In 1864 Alexander Smith, poet and essayist, spent six weeks exploring the island of Skye. These weeks were among the most contented of his life and in "A Summer in Skye", his magnificent prose poem the reader will discover a celebration of Skye life, scenery, and history that was to bewitch him as he uncovered the subtle and mystical charm of the island. A keen observer of life , the author portrays the islanders, both at work and at play, and the customs that have now died out. His magnificent descriptions of the island and its landscape remains in among the finest ever written.

The following is just one section when he was living in a bothy.

I AM QUITE alone here. England may have been invaded and London sacked, for aught I know. Several weeks since a newspaper, accidently blown to my solitude, informed me that the Great Eastern, with the second American telegraphic cable on board, had got under way and was about to proceed to sea. There is great joy, I perceive. Human nature stands astonished at itself - felicitates itself on its remarkable talent and will for months to come complacently purr over its achievement in magazines and reviews. A fine world that will attain to heaven if in the power of steam. A very fine world; yet for all that, I have withdrawn from it for a time and would rather not hear of its remarkable exploits. In my present mood I do not value them the coil of vapour on the brow of Blaavin which, as I gaze, smoulders into nothing in the fire of sunrise.

Goethe informs us that in his youth he loved to shelter himself in the scripture narratives from the marching and counter-marching of armies, the cannonading, fighting and retreating, that went on everywhere around him. He shut his eyes, as it were and a whole war-convulsed Europe wheeled away into silence and distance; and in its place, lo! the patriarchs with their tawny tents, their man-servants and maidservants and countless flocks in perceptible procession whitening the Syrian plains.

In this, my green solitude, I appreciate the full sweetness of the passage. Everything here is silent as the Bible plains themselves. The noise of the world does not touch me. I live too far inland to hear the thunder of the reef. To this place no postman comes; no tax gatherer. This region never heard the sound of the church-going bell. The land is Pagan as when the yellow-haired Norsemen landed a thousand years ago. I almost feel a Pagan myself.

Not using a notched stick, I have lost all count of time and don't know Saturday from Sunday. Civilization is like a soldier's stock, it makes you carry your head a good deal higher, makes the angels weep a little more at your fantastic tricks and half suffocates you the while. I have thrown it away and breathe freely.

My bed is the heather, my mirror the stream from the hills, my comb and brush the sea breeze, my watch the sun, my theatre the sunset and my evening service - not without a rude natural religion in it - watching the pinnacles of the hills of Cuchullin sharpening in intense purple against the pallid orange of the sky, or listening to the melancholy voices of the sea-birds and the tide; that over, I am asleep, till touched by the earliest splendour of the dawn. I am, not without reason, hugely enamoured of my vagabond existence.

My bothy is situated on the shores of one of the Lochs that intersect Skye. The coast is bare and rocky, hollowed into fantastic chambers; and when the tide is making, every cavern murmurs like a sea-shell. The land, from frequent rain, green as emerald, rises into soft pastoral heights and about a mile inland soars suddenly up into peaks of bastard marble, white as the cloud under which the lark sings at noon and bathed in rosy light at sunset. In front are the Cuchullin hills and the monstrous peak of Blaavin; then the green strath runs narrowing out to sea and the Island of Rum, with a white cloud upon it, stretches like a gigantic shadow across the entrance of the loch and completes the scene.

Twice every twenty-four hours the Atlantic tide sets in upon the hollowed shores; twice is the sea withdrawn, leaving spaces of smooth sand on which mermaids, with golden combs, might sleek alluring tresses; and black rocks, heaped with brown dulse and tangle and lovely ocean blooms of purple and orange; and bare islets - marked at full of tide by a glimmer of pale green amid the universal sparkle - where most the sea-fowl love to congregate. To these islets, on favourable evenings, come the crows and sit in sable parliament; business despatched, they start into air as at a gun and stream away through the sunset to their roosting-place in the Armadale woods.

This is not a book it is to experience Skye.

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