3-039-097 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Land of Lorne: Island of Mull, 1871. 'The island of Mull, thirty miles long and twenty broad in some parts, but curved and indented to a very irregular shape, is separated from the Lorne coast, at Oban (with Kerrera lying in front of Oban), by its firth, ten or twelve miles in width; but from the Morven coast, towards the north, it is divided only by a strait, varying from one mile wide to three. Sailing or steaming up this channel, named the Sound of Mull, to the small seaport town of Tobermory, at its northwest extremity, you pass Ardtornish to the right hand, and Duart Castle, the stronghold of the Macleans, renowned in Ossian's heroic poetry, to the left, besides the ruins of Aros, and other relics of feudal or barbaric power. There is the "Lady's Rock," where a Maclean once exposed his wife, a daughter of the second Earl of Argyll, to be drowned by the flowing tide. The shore of Mull here is flat and low, but its westward mountains, and the cliffs of its southern coast, have a grand and imposing aspect. One remembers Dr. Johnson and Boswell here, with the pleasant anecdotes of their tour just a hundred years ago'. From "Illustrated London News", 1871.