“As to music, for which St. Kilda was famous, I am sorry to say that neither bagpipe nor violin were in the island when I was there; the airs, it is said, are very plaintive, like the generality of Highland music.
“The mode of preserving the peat in winter, and also the corn and hay, is ingenious, and peculiar, I am told, to this island. They are kept in buildings, which from their domed shape appeared most extraordinary, till I discovered their purpose. They are the first objects visible on approaching from sea, and I, of course, thought they were the dwellings of the natives. The sides admit a free passage of air, but the roofs are rendered water-tight by a covering of turf; the domes are formed by the regular diminution of the courses of masonry, and the whole is closed and secured at top by a few large heavy stones.
“The bird-catchers of this island have long been celebrated. The puffins are caught in their burrows by the dogs, and the chase is usually managed by the children, while the men are engaged in the pursuit of more difficult game. Gannets, or Solan-geese, and other large birds, are taken by hand, or with snares, on their nests; for which purpose the bird-catchers descend the cliffs, by the assistance of a rope, which is sometimes made of hair, or sometimes of slips of twisted cow-hide.
“A party, who were provided with these ropes, led me to the brink of a precipice, of such a height, that the sea, dashing against the rocks below, was not heard above. Several of the ropes having been tied to one another, to increase their length, the man who was going down fastened one end of it round his waist, and the other end he let down the precipice, to about the depth to which he intended to go; then giving the middle of the rope to a man to hold, he began to descend, always steadying himself by one part of the rope as he let himself down by the other. He was supported from falling only by the single man above, who merely held it in his hands, and sometimes with one hand alone, looking at the same time over the precipice, without any stay for his feet, and conversing with the young man as he descended. In a short time, however, he returned, with a fulmar in his hand; it was placed on the ground, and a little dog having been set at it, the angry bird repeatedly cast out quantities of pure oil, which it spat in the dog’s face.
“I accompanied the same party in one of their night expeditions, as far at least as the edge of the precipice, in order to see them catch the Solan-geese. These wary birds have always a sentinel to keep watch; the object is therefore, by surprising him, to prevent his giving the alarm; for this purpose, the catcher descends the rock, at some distance from the sentinel, and then passing along horizontally, comes upon him unperceived, and so quickly breaks his neck, that the other birds are not roused. He then quietly removes one into the nest of another, which causes an immediate battle; this disturbs all the geese on the rock, and while they are gaping at the combat they are easily caught;—the man twisting the necks of as many as he chooses, and thrusting their heads into his belt—eight hundred are sometimes taken by this method in one night.
“There is a loose skin under their bill, in which these birds can carry four or five herrings at a time, besides sprats, which the young pick out with their bill, through the mouth of the parent, as with a pair of pincers. When the gannets observe a shoal of herrings, they close their wings to their sides and precipitate themselves head-foremost into the water, dropping just like a stone.—Their eye is so exact in doing this, that they are sure to rise with a fish in their mouth.
“I must also mention the Foolish Guillemot.—A rock-man descends at night by his rope to the ledge of a precipice, where he fixes himself, and tying round him a piece of white linen, awaits the approach of the bird, who, mistaking the cloth for a rock, alights on it, and is killed immediately. This silly bird lays but one egg, and without any nest to protect it: so that when disturbed, she frequently tumbles it down the rocks as she rises.”
29th.—I have been labouring most diligently at my garden, and many a time did I wish that my Mamma and Marianne could have seen how much the indolent Bertha, as she used to be called, is improved in activity and in real strength. I was preparing a bed for hyacinths; taking out the old soil, and putting nice fresh earth, mixed with sand, in its place. Wentworth helped me to dig out the earth, and Frederick and his wheelbarrow were for a long time busily employed in taking it away. My aunt had given me the bulbs, and we were anxious to complete the job, before the weather should become too wet.
My uncle paid us a visit, and seemed pleased with us all. He likes to see that sort of patient perseverance—it is more valuable, he says, than genius; and in the evening, he read to us the following anecdote from Bakewell’s Savoy, to shew how much may be done by it.
The mineral waters of Breda were formerly covered by a sudden inundation of the river Isere, and lost. In the summer of 1819, the breaking down of the side of a glacier, in one of the upper valleys of that river, produced another inundation, which brought down with it an immense quantity of stones and earth, that blocked up the river and forced it into a new channel. A miller and his family, who lived on the banks, narrowly escaped with their lives, and most of his little property and all his winter stores were swept away. He was then an old man; but nature had given him that resolute spirit, which regards common calamities only as motives for additional exertion. He lost no time in useless lamentations, and immediately began, not only to repair, but to improve, and to provide, as much as possible, against a recurrence of similar misfortunes. He excavated with his own hands a large cellar in the rock near his mill, partly by the pickaxe, and partly by blasting with gunpowder; and there his stores and winter provisions were safe from any power of destruction, less formidable than an earthquake.