Raasay Is Supposed To Have Been Very Long Inhabited.
On one side
of it they show caves, into which the rude nations of the first
ages retreated from the weather.
These dreary vaults might have
had other uses. There is still a cavity near the house called the
oar-cave, in which the seamen, after one of those piratical
expeditions, which in rougher times were very frequent, used, as
tradition tells, to hide their oars. This hollow was near the sea,
that nothing so necessary might be far to be fetched; and it was
secret, that enemies, if they landed, could find nothing. Yet it
is not very evident of what use it was to hide their oars from
those, who, if they were masters of the coast, could take away
their boats.
A proof much stronger of the distance at which the first possessors
of this island lived from the present time, is afforded by the
stone heads of arrows which are very frequently picked up. The
people call them Elf-bolts, and believe that the fairies shoot them
at the cattle. They nearly resemble those which Mr. Banks has
lately brought from the savage countries in the Pacifick Ocean, and
must have been made by a nation to which the use of metals was
unknown.
The number of this little community has never been counted by its
ruler, nor have I obtained any positive account, consistent with
the result of political computation. Not many years ago, the late
Laird led out one hundred men upon a military expedition.
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