Читать книгу Scottish Reminiscences онлайн

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Perhaps the most striking of these ‘deserts’ in Scotland is to be found on the uninhabited rock known as Sùla Sgeir, which rises out of the Atlantic, about forty miles to the north of the Butt of Lewis. Though much less imposing in height and size than the Skellig off the coast of Kerry, it is at least four times further from the land, and must consequently have been still more difficult to reach in primitive times. I had a few years ago an opportunity of landing on this rock, during a yachting cruise to the Faroe Islands. With some little difficulty, on account of the heavy swell, I succeeded in scrambling ashore, and found the rock to consist of gneiss, like that of the Long Island. My arrival disturbed a numerous colony of sea-fowl. The puffins emerged from their holes, and sat gazing at me with their whimsical wistful look. Flocks of razo-bills and guillemots circled overhead, filling the air with their screams, while the gannets, angry that their mates should be disturbed from their nests, wheeled to and fro still higher, with mocking shouts of ha! ha! ha! A dank grey sea-fog hung over the summit of the islet. Everything was damp with mist and clammy with birds’ droppings, which in a dry climate would gather as a deposit of guano. Loathsome pools of rain-water and sea-spray, putrid with excrement, filled the hollows of the naked rock, while the air was heavy with the odours of living and dead birds. The only things of beauty in the place were the tufts of sea-pink that grew luxuriantly in the crannies. Some traces of recent human occupation could be seen in the form of a few rude stone-huts erected as shelters by the men who now and then come to take off the gannets and their eggs, and who when there lately had left some heaps of unused peat behind them.