ISLANDS FOR SALE

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 226, 20 June 1936, Page 22

ISLANDS FOR SALE

Strange Reunion of

Friends

Three isolated islands off the Outer Hebrides arc for sale. They are three of the loneliest islands scattered along the British coast. One man owns them and lives on them, with only flocks of sheep, thousands of wild sea birds, and an occasional shepherd for companj.

But through these islands two lives that broke apart many years ago in New Zealand have touched again in reunion; a .third, buried in the hurlyburly of London, has gained new hope and courage. The islands are Miiigalay, Pabbay and Berneray, which lie south of Barra, sixty miles from the mainland. Their owner is a fifty-five-year-old Englishman named J. H. Russell. At the beginning of the century young Russell set out from Britain for America, lie became a cowboy in Montana, then started a sheep ranch, which prospered. Russell returned to Britain to enlist for'tlie war. He served in a Scottish cavalry regiment. When the war ended lie took up his wanderings again. He arrived in Western Australia, and there he met a young Englishman who had left Eton to make his way in the Dominions. His name was Hervey-Bathurst. They became friends. The ex-soldier and the Old Etonian started a sheep farm in Queensland, then crossed to New Zealand together. There the business failed, and there their story ended—for a time. Russell came to Britain, heard of the three lonely islands off the Outer Hebrides, and bought them, He went to live on the island of Mingalay, which has only a four-roomed cottage and a disused chapel house. ; There is only one landing-ground on the island; a boat calls once weekly in summer: once every fortnight in winter. , . Occasionally a shepherd, tending the 700 sheep and lambs, called ou him, occasionally, too, he visited the men who tend the Barra Head lighthouse. That was all. Then, at last, be tired of the loneliness! He wrote to a firm of estate agents in London, asking them to sell his three islands. His letter was answered by his old friend, Mr. Hervey-Bathurst.