In the years following the Jacobite rebellions, the number of visitors to the Hebrides increased greatly. All the accounts mentioned here fall within the relatively short period between 1760 and 1773, quite a contrast with the rarity of visits in previous decades. Some of the things which interested the travellers were by no means new. In a previous generation, Dean Fraser (see Coll Magazine. No. 1) was very concerned about second sight, and described how the servant of one of the lairds had seen his master dripping with water a year before he drowned. In 1760, an Irish bishop called Richard Popcocke recorded his impression that the phenomenon was particularly common on Coll and the nearby islands. A year later, Rev. Donald MacLeod, a minister of Skye, took up the theme. He told how the gift was possessed by the laird's wife and by Maclean of Knock (between Gallanach and Torastan).

Though folklore of this type continued to attract travellers, many of those who came after Macleod added more substantial concerns. Only a year after Macleod's book was published, Dr John Walker visited a number of islands, including Coll, and wrote not only about farming (see Farming on Coll, 1764 page 7) but buildings on the island as well. Like many of his predecessors, Walker was struck by their Castle, but unlike them he was able to add descriptions of two more modern items of real estate erected by the Coll family. The recently built new Castle Walker judged "a very good modern building", and the White House at Grishipol was "well built and slated, and well lighted". Walker visited Coll in July, and it seems to have been a perfect summer. He described the machair mor, with its red and yellow clover, buttercups, and bloody cranesbill, as "the most beautiful embroidered carpet that the earth is perhaps anywhere covered with."

The weather was very different in October 1773 when Samuel Johnson and James Boswell arrived in a dramatic and unintended manner. They had set out from Skye for Mull, but the wind changed and the sea became very rough. Their sails tore, and darkness fell. Under the guidance of the son of the laird of Coll, they made for Loch Eatharna. Young Coll lay in the bows, peering into the darkness by the light of a glowing peat, while the miserable Boswell pulled aimlessly on a rope to keep out of the way, and worried in case the peat sparks would set off young Coll's gunpowder. When they made land, there followed the most celebrated ten day stay on Coll that there has ever been.

The circumstances of their arrival some what coloured their view of the island. Johnson declared that he had never heard the wind so loud in any other place. 21 Undeterred, they followed in the footsteps of previous visitors. Boswell, like Walker, was impressed by Grishipol, but was less observant in seeing only two storeys where Walker mentioned three. From Grishipol the pair rode past Ben Hogh and through the bents to the Castles. The laird was not at home - he had for some time been living in Aberdeen - but Boswell thought the new Castle "a neat gentleman's house." Johnson was less complimentary. He said "there was nothing becoming a chief about it. It was quite a tradesman's box." More practically, though beside the older building the new Castle must have looked very up to date, the rain was already finding its way through the windows. Johnson obviously much preferred the old Castle. Keen to investigate this "specimen of our ancient life" he squeezed into a narrow passage, and had to undo his waistcoat before he could get out.

The visitors' impression of the islanders was largely favourable. Coll was nearly self sufficient, and its people industrious. They tanned bark for footwear (which was previously imported), and made candles from various natural products. There were two carpenters, but most Collachs made or mended their own boats. They made and dyed their own clothes, but every year a man took a boat to Greenock for hardware, ribbons, and other small items, and their bonnets too came from the mainland. In a good year, Coll could export considerable quantities of grain.

The two desirable residences apart, conditions of life for most classes of society were much the same. At Feall, Boswell saw a village of forty or so small houses each so simply thatched that at a distance they could not be distinguished from the stacks of corn which stood nearby. From far off, the whole village looked like a very large barnyard. Further up the social scale, when the visitors went to see Captain Lachlan Maclean, a relative of the laird who had made money in the East and had taken a farm on Coll, they found him in a dwelling built of stone, but with no plaster or finishing of any kind. Some of the conditions of the very poor reached even the laird's family. When Boswell was required to sleep in the same bed as the laird's son, he hesitated, in fear that his companion might have the itch. In the end, of course, it all turned out well enough. The visitor concluded, "Upon inspection - as much as could be without his observing it - he seemed to be quite clean, and the bed was very broad."