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Updated: June 14, 2025
I had heard of the Giant's Causeway in Ireland, and Fingal's Cave in Staffa, one of the Hebrides; but I had never yet seen a basaltic formation. At Stapi I beheld this phenomenon in all its beauty. The wall that confined the fiord, like all the coast of the peninsula, was composed of a series of vertical columns thirty feet high.
It is one of that cluster of the Hebrides thus alluded to by Walter Scott: "And Ulva dark, and Colonsay, And all the group of islets gay That guard famed Staffa round."* * Lord of the Isles, canto 4. Our grandfather was intimately acquainted with all the traditionary legends which that great writer has since made use of in the "Tales of a Grandfather" and other works.
In the Lord of the Isles, Scott beautifully contrasts the church on Iona with the Cave of Staffa, opposite: "Nature herself, it seemed, would raise A minister to her Maker's praise!
Then the distant islands of Colonsay, and Staffa, and Lunga, and Fladda lying on this shining green sea, appeared to be of a perfectly transparent bronze; while nearer at hand the long ranges of cliffs were becoming a pale rose-red under the darkening blue-gray sky.
Here was the very picture he had so often desired that she should see the wind-swept Atlantic; the glad blue skies with their drifting clouds of summer white; the Erisgeir rocks; the green shores of Ulva; and Colonsay and Gometra and Staffa all shining in the sunlight; with the sea-birds calling, and the waves breaking, and the soft west wind stirring the fuchsia-bushes below the windows of Castle Dare.
I must stop now, as it is late and we are to leave here early to- morrow morning. We are going to Staffa, lona, the Pass of Glencoe, and finally through the Caledonian Canal up to Dunrobin Castle, where a large party of all sorts of interesting people are gathered around the Duchess of Sutherland. Affectionately yours,
It was looked upon as a holy island, and many kings and chiefs were buried there. Macbeth was the last king of Scotland who had that honour paid him. Opposite the cathedral we saw a beautiful cross, carved in high relief. It had fallen down, but had been replaced on a basement of granite. The next place of interest before which we brought-up was the island of Staffa.
There seems little doubt that the well-known columnar basalt of Staffa, as well as that of Antrim in Ireland, are of the same age, and not of higher antiquity, as once suspected. A large portion of the volcanic rocks of the Lower Rhine and the Eifel are coeval with the Lower Miocene deposits to which most of the "Brown-Coal" of Germany belongs.
Johnson visited Iona without looking at Staffa, which lay in sight, with that indifference to natural objects, either of taste or scientific curiosity, which characterised him. This is a fair enough sample of much of the criticism under which Johnson's reputation has suffered.
Sleep, solemn and profound, dwelt over the lonely islands over Staffa, with her resounding caves, and Fiadda, with her desolate rocks, and Iona, with her fairy-white sands, and the distant Dutchman, and Coll, and Tiree, all haunted by the wild sea-birds' cry; and a sleep as deep dwelt over the silent hills, far up under the cold light of the skies.
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