With nature and a camera

Chapter I. St Kilda and its people

In Village Bay

As we passed Rock Lavenish the ship got the full benefit of wind and tide on her port, and, in consequence, rolled fearfully. Her decks were often at such an acute angle that the sailors themselves were obliged to hold on to whatsoever stable article lay within reach. No sooner, however, had we got inside Village Bay than the sea became almost as smooth as a mill-pond, and everybody was on deck, gazing intently at the weird scene. The sombre grandeur of the place was as awe-inspiring as the most dreadful page in Dante or Milton, and required the pencil of a Doré to do justice to its sublimity. The booming of the tide in the caves that run beneath the Doon sounded like the growl of chained monsters that had made a meal of the men and women who had once lived in the straggling line of primitive-looking dwellings standing at the foot of steep Conagher without a sign of life near them.

During the spring a bottle had been picked up somewhere amongst the Western Isles with a letter in it, purporting to have been sent from St Kilda, with the information that a Spanish ship had been lost there during the winter, and that sixteen rescued sailors were waiting to be taken off. A couple of Glasgow pressmen had accompanied us, and endured all sorts of hardships and discomforts that the dull work-a-day world might enjoy reading of the adventures and hairbreadth escapes of the survivors. I observed them wistfully scanning the shore in search of some evidence of the castaways, and felt genuinely sorry for their disappointment on discovering that the whole business was a cruel hoax.

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The St Kildans had no knowledge of the date of our coming, and the dogs, numbering between thirty and forty, were the first to discover our presence in the bay and tear pell-mell down to the water's edge. The dogs of Hirta - which is the Gaelic name of St Kilda - are a distinct feature of the place, and whenever a boat is being launched or hauled in there they all are congregated at the water's edge, engaged in furious barking, which generally ends in a fight, and a bundle of three or four, closely locked together, rolling into the sea.

As nobody was to be seen, our captain blew the ship's whistle, but although he succeeded in making a prodigious din which echoed and re-echoed amongst the crags, causing the sheep to scamper away up the steep hill-sides, he produced not a sign of human life on the place. After waiting a few minutes, he sent forth another loud blast, which frightened the Kittiwakes off their nests and sent them wheeling like a little snow-cloud across the bay. In a while, a small boy, who was evidently more curious or energetic than the rest of the population, came running down to the shore to gaze at us. Nearly every writer who has visited St Kilda has noted this seeming indifference of the natives to the arrival of strangers, and commented upon it. I think that the clean, shining faces, and smooth, glistening hair of the women, and general Sunday appearance of the men, afford an explanation. They are caught in what they consider an unpresentable state, and the time taken up between the arrival of a boat in the bay and the putting off of the natives is occupied in washing and tidying themselves up a bit.

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St Kildans landing stores

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By-and-by a boat put off and came alongside. I was particularly anxious to hear the first words of salutation from men who, though actually living within the confines of the British Isles, are in reality more out of touch with their country than the natives of Vancouver Island or Timbuctoo. As I could not get on deck in time, I popped my head out of a port-hole, and was startled to hear the minister wish everybody "A happy new year."

When we got ashore, we found most of the women and children had come down to the place of landing with great checked handkerchiefs full of birds' eggs, chiefly those of Guillemots and Razorbills, for which they found a ready sale at a penny a piece amongst the passengers and crew.

The first two things which struck me upon landing at St Kilda were the apparent dearth of sea-bird life and the joyous songs of the Wrens.

We climbed to the empty cottage in which we were to stay, and after sweeping out the plaster that had fallen off the wails during the preceding twelve months and lighting a fire on a grateless hearth, we began to set things to rights. The place being half buried in the base of a steep hill called Oisaval was fearfully damp, and when my brother, with the instinct of the photographer, commenced to prowl round in search of a "dark" room, the boards were in such a rotten condition on the ground floor that he fell through.

After tea we walked down to the beach to watch the natives bring their provisions ashore. The men conveyed the bags of meal and flour from the steamer to the rocks in their boat, whilst the women performed the far more arduous task of carrying them on their backs up the steep path to the cottages.

Each family consumes in a year nine bolls of oatmeal and flour, averaging out at one hundred and twenty pounds per head per annum; which is, according to the factor, twenty-eight per cent. more than the Hebridean ordinary crofter supplies himself and his family with.