Treshnish Isles, a group of Hebridean islets, 5 miles NNW of Staffa, 5½ SE of Coll, and 3 W of the entrance of Loch Tuadh in Mull. They are disposed in a chain of between 4 and 5 miles in length from NE to SW; and consist of five principal isles and some intervening rocks. Their whole coasts, with little exception, present perpendicular cliffs of from 40 to upwards of 60 feet in height; and, as seen from a little distance, they possess a singularly interesting appearance, and give a promise, which they but slenderly realise, of disclosing objects of worth to naturalists and the curious. They are mere uninhabited pasture-grounds, carpeted with rich grass, and attached to a farm in Coll. - Cairnbugmore and Cairnbug-beg, two of the principal, are separated by a very narrow strait, and are supposed to have anciently formed the limits and the advanced post of the Sudreys or Southern Hebrides. A fortalice on the former seems to have been constructed by the Macleans, on the site of a more ancient strength which history states to have been in the possession of the Norwegians in 1249; and as part of it which remains is a wall with embrasures skirting the edge of the cliff, it most probably was mounted with ordnance. Many books and records rescued from Iona at the time of the suppression of its monastery having been deposited in this fortalice, were destroyed in the course of a siege which the place sustained from a detachment of Cromwell's army. A barrack on Cairnbug-beg is still tolerably entire. Fladda, a third of the principal isles, has a uniformly flat and uninteresting aspect; Linga, a fourth, rises from a low plain by a succession of terraces into a hill 300 feet high; and Back, the fifth, is `distinguished by a hill which in some positions has the appearance of a hemisphere, from which the whole island acquires the semblance of an ancient shield with the umbo protuberant in the centre.' The isles are composed throughout of amygdaloid and basalt - the latter of perpendicular fracture but not columnar.
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