The earliest people to visit the Hebrides and leave behind an account of their travels were probably Roman seamen, but it is difficult now to identify Coll among the islands they describe. Rather later, the Vikings knew Coll, but left few written records- We are however told in an Icelandic saga of a raiding party which, in the years just before 1000, plundered Kintyre and the Isle of Man before heading north to Coll where they stayed for a while with Jarl Gilli, earl of the Hebrides. It is not until the middle of the sixteenth century that we can find travellers' descriptions of the island itself.

The first known description is by Dean Donald Monro (c.1500-1575) who seems to have known Coll personally. Before the Reformation he was a parish priest on Skye, later an assistant to the bishop of the Isles and, after 1560, a Protestant Minister. Perhaps it was to help the bishop that he travelled extensively in the islands, and described many of them. Of Coll, Dean Munro writes:

Be twa mile of sea northwart from Gunna lyis an ile of half a mile* lang callit Coll, tending in lenth from the SW to the NE, and twa mile braid. Ane mane fertile ile, inhabite and manurit, with anecastell and ane paroch kirk it it, gude for fishing and fowleris, with ane fine falconis nest in it.

A generation later an unknown author had also been to Coll, and what struck him was obviously the castle. He described Breachacha as:

verie near to the sea, quhilk defend is the half thairoff, and hes three wallis about the rest of the castell and theiroff, biggit with lyme and stane, with sundrie gude devises for defending of the tower. Ane uther wall about that, within the quhilk shippis and boittis are drawin and salvit. And the third and uttermostwall of timber and earth, within the quhilk the haill gudes of the cuntrie are keipit in time of trublis or warris.

The unknown author adds that Coll is "very fertile alsweill of cows as of all kinds of catteil." He also mentions what no one else has recorded, that "there is sum littil birkin woodis."

The next series of descriptions is found about a century later. The principal author seems to he John Fraser, another Dean of the Isles, and episcopal minister of Tiree who refused to conform to the Church of Scotland when the presbytery was restored in 1689, and who gave some information to Sir Robert Sibbald. the Geographer Royal under Charles II. Coll, says Fraser, is:

sufficiently fertile, it has small woods, many freshwater lochs, gouid springs and medicinal herbs, pettie rivers, In this lll are twa ruinous chepalls and a strong compak toure, seated neare the sea. The coast of this Island is better than that of Tiree or Gunna for ther entreth an arme of the sea in the Suth and Sutheast side of it called Loch Jern, where shippis may saflie venter. It is pleasant for fishing and fouling.

An entirely new look at Coll was taken just at the end of the seventeenth century, by Martin Martin, a Skye doctor particularly interested in climate, agriculture and disease. He made Coll 10 miles by 3 - it is in fact 13 miles by 5 at maximum - and found it "generally compos'd of little rocky hills, covered with heath." The North side was much flatter, with arable land producing barley and oats. Salmon were to be found in "several" rivers, and there was "a freshwater lake on the S.E. side" - near Breachacha - "which hath trouts and eels." Cod and ling of unusual size were to be caught off the coast. Coll was "much wholesomer" than Tiree, at least in the age of its inhabitants. Otherwise the two islands complemented each other. Coll produced more boys than girls - so Martin Martin said - and Tiree the reverse; ”… as if Nature intended both these Isles for mutual Alliances, without being at the trouble of going to the adjacent Isles or Continent [i,e. mainland] to be matched."

*Someone seems to have mistakenly copied "12" as "1/2"