200 
that it is merely the sediment of a fluid that held in suspension clay and 
gravel which it swept up in passing over the surface of the adjacent 
country, and threw its w T aves into the cavern in a tumultuous manner, is 
manifest from the ruins of the ancient roof and floor, buried in its sediment 
in the shape of loose cones and slabs of spar, and in the accumulation against 
the opposite walls of heaps of gravel and bones. 
“ In the upper gallery they are so thinly dispersed that then- existence is 
only traced by a straggling bone. 
“ At the foot of the slope splinters of bone and of stones were driven into 
the crevices of the rock, and the remains of rodentia, accompanied by fine 
gravel, injected into the chambers of the skulls and long bones, places into 
which it was impossible for them to have penetrated without the agency of 
a fluid in violent commotion. 
“ Fragments of jaws and bones perfectly corresponding, that had been 
divided, not by the teeth of animals, but by mechanical force, were picked 
up in the upper and lower gallery at the distance of 70 feet from each 
other. 
“ But that it was as transient as it was violent appears from the unrolled 
condition of the bones, and still further from the state of the album vetus. 
The great majority of it was detained in the narrow strait, where it was 
deposited between upright walls in heaps, while scattered balls entangled in 
the mud and perhaps carried down by eddies arising from cavities in the 
floor, were scattered through all depths ; more of it, from its buoyancy, was 
floated upwards to the surface. The whole must have been reduced to 
powder, the teeth dislodged from their sockets, and the processes of the 
bones struck off in the supposition of a long- continued agitation of the mass. 
It further appears that it subsided by degrees, in proportion as the liquid in 
which the clay and gravel were suspended escaped through the bottom of 
the cavern. The large masses of rock and heavier bones sank undermost, 
just as they are found. Marks of its gradual subsidence before the stalag- 
mite had yet acquired consistence may be traced on the sides of the cavern 
like tide-marks,” 
APPENDIX E. 
“ One such man Used to live at Bradford, in the Isle of Skye, who told 
wondrous tales of the Elan na Fermor (Island of the Big Men), that is, the 
opposite Isle of Kaasay, where huge bones of some extinct race of giants are 
still shown in the kirk. He told also of the Piets, or little men, whose 
curious ‘ beehive houses ’ built under ground, chamber within chamber, still 
puzzle the antiquarians in Lewis and Uist ; unless, indeed, they have been 
content to accept Campbell of Islay’s suggestion, of the strange likeness 
between these old houses and those in common use among the little Lapps 
of the present day. Both are alike sunk in the ground, so that to the 
passer-by they appear but a grassy conical hillock, with a hole at the top to 
act as a chimney for the fire, which burns in the centre of the hut, a chimney 
through which a man standing upright might suddenly thrust his head, 
greatly to the amazement of the passers-by. Bound these huts, say the old 
Gaelic fairy tales, the little men drove their herds of wild deer, and the little 
women came forth to milk the hinds, just as at the present day the little 
Lapps still drive the wild deer down from the mountains, and the little 
Lapp women milk the hinds and give the traveller reindeer cream in bowls of 
