The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls

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No story of Robert Louis Stevenson's life would be complete that failed
to mention the work done for Scotland and the world at large by the two
men he held most dear, the engineers, his father and grandfather.

When Robert Stevenson, his grandfather, received his appointment on the
Board of Northern Lights the art of lighthouse building in Scotland had
just begun. Its bleak, rocky shores were world-famous for their danger,
and few mariners cared to venture around them. At that time the coast
"was lighted at a single point, the Isle of May, in the jaws of the
Firth of Forth, where, on a tower already a hundred and fifty years old,
an open coal-fire blazed in an open chaufer. The whole archipelago thus
nightly plunged in darkness was shunned by seagoing vessels." [Footnote:
Stevenson, "Family of Engineers."]

The board at first proposed building four new lights, but afterward
built many more, so that to-day Scotland stands foremost among the
nations for the number and splendor of her coast lights.