miles to inspect the remains or vestiges of a Danish light-house upon a distant hill, called, as usual, the Wardhill, and returned with specimens of copper ore. I went to see two remarkable indentures in the coast called Rivas, perhaps from their being rift ed or riven. They are exactly like the Buller of Buchan, the sea rolling into a large open bason within the land through a natural arch-way. These places are close to each other, one is oblong, and it is easy to descend into it by a rude path; the other gulph is inaccessible from the land, unless to a crags-man, as these venturous climbers call themselves. I sat for about an hour upon the verge, like the cormorants around me, hanging my legs over the precipice; but I could not get free of two or three well-meaning islanders, who held me fast by the skirts all the time, for it must be conceived, that our numbers and appointments had drawn out the whole population to admire and attend us. After we separated, each, like the nucleus of a comet, had his own distinct train of attendants. We then visited the ca. pital town, a wretched assemblage of the basest huts, dirty without, and still dirtier within; pigs, fowls, cows, men, women, and children, all living promiscuously under the same roof, and in the same room the brood-sow making (among the more opulent) a distinguished inhabitant of the mansion. The compost, a liquid mass of utter abomination, is kept in a square pond of 7 feet deep; when I censured it, they allowed it might be dangerous to the bairns; but appeared unconscious of any other objection. I cannot wonder they want meal, for assuredly they waste it. A great bowie or wooden vessel of porridge is made in the morning; a

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child comes and sups a few spoon fuls; then Mrs Sow takes her share; then the rest of the children or the parents, and all at pleasure; then come the poultry when the mess is more cool; the rest is flung upon the dunghill, and the good-wife wonders and complains when she wants meal in winter. They are a longlived race, notwithstanding utter and inconceivable dirt and sluttery. A man of sixty told me his father died only last year aged ninety-eight, nor was this considered as very unusual. The clergyman of Dunrossness in Zetland visits these poor people once a-year for a week or two during sum mer. In winter this is impossible, and even the visit in summer is occasionally interrupted for two years. Marriages and baptisms are performed, as one of the isles-men told me, by the slump, and one of the children was old enough to tell the clergyman who sprinkled him with water, "Deel be in your fingers." Last time four couple were married; sixteen children baptized. The schoolmaster reads a portion of Scripture in the church each Sunday, when the clergyman is absent. The women knit. worsted-stockings, night-caps, and similar trifles, which they exchange with any merchant-vessels that approach their lonely isle. In these respects they greatly regretted the American war; and mentioned with great unction the happy days when they could get from an American trader a bottle of peach brandy or rum in exchange for a pair of worsted-stockings or a dozen of eggs. The humanity of their master interferes much with the favourite but dangerous occupation of the islanders, which is fowling, that is, taking the young sea-fowl from their nests among these tremendous crags. A.

bout a fortnight before we arrived, a fine boy of fourteen had dropped from the cliff, while in prosecution of this amusement, into a roaring surf, by which he was instantly swallowed up. The unfortunate mother was labouring at the peat-moss at a little distance. These accidents do not, however, strike terror into the survivors. They regard the death of an individual engaged in these desperate exploits, as we do the fate of a brave relative who dies in the field of battle, where the honour of his death furnishes a balm to our sorrow. It, therefore, requires all the tacks man's authority to prevent a practice so pregnant with danger. Like all other precarious and dangerous employments, the occupation of the crags-men renders them unwilling to labour at employments of a more steady description

We must not leave the Fair Isle without remarking, that the flag-ship of the Duke of Medina Sidonia, was wrecked here in 1688; and the High Admiral of the Invincible Armada spent some weeks in this wild and sequestered island before he could find the means of transporting himself to Norway. Independently of the moral consideration, that, from the pitch of power in which he stood a few days before, the proudest peer of the proudest nation in Europe found himself dependent on the jealous and scanty charity of these secluded islanders, it is scarce possible not to reflect with compassion on the change of situation from the palaces of Estremadura to the hamlets on the Fair Isle.

Dost thou think on thy desarts, son of Hodeirah?

Dost thou long for the gales of Arabia?

The tradition of the Fair Isle is unfavourable to those ship-wrecked strangers, who are said to have committed several acts of violence to extort the supplies of provision, given them sparingly and with reluctance by the islanders, who were probably themselves very far from being well supplied.

Uamh Smowe.

