Account of the Erection of the Bell Roch Lighthouse. 31 
thickness gradually diminishes upwards, till, under the cornice 
of the building, it extends only to eighteen inches. The stones 
of the walls of the several apartments are connected at the ends 
with dove- tail joints, instead of square joggles, as in the solid 
and the stair-case ; while the bed-joints are fairly embedded in- 
to each other by means of a girth raised upon the one stone 
and sunk into the other. The floors are also constructed in a 
manner which adds much to the bond or union of the fabric. 
Instead of being arched, which would have given a tendency 
or pressure outwards on the walls, the floors are formed of long 
stones radiating from the centre of the respective apartments, and 
at the same time forming a course of the outward wall of the 
building ; these floor-stones are also joggled sidewise, and, upon 
the whole, form a complete girth at each storey. In this man- 
ner the pressure of the floors upon the walls is rendered per- 
pendicular, while the side-joggles resemble the groove-and~ 
feather in carpentry. In the stranger’s room or library, the 
roof takes an arched form, but the curve is cut only upon the 
interior ends of the stones of the cornice, the several courses of 
which it is composed being all laid upon level beds. 
Towards the latter end of August the masonry of the light- 
house was completed, and the operations of erecting the light- 
room were commenced. The beacon-house, which had hither- 
to been crowded by more than thirty persons during the sum- 
mer, was now more thinly peopled. The Engineer must have 
been glad to take leave of his cabin, after an uninterrupted re- 
sidence of about six weeks upon the rock : 
In leaving the Rock, the writer kept his eyes fixed upon 
the Light-house, which had recently got into the form of a 
house, having several tiers or storeys of windows. Nor was he 
unmindful of his habitation in the Beacon, now far overtopped 
by the masonry ; where he had spent several weeks in a kind of 
active retirement, making practical experiment of the fewness of 
the positive wants of man. His cabin measured not more than 
four feet three inches in breadth on the floor ; and though, from 
the oblique direction of the beams of the Beacon, it widened to- 
wards the top, yet it did not admit of the full extension of his 
arms when he stood on the floor ; while its length was little more 
than sufficient for suspending a cot-bed during the night, calcu- 
2 
