6Just as with the Giant's Causeway in Ireland, some authors insisted that Fingal's Cave in Scotland was a manufactured, rather than a natural phenomenon. This excerpt is from a popular science magazine of 1882: "Until it is shown that a thousand yards of landlocked, iron-bound coast can be cut and tunneled in utter disregard of every known law of mechanical action, the caves in Staffa, on the west coast of Scotland, driven into igneous rock, not modified by local conditions, or in the weak places 'of an exposed cliff,' can not be classified as merely remarkable instances of caves worn by the sea." Whitehouse, F.C. "Is Fingal's Cave Artificial." Popular Science Monthly 22.12 (1882): 240. The article may be read in its entirely here. More information here.
The sound of the water rushing in and out of Fingal's Cave apparently inspired Felix Mendelssohn to compose his Hebrides overture. It was, and is, considered good fortune for a visitor to enter the cave by small boat and touch the back wall. Such luminaries as Johnson and Boswell, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, Sir Walter Scott, John Keats, and Robert Lewis Stevenson all made the effort. (Smith, Terence. "Where They Drink Whiskey in the Morning." The Atlantic December (2013): 49. Web. <http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/12/in-the-wake-of-dr-johnson/354666/>.)