19th August, 1814, Loch Eribol near Cape Wrath. Went off before eight A.M. to breakfast with our friend Mr A

His house of

Respand, invisible from the vessel at her moorings, and, indeed, from any part of the entrance into Loch Eri bol, is a very comfortable mansion, lying obscured behind a craggy eminence which interferes between the house and the lake. A little creek winding up behind the crag, and in front of the house, forms a small harbour, and gives a romantic air of concealment and snugness to the house. There we found a ship upon the stocks, built from the keel by a Highland carpenter, who had magnanimously declined receiving assistance from any of the ship-carpenters who happened to be here occasionally, lest it should be said he could not have finished his task without their assistance. An ample Highland breakfast of excellent new taken herring, equal to those of Lochfine, fresh haddocks, fresh eggs, and fresh butter, not forgetting the bottle of whisky, and bannocks of barley and oat cakes, with the Lowland luxuries of tea and coffee. After breakfast, took the long-boat, and under Mr Apilotage, row to see a remarkable natural curiosity, called Uamh Smowe, or the Largest Cave.

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After rowing about three miles to the westward of the entrance from the sea to Loch Eribol, we enter a creek, between two ledges of very high rocks, and landing, find our selves in front of the wonder we came to see. The exterior apartment of the cavern opens under a tremendous rock, facing the creek where we land. ed, and occupies the full space of the ravine where we debarked. From the top of the rock to the base of the cavern, as we afterwards discovered by plumb, is 80 feet, of which the height of the aperture, or arch, is 53 feet; the rest, being 27 feet, is occupied by the precipitous rock under which it opens; the width is fully in proportion to this great height, being 110 feet. The depth of this exterior cavern is 200 feet, and it is apparent ly supported by an intermediate column of natural rock. Being open to day-light and the sea air, the cavern is perfectly clean and dry, and the sides are incrusted with stalactites. This immense cavern is so well proportioned, that I was not aware of its extraor dinary height and extent, till I saw two of our friends, who had somewhat preceded us, having made the journey by land, appearing like pigmies among its recesses. Afterwards, on entering the cave, I climbed up a sloping rock at its extremity, and was much struck with the view, look. ing outward from this magnificent arched cavern upon our boat and its crew, the view being otherwise bounded by the ledge of rocks which formed each side of the creek. We now proposed to investigate the farther wonders of the cave of Smowe. In the right or west side of the cave opens an interior cavern of a different aspect. The height of this second passage may be about twelve or fourteen feet, and its breadth about six

or eight feet, neatly formed into a Gothic portal by the hand of Nature. The lower part of this porch, or entrance, is closed by a ledge of rock, rising to the height of between five and six feet, and which I can compare to nothing but the hatch-door of a shop. Beneath this hatch a brook finds its way out, forms a black deep pool before the Gothic archway, and then escapes to the sea, and forms the creek in which we landed. It is somewhat difficult to approach this strange pass, so as to gain a view into the interior of the cavern. By clambering along a broken and dangerous cliff, you can, however, look into it; but only so far as to see a twilight space filled with dark-coloured water in great agitation, and representing a subterranean lake, moved by some fearful convulsion of nature. How this pond is supplied with water you cannot see from even this point of vantage, but you are made partly sensible of the truth by a sound like the dashing of a sullen cataract within the bowels of the earth. Here the adventure has usually been abandoned, and Mr A- only men. tioned two travellers whose curiosity had led them farther. We were resolved, however, to see the adventures of this new cave of Montesinos to an end. Our friends had already secured the use of a fisher's boat and its hands, our own long-boat being too heavy and far too valuable to be ventured upon this subterranean Cocytus. Accordingly the skiff was drag ged up the brook to the rocky ledge or hatch which barred up the interior cavern, and there, by force of hands, our boat's crew and two or three fishers first raised the boat's bow upon the ledge of rock, then brought her to a level poise upon that narrow hatch, and lastly launched her down

into the dark and deep subterranean lake within. The entrance was so narrow, and the boat so clumsy, that we, who were all this while clinging to the rock like sea-fowl, and with scarce more secure footing, were greatly alarmed for the safety of our trusty sailors. At the instant when the boat sloped inward to the cave, a highlander threw himself into it with great boldness and dexterity, and, at the expence of some bruises, shared its precipitate fall into the waters under the earth. This dangerous expedient was necessary to prevent the boat drifting away from us, but a cord at its stern would have been a safer and surer expedient.

