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THE SAINT OF SULA SGEIR

Yet this desolate, bird-haunted rock, with the heavy surf breaking all round it and resounding from its chasms and caves, was the place chosen by one of the Celtic saints as his ‘desert.’ His little rude chapel yet remains, built of rough stones and still retaining its roof of large flags. It measures inside about fourteen feet in length by from six to eight in breadth, with an entrance doorway and one small window-opening, beneath which the altar-stone still lies in place. There could hardly ever have been a community here; one is puzzled to understand how even the saint himself succeeded in reaching this barren rock, and how he supported himself on it during his stay. He came, no doubt, in one of the light skin-covered coracles, which could contain but a slender stock of provisions. When these were exhausted, if the weather forbade his return to Lewis or to the mainland, he had no fuel on the rock to fall back upon, with which to cook any of the eggs or birds of the islet, and there was no edible vegetation, save the dulse or other sea-weeds growing between tide-marks.