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Updated: May 20, 2025
Seals that haunted on that coast have been known to speak to man in his own tongue, presaging great disasters. It was here that a certain saint first landed on his voyage out of Ireland to convert the Hebrideans.
It was a Dublin vessel, manned by Irish and Hebrideans, with few Norsemen on board. They lay there for a long time during the summer, waiting for a favourable wind to sail into the firth, and many people from the Ness went down to trade with them.
"The sandalwood traders," wrote Paton, "are as a class the most godless of men.... By them the poor defenceless natives are oppressed and robbed on every hand; and if they offer the slightest resistance they are ruthlessly silenced by the musket or revolver.... The sale of intoxicants, opium, fire-arms, and ammunition by the traders among the New Hebrideans, had become a terrible and intolerable evil."
It was here that a certain saint first landed on his voyage out of Ireland to convert the Hebrideans. And, indeed, I think he had some claim to be called saint; for, with the boats of that past age, to make so rough a passage, and land on such a ticklish coast, was surely not far short of the miraculous.
Indeed, the whole expedition was highly perilous, considering the season of the year, the precarious chance of getting sea-worthy boats, and the ignorance of the Hebrideans, who, notwithstanding the opportunities, I may say the necessities, of their situation, are very careless and unskilful sailors. Croker's Boswell, p. 362. For as the tempest drives, I shape my way.
We were now able to get the names of persons and things, and so our ears got familiarized with the distinctive sounds of their language; and being always keenly on the alert, we made extraordinary progress in attempting bits of conversation and in reducing their speech for the first time to a written form for the New Hebrideans had no literature, and not even the rudiments of an alphabet.
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