The Nevada Democrat., 1859-04-13
THE GAVE OF DEATH.
A THRILLING SKETCH,

y
titled the "Cruise Of the Betsey,o we take the
following interesting account Of the Cave 10
which the whole people Of the Island of Eigg,
one Of the Hebrides, were smoked to death by
: neighboring clan, the McLeods:
We struck a light, and worming ourselves
through the narrow entrance gained the lnte-
rior-a true rock gallery, vastly more roomy
and lofty than one could have anticipated from
the mean vestibule placed in front of it. Its
extreme length we found to be two hundred
and sixty feet; its extreme breadth twenty-seven
feet; it's height, where the roof rises highest,
from eighteen to twenty feet. The cave seems
to have owed its origin to two distinct causes.
The trap rocks on each side Of the vauit-llke
crevice which separates them are greatly de-
composed. as 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 upheayal of the land. When the Dog
stone at DunOlly existed as sea stock, skirted
with alQ@, the breakers on this shore must
have dashed every tide through the narrow
opening of the cavern, and scooped out by
handfuls the decomposing trap within.
The process Of decomposition, and conse-
quent enlargement, is still going on inside; but
there is no longer an agent to sweep away the
disintegrated fragment. Where the roof rises
lations of bulky decaying masses that have
dropped from above; and it is covered over its
entire erea Ey stratum Of earthy rubbish,
which has fallen from the sides and ceiling in
such abundance that it covers up the straw
beds of the perished islanders, which still exist
beneath, as O brown mouldering felt to the
depth of five or eight inches. Never yet was
tragedy enacted on gloomier theater. An
uncertain twilight glimmers gray at the en-
AZ ths.lo hut oil
within, for two hundred feet, is black as with
Egyptian darkness. As we passed on with our
one feeble light along the dark mouldering
wall and roof, which absorbed every struggling
ray that reached them, and over the dngy floor
roppy and damp, the place called to reeollec-
tion that hall in Roman story, hung and car
peted in black, into which Domitian once thrust
his Senate, in frolc. to read their own names
on the coffin lids placed against the wall. The
darkness seemed to press upon US from every
side, as il 1t were q 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 were
each others heads and faces and the lighter
parts of our dress.
The floor, for about one hundred feet nwards
from the narrow vestibule resembles that of a
cbarnel house. At almost every step we came
upon heaps Of human bones grouped together
as the Psalmist 20 graphically describes, as
when one cutteth aud cleaveth wood to the
earth" They are of brownish, earthly hue,
here and there tinged with green the skulls.
with the exception of a few broken fragments,
have disappeared; for travellers in the Hebrdes
have of late years been numerous and curious;
and many museum--tbat of AbbOtsford among
the rest-exhibits skull in memorial Of the
Massacre Of Eigg. We find too, further marks
of visitors 10 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 walls in families, each
little group separated few feet from the others.
Here and there the remains of detached skel-
eton may be seen, as if some robust islander,
restless in his agony, had stalked out into the
middle space ere he fell; but the social ar
rangement is the general one.
And beneath 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, largely mixed with the smaller bones of
the human frame, ribs and yertebr@. and hand
and feet bones occasionally, too. with frag-
ments of pottery, and various other implements
Of housewifery. The minister found for me,
under one family heap, the pieces of half
burnt, unglaZed earthern jar, with narrow
mouth, that, like the sepulohral urns of our
ancient tumuli, had been moulded by the hand,
without the assistance of the potter's wheel;
and to ono of the fragments there stuck mi
mute pellet of gray hair. From under another
heap he disinterred the handle stave of child's
wooden porringer, (bicker,) perforated by hole
still bearing the mark of the cord that hung it
to the wall and beside the stave lay few Of
The larger, less destructible bones of the child,
with what for time puzzled us both not
little-one of the grinders of horse.
Certain it was, no horse could have got there
TO have dropped q tooth--a foal of o week old
could not have passed itself through the OPEN
ing.-and how that single grinder, evidently no
recent introduction into the cave, could have
possibly got mixed up in the straw with the
human bones. seems an enigma somewhat of
the class to which the reel In the bottle belongs.
found in Edinburg an unexpected commen-
tator on the mystery, in the person of my little
year. had spread out on the floor the curl
osties of Eigg among the rest the relics of the
cave. including the pieces of earthern jar, and
the fragments of the porringer; but the horses
tooth seemed to be the only real curiosity
among them in the eyes of little Bill. He laid
instant hold of it, and approprating it as o toy,
continued playing with it till he fell asleep.
have now little doubt but that it was first
brought into the cave by the poor child amid
whose mouldering remains Mr.. Swanson found
II. The little pellet Of gray hair spoke of
feeble old age involved in this wholesale mas
sacre with the vigorous manhood of the island;
and here was a story of unsuspecting infancy
amusing itself on the eve of destruction with
its toys Alas for man! "Should not spare
Ninevah, that great city," said God to the angry
prophet, wherein are more than six score thou
sand persons that cannot discern between the
right band and the left?" Gods image must
have been sadly defaced in the murderers of
the poor inoffensive children of Eigg, ere they
could have heard their feeble wailings, raised,
no doubt, when the sitting atmosphere within
began to thicken, and yet ruthessiy persist in
their indscrimnate destruction,
"Some hundreds of years ago." says Mr..
Wilson, ga few of the McLeods landed in Eigg
from Skye, where. having greatly misconducted
themselves, the Eiggites strapped them to their
own boats, which they set adrift in the ocean.
They were. however, rescued by some clans.
men and soon after q strong body Of the Nc
LeOds set sail from Skye to revenge themselves