point--the Isle of May, in the jaws of the Firth of Forth, where,
on a tower already a hundred and fifty years old, an open coal-fire
blazed in an iron chauffer. The whole archipelago, thus nightly
plunged in darkness, was shunned by sea-going vessels, and the
favourite courses were north about Shetland and west about St.
Kilda. When the Board met, four new lights formed the extent of
their intentions--Kinnaird Head, in Aberdeenshire, at the eastern
elbow of the coast; North Ronaldsay, in Orkney, to keep the north
and guide ships passing to the south'ard of Shetland; Island Glass,
on Harris, to mark the inner shore of the Hebrides and illuminate
the navigation of the Minch; and the Mull of Kintyre. These works
were to be attempted against obstacles, material and financial,
that might have staggered the most bold. Smith had no ship at his
command till 1791; the roads in those outlandish quarters where his
business lay were scarce passable when they existed, and the tower
on the Mull of Kintyre stood eleven months unlighted while the
apparatus toiled and foundered by the way among rocks and mosses.
Not only had towers to be built and apparatus transplanted; the
supply of oil must be maintained, and the men fed, in the same
inaccessible and distant scenes; a whole service, with its routine
and hierarchy, had to be called out of nothing; and a new trade
(that of lightkeeper) to be taught, recruited, and organised. The
funds of the Board were at the first laughably inadequate. They
embarked on their career on a loan of twelve hundred pounds, and
their income in 1789, after relief by a fresh Act of Parliament,
amounted to less than three hundred. It must be supposed that the
thoughts of Thomas Smith, in these early years, were sometimes
coloured with despair; and since he built and lighted one tower
after another, and created and bequeathed to his successors the
elements of an excellent administration, it may be conceded that he