is one of the larger Islands, almost square, and therefore of great
capacity in proportion to its sides. By the usual method of estimating
computed extent, it may contain more than a hundred and twenty square
miles.

It originally belonged to Clanronald, and was purchased by Col; who, in
some dispute about the bargain, made Clanronald prisoner, and kept him
nine months in confinement. Its owner represents it as mountainous,
rugged, and barren. In the hills there are red deer. The horses are
very small, but of a breed eminent for beauty. Col, not long ago, bought
one of them from a tenant; who told him, that as he was of a shape
uncommonly elegant, he could not sell him but at a high price; and that
whoever had him should pay a guinea and a half.

There are said to be in Barra a race of horses yet smaller, of which the
highest is not above thirty-six inches.

The rent of Rum is not great. Mr. Maclean declared, that he should be
very rich, if he could set his land at two-pence halfpenny an acre. The
inhabitants are fifty-eight families, who continued Papists for some time
after the Laird became a Protestant. Their adherence to their old
religion was strengthened by the countenance of the Laird's sister, a
zealous Romanist, till one Sunday, as they were going to mass under the
conduct of their patroness, Maclean met them on the way, gave one of them
a blow on the head with a yellow stick, I suppose a cane, for which the
Earse had no name, and drove them to the kirk, from which they have never
since departed. Since the use of this method of conversion, the
inhabitants of Egg and Canna, who continue Papists, call the
Protestantism of Rum, the religion of the Yellow Stick.

The only Popish Islands are Egg and Canna. Egg is the principal Island
of a parish, in which, though he has no congregation, the Protestant
Minister resides. I have heard of nothing curious in it, but the cave in
which a former generation of the Islanders were smothered by Macleod.

If we had travelled with more leisure, it had not been fit to have
neglected the Popish Islands. Popery is favourable to ceremony; and
among ignorant nations, ceremony is the only preservative of tradition.
Since protestantism was extended to the savage parts of Scotland, it has
perhaps been one of the chief labours of the Ministers to abolish stated
observances, because they continued the remembrance of the former
religion. We therefore who came to hear old tr