hile we shall have to consider some of the most wonderful caverns of other lands, we must not forget that Great Britain can boast of perhaps the most beautiful cave in the world. As we are a nation of sailors, it seems fitting that our marvellous cavern should rise directly from the sea, and that its pavement should be the mighty ocean. It is claimed as the most beautiful because it has the advantage of light to exhibit its wonders, as well as the endless variety of the dancing waves to illuminate its dark pillars with a never-ending flash of gems, as the waters dash against its walls in storms, or lap lovingly round them in the summer sunlight.

Fingal's Cave is one of many fringing the cliffs of the little island of Staffa, off the coast of Mull, in Scotland. These caves are all formed of what learned people call basalt, which means rocks moulded by the action of fire. Basalt contains a good deal of an opaque glassy substance, and its colour may be pale blue, dark blue, grey, brown, or black. This rock has a special faculty for building columns with (usually) six sides, but the form varies as much as the colour. These pillars are divided at fairly equal distances into lengths, just as stone pillars in a cathedral are generally built, and, wonderful to say, the joints, when closely examined, are found to be of the cup-and-ball pattern, on which our own bones are put into their sockets.

Basalt is usually hard and tough, and it is supposed, though with no certainty, that the regularity of the columns is the result of the contraction of the rock in cooling after undergoing great heat.

The name Staffa is a Scandinavian word meaning 'Pillar Island,' and no doubt its wonders have been known from very remote times. It is quite near the island of Iona, one of the earliest settlements of the Christian missionaries from Ireland.

A little distance from the shore is the tiny island of Bouchallie, or the Herdsman, which is entirely composed of basaltic rocks of great beauty; and from this islet a colonnade of pillars leads to the entrance of Fingal's Cave. The mouth of the cave is forty-two feet wide, the roof is fifty-six feet above, and the length of the cavern is two hundred and twenty-seven feet.

All down the sides pillars line the walls, and from above hang the ends of pendant columns. Below is the clear blue water, where even at low tide there is a depth of eighteen feet.

Sir Walter Scott was so impressed with this marvel of Nature, that he wrote:

Certainly no service that human tongues could utter could surpass in impressiveness the strains raised to the glory of the Creator by the waves as they enter this temple of His own building, and toss aloft their offerings of glistening water and snowy foam.

Fingal, the hero from whom the cave takes its name, was a mighty man of renown in the legendary days of both Scotland and Ireland. He figures in the poems of Ossian, as well as in Gaelic ballads as Fion or Fion na Gael, and no other lore has ever been so dear to the peasants of these countries as the record of the marvellous deeds of Fingal.

Another remarkable cave in Staffa is 'Clam-shell Cave,' which is of immense size. It is really a huge fissure in the cliff, of which one side is wonderfully like the ribs of a ship or the markings on a clam-shell. This appearance is the result of immense pillars of basalt crossing the rock in even lines.

A rough iron stairway has been put up the cliff to enable visitors to look into the cave from above.

The 'Boat Cave' is smaller than that of Fingal, but the basaltic formation is even more regular: this cavern runs for one hundred and fifty feet, and is about twelve feet broad.

Indeed the whole coast of Staffa is studded with caves, into some of which a boat can enter when the water is smooth, but this is not of very frequent occurrence on this storm-beaten coast.

Helena Heath.