With nature and a camera

Chapter I. St Kilda and its people

A drifted buoy

The Gulf Stream occasionally takes charge of a plank washed off an Atlantic timber boat and lands it in Village Bay. I saw several lumps of wood that had come ashore in this way, but most of it had been rendered useless by the burrowings of innumerable teredos. The accompanying picture shows the havoc wrought by these little creatures in a piece of timber I picked up and brought home as a curiosity.

Driftwood bored by Teredos

The Gulf Stream played the St Kildans rather a cruel trick not long ago. A man whilst out on the hill-tops one afternoon had his attention attracted by the most bewildering object he had ever gazed upon. It was a great blood-red, conical thing bobbing about in the sea away to the west. After watching it for a moment, he rushed madly down to the village with the strange news. A boat was at once launched and pulled round the end of the Doon, where it fell in with the astonishing prize which, from its remarkable appearance and shape, was adjudged to be of great value. As there was a good deal of sea running at the time, and the size and shape of the prize made it somewhat unmanageable, it took a long time and a great deal of hard work to get it home and hauled into a safe place. When this had, however, been accomplished, they had nothing to do but speculate often and lavishly as to its value, and the fortune it would probably make for them all when its owner turned up to claim it.

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Alas, when the factor called the following summer, it was discovered to be only an old iron buoy that had broken loose from its moorings in New York harbour and drifted across the Atlantic. It now lies at Dunvegan, in Skye, an object of considerable curiosity to trippers, but not beloved of anybody hailing from St Kilda. It was afterwards discovered to have taken two years to cross the Atlantic.