Eilean (Scottish Gaelic for island) Aros, the fictional island setting of the story, is based on the Isle of Erraid in the Inner Hebrides. Stevenson wrote of his time there in his collection of essays "Memories and Portraits", where he says "here is another isle in my collection, the memory of which besieges me. I put a whole family there, in one of my tales; and later on, threw upon its shores, and condemned to several days of rain and shellfish on its tumbled boulders, the hero of another."