We were eight days at Dunvegan, but we took the first opportunity which the weather afforded, after the first days, of going away, and, on the 21st, went to Ulinish, where we were well entertained, and wandered a little after curiosities.  In the afternoon, an interval of calm sunshine courted us out, to see a cave on the shore, famous for its echo.  When we went into the boat, one of our companions was asked, in Erse, by the boatmen, who they were, that came with him.  He gave us characters, I suppose, to our advantage, and was asked, in the spirit of the highlands, whether I could recite a long series of ancestors.  The boatmen said, as I perceived afterwards, that they heard the cry of an English ghost.  This, Boswell says, disturbed him.  We came to the cave, and, clambering up the rocks, came to an arch, open at one end, one hundred and eighty feet long, thirty broad, in the broadest part, and about thirty high.  There was no echo:  such is the fidelity of report; but I saw, what I had never seen before, muscles and whilks, in their natural state.  There was another arch in the rock, open at both ends.

September 23rd.  We removed to Talisker, a house occupied by Mr. Macleod, a lieutenant colonel in the Dutch service.  Talisker has been long in the possession of gentlemen, and, therefore, has a garden well cultivated, and, what is here very rare, is shaded by trees; a place where the imagination is more amused cannot easily be found.  The mountains about it are of great height, with waterfalls succeeding one another so fast, that as one ceases to be heard, another begins.  Between the mountains there is a small valley, extending to the sea, which is not far off, beating upon a coast, very difficult of access.

Two nights before our arrival, two boats were driven upon this coast by the tempest; one of them had a pilot that knew the passage; the second followed, but a third missed the true course, and was driven forward, with great danger of being forced into the vast ocean, but, however, gained, at last, some other island.  The crews crept to Talisker, almost lifeless with wet, cold, fatigue, and terrour, but the lady took care of them.  She is a woman of more than common qualifications; having travelled with her husband, she speaks four languages.

You find, that all the islanders, even in these recesses of life, are not barbarous.  One of the ministers, who has adhered to us almost all the time, is an excellent scholar.  We have now with us the young laird of Col, who is heir, perhaps, to two hundred square miles of land.  He has first studied at Aberdeen, and afterwards gone to Hertfordshire, to learn agriculture, being much impressed with desire of improvement; he, likewise, has the notions of a chief, and keeps a piper.  At Macleod’s the bagpipe always played, while we were dining.

Col has undertaken, by permission of the waves and wind, to carry us about several of the islands, with which he is acquainted enough to show us whatever curious is given by nature, or left by antiquity; but we grew afraid of deviating from our way home, lest we should be shut up for months upon some little protuberance of rock, that just appears above the sea, and, perhaps, is scarcely marked upon a map.