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by the stormy weather. We were more fortunate, for though we did not land, yet we saw it from the high ground on the opposite shore. The greater part of the way to this spot a rough road has been made along which we drove, passing a great heronry. It was curious to watch the huge nests and the great birds in the trees. For nearly three miles of country they were the chief inhabitants. Island Isa would certainly have lived in great solitude, for after we had passed the gamekeeper's cottage close to the castle, we saw no signs of habitation except the herons' nests, till we reached a farm-house nearly three miles off. Here the road ended. In the little garden stood some large laburnum trees, all drooping with their golden flowers. Our way led across a wide
HERONRY. heath to a fine breezy headland. Below us another stretch of heath-land sloped down to the shore of the loch. On the other side of a narrow channel lay Isa, with fine rocky cliffs to the west and the north, but lying open to the south-east. It was Midsummer Day. The sea was calm, a blue haze softened the outline of the neighbouring hills, but let the mountains in the farther Hebrides be but faintly seen. The little isle lay before us with no signs on it of human habitation. Buchanan describes it as "fertilis frugum,"^[1] and Martin says that it was "fruitful in corn;"^[2] but it must be many a year since the plough turned up its soil. It is a land of pastures. In the hot, drowsy air there was nothing but the song of the lark and the bleating of the lambs "to break the silence of the seas." Far below us a shepherd with his two dogs was gathering a small flock of sheep. They, and the larks, and the sea-birds were the only things that seemed alive. We had reached, as it were, the antipodes of "that full tide of human existence" in which Johnson delighted. For not a single day would he have endured the lonely dignity of

1. Buchanani Opera Omnia, ed. 1725, i. 40.
2. Martin's Western Islands, p. 170.