So they both slept. The remains of Ellen Courtney were conveyed to her own land; and on a dark November morning, when all nature seemed in mourning for the young and beautiful that had passed with the summer flowers, she was laid with her kindred, amidst streaming eyes and voices that blessed her name—
Poor victim of love and changeless faith.
But Eliza lay in a foreign soil, where the myrtle waved above her head, instead of her own mountain-ash—an exile even in death, from friends and home.
[LIFE IN ST KILDA.]
CONCLUDING PAPER.
On the 16th August I ascended the hill called Connaghar, where all the men had gone to catch and the women to carry home fulmars, leaving the village deserted. The weather was very warm, and although I carried my coat over my arm, I was fain to stop on my way up and cool myself in the light sea-breeze. About half-way up I saw my old friend Tormad, with his ruddy face and large white beard, seated on the edge of the cliff, with his attention fixed on the rope he held in his hands. 'Who is below?' I asked as I sat down beside him. 'Neil,' he answered. 'Is he far down?' 'Far—far,' he replied. Neil's voice could be heard calling from the abyss. In a little a crash sounds from below. Tormad looks anxious, and with craning head listens with deep attention; whilst two girls who had joined us, step with their bare feet to the very verge of the precipice and peer below. One of them, who has a light graceful figure, looks very picturesque as she stands poised on that stupendous cliff. She has a Turkey-red handkerchief on her head, and wears a coarse blue gown of a quaint shape, girdled at the waist, and only reaching to her knees. Her limbs are muscular and browned with the sun. She is engaged to Neil, and naturally feels anxious on his account. A shower of large stones had fallen, any one of which would have knocked his brains out had it chanced to hit; but fortunately a projecting crag above his head saves him. Tormad shifts his position to where he thinks the rock is less frangible. I leave him, and climb to where the cliffs form a lofty head or promontory which commands a view of the face of Connaghar. This hill rises one thousand two hundred and twenty feet above the sea, and is a precipice almost to the summit. The bottom of this tremendous cliff had been cleared of fulmars the previous day by men who had ascended from boats. Now the work had to be done from above.
It is a dreadful trade. A sound like the crack of a musket is occasionally heard, and one sees a huge stone bound and rattle with great leaps into the sea below. Parties of two or three men, laden with birds on their shoulders, are seen climbing by steep and perilous paths to the summit. From the spot where I lie basking in the sun, a path leads downwards to a steep grassy brae bounded by a cliff. This is considered a safe road for women, and a number of them go by it to where the men can bring them fulmars. Some of the girls can carry about two hundred pounds' weight, and seem rather proud of their strength; but as they toil up the dangerous path to where I recline, I hear them breathing heavily and in apparent distress; but in a few minutes they are all right again.
In the intervals of work a number of them sit around me and offer me a share of their oat-cakes and cheese, and hand me the little tub covered with raw sheepskin in which they carry milk: 'Drink, drink! you have taken none!' A number of the men also come up the path with coils of ropes and bundles of inflated gannets' craws on their backs. They are all barefooted and stripped to their underclothing. A pile of fulmars has been collected beside us, and the men whilst they rest economise time by extracting the oil. The receptacle for holding the oil is the stomach of a solan-goose, which is held open by one man, while another takes a fulmar, and squeezing the body, forces the oil in a stream from its gaping bill. When the fulmars and oil are carried home they are equally divided. The birds are plucked, and the feathers are sold to the factor for six shillings a St Kilda stone of twenty-four pounds. The flesh is pickled and used as food in winter and spring. The oil is sold to the factor for one shilling a St Kilda pint, which is equal to about five English pints. Over nine hundred St Kilda pints were exported in 1875. I ought to mention that it is the young fulmars that are caught in autumn. No art is required to capture them, as they are unable to fly; but they offer all the resistance in their power by spitting their oil in the faces of the men. The oil has a disagreeable odour. The old fulmars are caught in summer when hatching; a noose tied to the end of a rod being slipped over their heads. About the end of August all the fulmars leave St Kilda and take the young to sea for their education. They are absent for about two months and a half, and return lean and worthless.
On the 1st of September I began to be slightly alarmed that I might be detained on the island until the succeeding summer. No vessel had called since my arrival on the 21st of June. My stock of provisions had become exhausted, and I had to give up tea and coffee, and subsequently bread. The people began to pluck up their little crops, neither sickle nor scythe being used. The oatmeal supplied by the factor being done, the islanders had to depend on the grain grown on the island. The oats are thrashed with a flail; are scorched in a pot or in a straw basket containing hot stones, previous to being ground. The grain is then ground with hand-mills by the women, who work like furies.