When our enfant perdu had recovered breath an legs, he brought the boat back to the entrance, and took us in. We now found ourselves em barked on a deep black subterranean pond of water of an irregular form, the rocks rising like a dome all around us, and high over our heads. The light, a sort of dubious twilight, was derived from two chasms in the roof of the vault, for that offered by the entrance was but trifling. Down one of those rents there poured from the height of eighty feet, in a sheet of foam, the brook, which, after supplying the subterranean, pond with water, found its way out beneath the ledge of rock which blocked its entrance. The other sky-light, if I may so term it, looks out at the blue clear sky. It is impossible for description to explain the impression made by so strange a place, to which we had been conveyed with so much difficulty to witness so strange a scene. The cave itself, the pool, the cataract, would have been each separate objects of wonder, but united all together, and affecting at once the ear, the eye, and the imagination, their

effect is indescribable. The length of this pond, or loch, as the people here call it, is seventy feet over, the breadth about thirty at the narrowest point, and it is of great depth.

As we resolved to proceed, we di rected the boat to a natural arch on the right hand, or west side of the ca. taract. This archway was double, a high arch being placed above a very low one, as in a Roman aqueduct. The ledge of rock which forms this lower arch is not above two feet and a half high above the water, and under this we were to pass in the boat; so that we were fain to pile ourselves flat upon each other like a layer of herrings. By this judicious disposition we were pushed in safety beneath this low-browed rock into a region of utter darkness. For this, however, we were provided, for we had a tinder box and lights. The view back upon the twilight lake we had crossed, its sullen eddies wheeling round and round, and its echoes resounding to the ceaseless thunder of the waterfall, seemed dismal enough, and was aggravated by temporary darkness, and in some degree by a sense of danger. The lights, however, dispelled the latter sensation, if it prevailed to any extent, and we now found ourselves in a narrow cavern, sloping somewhat upward from the water. We got out of the boat, proceeded along some slippery places upon shelves of the rock, and gained the dry land. I cannot say dry, excepting comparatively. We were then in an arched cave, 12 feet high in the roof, and about 8 feet in breadth, which went winding into the bowels of the earth for about an hundred feet. The sides being (like those of the whole cavern) of lime-stone rock, were covered with stalactites, and with small drops of water like dew, glan

ing like ten thousand thousand sets of birth-day diamonds under the glare of our lights. In some places these stalactites, branch out into broad and curious ramifications resembling coral, and the foliage of sub-marine plants. When we reached the extremity of this passage, we found it declined, suddenly to a horrible ugly gulf, or well, filled with dark water, and of great depth, over which the rock elosed. We threw in stones, which indicated great profundity by their sound; and growing more familiar with the horrors of this den, we sounded with an oar, and found about ten feet depth at the entrance, but discovered, in the same manner, that the gulf extended under the rock, deepening as it went, God knows how far. Imagination can figure few deaths more horrible than to be sucked under these rocks into some unfathomable abyss. A water kelpy, or an evil spirit of any aquatic propensities, could not chuse a fitter abode; and, to say the truth, I believe at our first entrance, and when all our feelings were afloat at the novelty of the scene, the unexpected plashing of a seal would have routed the whole dozen of us. The mouth of this ugly gulf was all covered with slimy alluvious substances, which led one of our party to observe, that it could have no separate source, but must be fed from the waters of the outer lake and brook, as it lay upon the same level, and seemed to rise and fall with it, without having any thing to indicate a separate current of its own. Rounding this perilous hole, or gulf, upon the aforesaid alluvious substances, which formed its shores, we reached the extremity of the cavern, which there ascends like a vent, or funnel, directly up a sloping pre

cipice, but hideously black, and slippery from wet and sea-weeds. One of our sailors, a Zetlander, climbed up a good way, and by holding up a light, we could plainly perceive that this vent closed after ascending to a considerable height; and here, therefore, closed the adventure of the cave of Smowe, for it appeared utterly impossible to proceed further in any direction whatever. There is a tradition, that the first Lord Reay went through various subterranean abysses, and at length returned, after ineffectually endeavouring to penetrate to the extremity of the Smowe cave; but this must be either fabulous, or an exaggerated account of such a journey as we performed. And under the latter supposition, it is a cu rious instance how little the people in the neighbourhood of this curiosity have cared to examine it.

In returning, we endeavoured to familiarise ourselves with the objects in detail, which, viewed together, had struck us with so much wonder. The stalactites, or limy incrustations, upon the walls of the cavern, are chiefly of a dark-brown colour, and, in this respect, Smowe cave is inferior to the celebrated cave of Maccalister, in the Isle of Sky. In returning, the men with the lights, and the various groups and attitudes of the party, gave a good deal of amusement. We now ventured to clamber along the side of the rock above the subterranean water, and thus gained the upper arch, and had the satisfaction to see our admirable and good-humoured commander floated beneath the lower arch into the second cavern. His goodly countenance being illumined by a single candle, his recumbent posture, and the appearance of a hard-formed fellow guiding the