With nature and a camera

Chapter I. St Kilda and its people

A sheep for half-a-crown

The loss occasioned by sheep being blown over the cliffs is considerable, but in Soa this is to a great extent compensated by the remarkable fecundity of the animals. Macaulay says that he was told a single ewe added nine sheep to the flock in thirteen months. "She had brought three lambs in the month of March, three more in the same month the year after, and each of the first three had a young one before they had been thirteen months old."

Clipping-shears are unknown in St Kilda, and the wool that does not drop off or cannot be pulled off the backs of the sheep is cut away with pocket-knives.

My friend Mackenzie told me that the people wanted to cross the original breed of Soa sheep with Scotch black-faced ones, but that MacLeod, of MacLeod, the proprietor, had very naturally objected, and taken the island over himself. He said that when folks talked of half-a-crown as being the remarkably low figure at which a whole sheep might be purchased in the Antipodes, they little dreamed that there were people in the British Isles paying only the same price for the best and sweetest mutton in the world, as MacLeod only charges the St Kildans two shillings and sixpence for each sheep they take away from Soa to kill.

Whilst passing round the back of St Kilda one day in a boat I noticed a curious heap of stones on a grass-clad ledge far down the face of the awesome cliff; and as the collection looked too regular for a mere accidental gathering I asked how it came there, and was told that the wee cairn had been piled up by a man who was lowered by means of a long rope every autumn on to the handbreadth of rock with a sheep which he left to browse on the few mouthfuls of luscious grass for three or four days. That any sane being should risk so much for so little seemed to me incredible.

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Captain McCallum told me an amusing anecdote about a poor old woman who accompanied her kinsmen on a journey from St Kilda to Harris in the days when they used to visit the latter place in their large boat. On the occasion in question night fell before a landing was effected, and when they did succeed in getting ashore it was on an unknown part of the coast. In searching for some kind of habitation the old woman accidentally got separated from her companions, and fell in with an object of supernatural brilliancy at which she marvelled greatly - a lighthouse. It being a sultry night the keeper had left the door open, that he might benefit by the improved ventilation. The old woman mounted the tower stairs in great awe, and when she came into the presence of the attendant and the dazzling brilliancy of his lanterns' rays she fell on her knees and began to address him as the Almighty. The man was, on his part, so startled that he concluded the aged St Kildan was some hag from the nether regions, to which he bade her get back in language more forcible than polite.

A somewhat similar thing is said to have happened near London in the early days of ballooning, when an aeronaut alighted in a ploughed field at Coulsdon, in Surrey. A labourer who happened to be working close by at the time was so overcome with fear at the unusual sight that when asked the name of the place by the man who had dropped from the clouds, he fell on his knees and replied: "Coulsdon, if you please, God Almighty!"