Raasay is supposed to have been very long inhabited.  On one side of it they show caves, into which the rude nations of the first ages retreated from the weather.  These dreary vaults might have had other uses.  There is still a cavity near the house called the oar-cave, in which the seamen, after one of those piratical expeditions, which in rougher times were very frequent, used, as tradition tells, to hide their oars.  This hollow was near the sea, that nothing so necessary might be far to be fetched; and it was secret, that enemies, if they landed, could find nothing.  Yet it is not very evident of what use it was to hide their oars from those, who, if they were masters of the coast, could take away their boats.

A proof much stronger of the distance at which the first possessors of this island lived from the present time, is afforded by the stone heads of arrows which are very frequently picked up.  The people call them Elf-bolts, and believe that the fairies shoot them at the cattle.  They nearly resemble those which Mr. Banks has lately brought from the savage countries in the Pacifick Ocean, and must have been made by a nation to which the use of metals was unknown.

The number of this little community has never been counted by its ruler, nor have I obtained any positive account, consistent with the result of political computation.  Not many years ago, the late Laird led out one hundred men upon a military expedition.  The sixth part of a people is supposed capable of bearing arms:  Raasay had therefore six hundred inhabitants.  But because it is not likely, that every man able to serve in the field would follow the summons, or that the chief would leave his lands totally defenceless, or take away all the hands qualified for labour, let it be supposed, that half as many might be permitted to stay at home.  The whole number will then be nine hundred, or nine to a square mile; a degree of populousness greater than those tracts of desolation can often show.  They are content with their country, and faithful to their chiefs, and yet uninfected with the fever of migration.

Near the house, at Raasay, is a chapel unroofed and ruinous, which has long been used only as a place of burial.  About the churches, in the Islands, are small squares inclosed with stone, which belong to particular families, as repositories for the dead.  At Raasay there is one, I think, for the proprietor, and one for some collateral house.

It is told by Martin, that at the death of the Lady of the Island, it has been here the custom to erect a cross.  This we found not to be true.  The stones that stand about the chapel at a small distance, some of which perhaps have crosses cut upon them, are believed to have been not funeral monuments, but the ancient boundaries of the sanctuary or consecrated ground.