The national era. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1847-1860, 1858-09-02
the CAVE Of DEATH.

s the GAte VI UtATH.
ia hugh Millers posthumous work entitled
: The Cruise of the Be,sey,n we take the follow.
ing interesting account Of the Cave in whit
the waoie people Of the Island of Eigg, one O,
.ns neosides, were smoked to death by neigh.
foring clan, the McIeods:
"We struck light, and. worminc oprse,voo
Through the narrow entrance, gained the ;n,e.
rior-a true rocks gallery, vastly more roomy
and lofty than one could have anticipated from
the mean vestibul placed in front of it, lie
Extreme length We found to be two hundred and
inxfy feet; its extreme breadth twenty-seven
tact; It's height, where the roof rises highest.
from eighteen TO twenty feet. The cave seems
% have Owed its origin to two distinct causes
The trap.rocks on each side of the fault like
erevice which separates them are greatly de-
composed, az if BY the moisture from above
and directly in the line Of the crevice must the
surf have charged, wave after wave, ages ere
the last npheaval of the land When the Dog
atone at Dunolly existed as a ses-stack, skirted
nsn aige, the breakers on this shore must have
dashed every tide through the narrow opening
ofths cavern, sad scooped out BY handfals the
decomposing trap within. The process of de
composition, and consequent enlargement. is
suh going on inside, but there is no longer an
agent to sweep away the distintegrated frae.
ments Where the roof rises highest, the q DOR
blocked up with Accommodations of bulky de.
caying masses, that have dropped from above;
and It 10 covered over its entire area by
stratum OF earthly rubbish, which has fallen
IRON the sides and ceiling in such abundance
tnst It covers up the straw beds of the perished
isianders, which still exist beneath, as a brown
mouidering felt, to the depth of from We to
elsns ,ncnes' Never yet was tragedy enacted
on . gioomier theatre. An uncertain twilight
ghmmers gray at the entrance, from the narrow
vestibule; but all within, for two hundred az
black as with Egyptian darkness. As we
passed onward with our enc feeble light. along
the dark Wondering walls and roof, which alb.
sorbed every struggling ray that reached them,
ana over the dingy floor, roppy and damp, the
place called to recollection that hall in Roman
story, hung and csrpeted with black, into which
Domilan once thrust his Senate, in q frolic, to
read their own names on the coffin.lids placed
against the wall. The darkness seemed TO press
upon ~ from every side, "a if it we're a dense
Jetty fluid, out of which our light had scooped
pailful or two, and that was rushing in To
supply the vacuum; and the only objects we
saw distinctly visible were each Others heads
and faces, and the lighter parts of our dress.
The foor, for about one hundred feet in wards
from the narrow vestibule, resembles that of q
|ehsrnethouse. At almost every step we came
upon heaps of human bones grouped together,
"a the Psalnist 90 graphically describes, as
when one cutteth and cleaveth wood to the
earth.' They are of a brownish, earthly hue,
here and there tinged with green; the skulls,
with the exception of few broken Fragments.
have disappeared; for travellers in the Hebri
des have OF late years been numerous and curl
GUS and many museum-that at Abbotsford
among the rest--exhibits, in a grinnipg skull
It's memorial OF the Massacre of Eigg. We find,
too, further marks of visiters in the single bones
separated from the heaps, and scattered over
the area but enough still remains to show. in
the general disposition of the remains, that the
hapless islanders died under the valls,in fami.
lies, each little group separated by few feet
from the others. Here and there the remaips
OF detached skeleton may be seen, as if some
robust islander, restless in his agony had stalk
ed out into the middle space ere he fell; but the
social arrangement is the general one. And be-
meath every heap we find, at the depth, as has
been said, OF few inches, the remains of the
straw bed upon which the family had lain,
nan frame, h6ss and ves,sBns lana. fsbaA shSd
feet bones occasionally. too, with fragments Of
ungiazed pottery, and various other i'm elements
OF rude housewlfery. The minister found for
me, under one family heap, the pieces of half
burned ungiazed esrthen jar, with q narrow
mouth, that like the sepulchraI urns of onr an.
cient tumuli, had been moulded bv the hand
without the assistance of the potter's wheel
and to one OF the fragments there s,uck a mi;
mute pellet OF gray hair. From under another
heap ne disinterred the handle-stave of a chiId's
wooden porringer (6icker,) perforated by hole
sun bearing the mark of the cord that had
hung 1t to the wall and beside the staye Law a
lew OF the larger, LEGS destructible bones of the
cniu, win what tor q time puzzled us both not
httle-one Of the grinders of horse. Ger
tain 1t was, no horse could have got there TO
have dropped a tooth--a foal of a week old
could not have pressed itself through the open.
ing and how that single grinder, evidently no
recent Introduction into the cave, could have
got mixed up In the straw with the human
oones, seemed an enigma somewhat of the class
10 which the reel in the bottle belongs. found
Ia edinburgh an unexpected commentator on
the mystery, in the person of my little bow,
an experimental philosopher 10 his second
year. L had spread out on the floor the curl
oslties OF Eigg, among the rest, the relics of
the cave, including the pieces of earthen lar,
ana Inc fragments of the porringer; but the
horses tooth seemed to be the only real curiosi
" among them in the ey es of little Bill, BE
iaid instant hold of it and, appropriatipg il
as toy, continued playing with it till he fell
asleep. l have ncw little doubt but that il
was hrst brought into the cave by the poor
child amid whose Wondering remains Mr.. |
Swanson found it. This little pellet of gray
hair spoke of feeble old age involved in this
wholesale massacre, with the vigorous manhood
OF the island and here was a story of unsus. |
Pecting infancy amusing itself on the eve OF
oesuuction with its toys. Alas, for man
oloulo not spare Nineveb, that great city,
IA q 81
than SIX score thousand persons that cannot
discern between their right hand ar their left p
zoos image must have been sadly defaced in
the murderers OF the poor incffensive children
OF Egg, ere they could have heard their feeble
wailings, raised, no doubt, when the sitting at
within began first to th;cken, and vet
ruthiessly persist in their work of indscrimina;e
Some hundreds of years ago." SAYS Mr..
Wilson, 4" a few of the McLsods landed in Eipo
rota Skye, where, having greatly misconducted
hemselves, the Eighties strapped them to their
,wn boats, which they set adrift into the ocean.
They we're, however, rescued by some clans.
men and, soon after, a strong body of the
set sail from Skye, to revenge them.
elves on Eigg. The natives of the latter island.
ceiling they were not of sufic ient force to offer
went and hid themselves linen. wo.
neD, ano Cniioren) In TINS secret cave, which
8 narrow. but of great subterranean length.
Nth an exceedingly small entrance. 1t opens
rom the broken face of a steep bank along the
bore; and, as the whole coast s cavernous,
ne'r particular retreat would have been soughs
Or in vain BY strangers. So the Skye. men.
hiding the island uninhabited, presumed the
ativss had fed, and satisfied their revenpef.l
eelings by ransacking and pillaging the empty
ouses. Probably the morables were cf no
reat value. They then took their departure.
nd left the leland xhen fho .;ah. &c !. I.E.-L'l