Volume 3 - Electric Scotland

INSULAU CHURCHES. 393
Sanda ; while the monastery on Lanilash must at least
reckon for one. This entire district now contains three
parish churches.
Reviewing- the whole of this enumeration, the num-
ber of churches and chapels in the Western Islands, the
former existence of which can be proved, either from
inspection or good authority, amounts to 304. If there
be added, for the omissions, those which may be justi-
fied on the grounds already stated, the total should
be assuredly not less than 250; and, even then, it is
probable that many which have once existed, will remain
still unaccounted for, and that if 300 were assumed as
the number, the bounds of truth would not be exceeded.
It is possible that the ministers of the insular parishes
may know of many which have escaped my research; as,
without the aid of traditional knowledge, it is absolutely
impossible to discover those obscure remains.
Such was the state of religion here, or, if the terms
are convertible, the opulence or extent of the Catholic
Church. I do not mean to draw comparisons between
the past and present state of things ; as the only pur-
pose of this enumeration is to show, that although the
people are said to have taken their religion on trust
from their Chiefs, as you have yourself observed, it is
not likely that they were deficient in its ordinary duties,
or in religious belief, whatever that was. The Reforma-
tion has replaced all those churches and chapels, with
twenty-eight parish churches; and here my episode
should end.
But it is worth while to try to discover, or at least
to conjecture, what those churches and chapels were.
That lona and Oransa were both of them considerable
monastic establishments, splendid and wealthy, when
compared with the state and means of the age, needs not
be told. It does not seem certain what the nature of the