the dead were cut off’, or 
pulled off, or “ came off,” during the time that these 
wolves were possessing themselves of the rings and 
squabbling over their prey. A heavy charge was 
made for burying the dead. The funeral service is 
reported to have been a farce, and the whole pro- 
ceeding brutal and degrading to a degree. The 
bodies were thrown into two holes, “ packed like 
herrings in a barrel,” and there is no mark, not 
even a rail or bit of wood, to show where these 
bodies are buried, where not far short of 360 of the 
victims of one of the most heartrending wrecks of 
our time lie interred. 
But again to return to Barra. The Protestant 
Church at Bhirva is out of repair. The roof is not 
watertight, and the floor of the church is not paved 
or boarded ; there is one pew only, and the church 
itself is tolerably large, but more like a barn inside 
and outside than anything else. We have been 
told that it is not an uncommon occurrence for 
umbrellas to be used inside the church on a wet 
day. This may be, and we hope it is, untrue, but 
at any rate, we know from the actual knowledge 
of one of our party that in the school-house the 
children could not keep their books on the desk 
last winter because of the rain coming through the 
roof. 
The minister at Bhirva is a scholar and a gentle- 
man, with a fairly cultivated glebe, some good 
cattle, two fine and handsome daughters, and an 
inestimable wife. She, dear, kind soul, took us in 
when, in attempting to jump over a river (which, 
were it not for her kindness, we would call a ditch), 
we had fallen into it. Hers was the nearest 
house, and thus we made her acquaintance. She 
had our clothes toasted and our boots baked, and 
rigged us out in the clergyman’s suit, just big- 
enough to hold two of us, and then took us into 
Tier parlour, where, under the influence of new 
milk and whisky, as preventives of cold, we 
enjoyed the pleasant and lively conversation of 
herself, the minister, and their daughters. This 
glimpse of civilization — this oasis in the desert of 
Barra — will ever be remembered, but at the time it 
only made the dreariness and desolation outside 
appear still more dreary and more desolate. 
How is the law administered in Barra ? Reader, 
there is little or no law. The tenant farmers in 
these islands are mostly of undoubted respectability 
and immovable integrity ; but some of them, as we 
have seen, make harvests out of wrecks by systematic 
and groundless claims ; and the cottars act in a 
straightforward but less systematic plan of open 
plunder. The Government ships have visited Barra, 
so we were informed, three times in ten years. The 
police force in the island is not active and is not 
intelligent, nor could it establish a character for 
sobriety. It consists of a solitary constable. This 
representative of authority troubles himself not 
about plunder and lawlessness; his mind is ac- 
customed to the normal state of things on his beat, 
and he is supremely happy and contented with an 
occasional glass of whisky. 
During the last winter, a ship laden with paraffin 
came ashore, and soon broke up. Seventy-five 
casks were recovered, and given into the custody of 
the Resident Deputy Receiver of Wreck, the 
Government officer appointed to protect the interest 
of the owners. Now, Barra is a place whence thieves 
cannot escape, and had there been any desire to 
suppress plunder or to detect the thieves, it could 
easily have been done. But not so ; twenty-five 
casks were removed from the custody of the Resi- 
dent Receiver, a tenant farmer, by the natives, who 
thought it was whisky or gin, or something to 
drink. And although it was offered for sale freely 
throughout the islands, and although every hut was 
burning it — some in teapots with the wick through 
the spout — no steps were taken to detect the thieves, 
and the Hebridean officers, who ought to have pro- 
tected the property, represented that there had been 
almost no plunder at all. 
The Harmony , a large timber-laden ship, came 
ashore on the rocks last winter, bottom up. She 
was on an isolated rock, and her bottom and keel 
were prominent objects against the sky. Gulls, 
herons, and puffins sitting on them, could be seen dis- 
tinctly from the neighbouring places; and yet thieves 
worked on her where any one could see them, day 
after day, and week after week, with heavy hammers 
and crowbars, until nearly the whole of the valuable 
copper fittings were removed. Some of them of 
great size and weight were carried about and dis- 
posed of in the most charmingly open and candid 
manner. The policeman’s beat is large, and he was 
probably wanted at another part of it ; we will not 
put his inaction down to apathy, as he does bestir 
himself sometimes ; for he has been known to get a 
search-warrant two months after property has been 
stolen, and to make a search of premises after giving 
twenty-four hours’ notice in the cross roads that he 
was about to begin. 
And now one other of last winter’s cases, and 
we have done. We like to take recent cases, other- 
wise our readers might be deluded into the belief 
that all we have written about Barra, its crime, 
barbarism and misery, are things of the past. We 
would they were things of the past, but, alas ! it is 
not so. Last winter, the Bermuda, a fine ship, was 
wrecked there. It was a fearful night, and bitterly 
cold, with a driving sleet, and with the snow thick 
