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When the natives now desire to send news of any happenings on the island to their friends, they cut a cavity in a solid piece of wood roughly hewn like a boat, and, putting a small canister or bottle containing a letter and request that whosoever picks it up will post it to its destination (a penny being enclosed in the boat for that purpose, they nail a lid or hatch over the cavity, with the letters of the words "Please open" crudely cut on the top of it. To the boat is attached a bladder made from a sheep's skin, and the whole is cast into the sea during the prevalence of a westerly wind. I was assured that an average of four out of six of these interesting little mailboats are picked up either on the shores of Long Island or Norway, and their contents forwarded to the people whose hands they are intended to reach. Such as find their way to the Norwegian coast are sent to the Foreign Office in London, from which venerable institution they emerge again in due course, accompanied by an official document often exceeding them many times in length. I was so much interested in these miniature mailboats that I got a man who was accustomed to make them to construct one for me absolutely complete in every particular. I had it put in the sea so as to observe its behaviour, and in order that my brother might have an opportunity of photographing the man in the act of despatching it.
St Kilda mailboat
As I had expressed a desire to hear from the St Kildans during the winter by means of one of their miniature mailboats, they dispatched one containing three letters for me at eleven o'clock on the morning of March 24th, during the prevalence of a north-westerly wind. On the 31st of the same month it was picked up by a shepherd in a little bay at Vahlay, North Uist, and its contents forwarded to me by post.
The letters had been placed in a small tin canister, and despite the fact that they had become soaked with sea water, they still retained a delightful aroma of peat smoke when they reached my hands, reminding me forcibly of my stay on the island.
Facsimile of portion of a letter received by the author per St Kilda mailboat
Facsimile of portion of a letter received by the author per St Kilda mailboat
Martin, in his entertaining account of a visit paid to St Kilda in 1697, as already mentioned, after praising the good looks of the people, says, "The present generation comes short of the last in strength and longevity. They showed us huge big stones, carried by the fathers of some of the inhabitants now living, any of which is a burthen too heavy for any two of the present inhabitants to raise from the ground, and this change is all within the compass of forty years. But notwithstanding this, anyone inhabiting St Kilda is always reputed stronger than two of the inhabitants belonging to the Isle of Harris or the adjacent isles."
Curiously enough, the same pessimistic belief in the physical degeneracy of the human race is rife today in many Yorkshire dales, and old men will as evidence of the fact point out huge stones in the remains of ancient dry walls that mark long-forgotten divisions of the land, and say that no man now living could lift them, forgetful of the fact that in all probability they never were lifted, but simply rolled into their present situations over smaller stones placed conveniently for the purpose.
The same historian whom I have just quoted also recorded the fact that men of Hirta had "generally but very thin beards." They have evidently taken the reproach to heart, for nearly all of them have now thick bushy ones.
Dispatch of the St Kilda mailboat
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