seventeenth century, this was one of the places where the foot of man
had never trod, and a prize of a cow was offered to any man who would
climb the face of the cliff and establish a connection with the mainland
by means of a rope, as it was thought that the Holm would provide
pasturage for about twenty sheep. A daring fowler, from Foula Island,
successfully performed the feat, and ropes were firmly secured to the
rocks on each side, and along two parallel ropes a box or basket was
fixed, capable of holding a man and a sheep. This apparatus was named
the Cradle of Noss, and was so arranged that an Islander with or without
a sheep placed in the cradle could drag himself across the chasm in
either direction. Instead, however, of returning by the rope or cradle,
on which he would have been comparatively safe, the hardy fowler decided
to go back by the same way he had come, and, missing his foothold,
fell on the rocks in the sea below and was dashed to pieces, so that
the prize was never claimed by him.

[Illustration: THE HOLM OF NOSS. "It made us shudder ... as we peered
down on the abysmal depths below."]

We felt almost spellbound as we approached this awful chasm, and as if
we were being impelled by some invisible force towards the edge of the
precipice. It fairly made us shudder as on hands and knees we peered
down on the abysmal depths below. It was a horrible sensation, and one
that sometimes haunted us in our dreams for years afterwards, and we
felt greatly relieved when we found that we could safely crawl away and
regain an upright posture. We could see thousands upon thousands of wild
birds, amongst which the ordinary sea-gull was largely represented; but
there were many other varieties of different colours, and the
combination of their varied cries, mingled with the bleating of the
sheep, the whistling of the wind, the roaring of the waves as they