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+Project Gutenberg Etext Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland
+#3 in our series by Samuel Johnson
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+A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland
+
+by Samuel Johnson
+
+February, 2000 [Etext #2064]
+
+
+Project Gutenberg Etext Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland
+******This file should be named jwsct10.txt or jwsct10.zip******
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+
+A JOURNEY TO THE WESTERN ISLANDS OF SCOTLAND
+
+
+
+
+INCH KEITH
+
+
+
+I had desired to visit the Hebrides, or Western Islands of
+Scotland, so long, that I scarcely remember how the wish was
+originally excited; and was in the Autumn of the year 1773 induced
+to undertake the journey, by finding in Mr. Boswell a companion,
+whose acuteness would help my inquiry, and whose gaiety of
+conversation and civility of manners are sufficient to counteract
+the inconveniences of travel, in countries less hospitable than we
+have passed.
+
+On the eighteenth of August we left Edinburgh, a city too well
+known to admit description, and directed our course northward,
+along the eastern coast of Scotland, accompanied the first day by
+another gentleman, who could stay with us only long enough to shew
+us how much we lost at separation.
+
+As we crossed the Frith of Forth, our curiosity was attracted by
+Inch Keith, a small island, which neither of my companions had ever
+visited, though, lying within their view, it had all their lives
+solicited their notice.  Here, by climbing with some difficulty
+over shattered crags, we made the first experiment of unfrequented
+coasts.  Inch Keith is nothing more than a rock covered with a thin
+layer of earth, not wholly bare of grass, and very fertile of
+thistles.  A small herd of cows grazes annually upon it in the
+summer.  It seems never to have afforded to man or beast a
+permanent habitation.
+
+We found only the ruins of a small fort, not so injured by time but
+that it might be easily restored to its former state.  It seems
+never to have been intended as a place of strength, nor was built
+to endure a siege, but merely to afford cover to a few soldiers,
+who perhaps had the charge of a battery, or were stationed to give
+signals of approaching danger.  There is therefore no provision of
+water within the walls, though the spring is so near, that it might
+have been easily enclosed.  One of the stones had this inscription:
+'Maria Reg. 1564.'  It has probably been neglected from the time
+that the whole island had the same king.
+
+We left this little island with our thoughts employed awhile on the
+different appearance that it would have made, if it had been placed
+at the same distance from London, with the same facility of
+approach; with what emulation of price a few rocky acres would have
+been purchased, and with what expensive industry they would have
+been cultivated and adorned.
+
+When we landed, we found our chaise ready, and passed through
+Kinghorn, Kirkaldy, and Cowpar, places not unlike the small or
+straggling market-towns in those parts of England where commerce
+and manufactures have not yet produced opulence.
+
+Though we were yet in the most populous part of Scotland, and at so
+small a distance from the capital, we met few passengers.
+
+The roads are neither rough nor dirty; and it affords a southern
+stranger a new kind of pleasure to travel so commodiously without
+the interruption of toll-gates.  Where the bottom is rocky, as it
+seems commonly to be in Scotland, a smooth way is made indeed with
+great labour, but it never wants repairs; and in those parts where
+adventitious materials are necessary, the ground once consolidated
+is rarely broken; for the inland commerce is not great, nor are
+heavy commodities often transported otherwise than by water.  The
+carriages in common use are small carts, drawn each by one little
+horse; and a man seems to derive some degree of dignity and
+importance from the reputation of possessing a two-horse cart.
+
+
+
+ST. ANDREWS
+
+
+
+At an hour somewhat late we came to St. Andrews, a city once
+archiepiscopal; where that university still subsists in which
+philosophy was formerly taught by Buchanan, whose name has as fair
+a claim to immortality as can be conferred by modern latinity, and
+perhaps a fairer than the instability of vernacular languages
+admits.
+
+We found, that by the interposition of some invisible friend,
+lodgings had been provided for us at the house of one of the
+professors, whose easy civility quickly made us forget that we were
+strangers; and in the whole time of our stay we were gratified by
+every mode of kindness, and entertained with all the elegance of
+lettered hospitality.
+
+In the morning we rose to perambulate a city, which only history
+shews to have once flourished, and surveyed the ruins of ancient
+magnificence, of which even the ruins cannot long be visible,
+unless some care be taken to preserve them; and where is the
+pleasure of preserving such mournful memorials?  They have been
+till very lately so much neglected, that every man carried away the
+stones who fancied that he wanted them.
+
+The cathedral, of which the foundations may be still traced, and a
+small part of the wall is standing, appears to have been a spacious
+and majestick building, not unsuitable to the primacy of the
+kingdom.  Of the architecture, the poor remains can hardly exhibit,
+even to an artist, a sufficient specimen.  It was demolished, as is
+well known, in the tumult and violence of Knox's reformation.
+
+Not far from the cathedral, on the margin of the water, stands a
+fragment of the castle, in which the archbishop anciently resided.
+It was never very large, and was built with more attention to
+security than pleasure.  Cardinal Beatoun is said to have had
+workmen employed in improving its fortifications at the time when
+he was murdered by the ruffians of reformation, in the manner of
+which Knox has given what he himself calls a merry narrative.
+
+The change of religion in Scotland, eager and vehement as it was,
+raised an epidemical enthusiasm, compounded of sullen
+scrupulousness and warlike ferocity, which, in a people whom
+idleness resigned to their own thoughts, and who, conversing only
+with each other, suffered no dilution of their zeal from the
+gradual influx of new opinions, was long transmitted in its full
+strength from the old to the young, but by trade and intercourse
+with England, is now visibly abating, and giving way too fast to
+that laxity of practice and indifference of opinion, in which men,
+not sufficiently instructed to find the middle point, too easily
+shelter themselves from rigour and constraint.
+
+The city of St. Andrews, when it had lost its archiepiscopal pre-
+eminence, gradually decayed:  One of its streets is now lost; and
+in those that remain, there is silence and solitude of inactive
+indigence and gloomy depopulation.
+
+The university, within a few years, consisted of three colleges,
+but is now reduced to two; the college of St. Leonard being lately
+dissolved by the sale of its buildings and the appropriation of its
+revenues to the professors of the two others.  The chapel of the
+alienated college is yet standing, a fabrick not inelegant of
+external structure; but I was always, by some civil excuse, hindred
+from entering it.  A decent attempt, as I was since told, has been
+made to convert it into a kind of green-house, by planting its area
+with shrubs.  This new method of gardening is unsuccessful; the
+plants do not hitherto prosper.  To what use it will next be put I
+have no pleasure in conjecturing.  It is something that its present
+state is at least not ostentatiously displayed.  Where there is yet
+shame, there may in time be virtue.
+
+The dissolution of St. Leonard's college was doubtless necessary;
+but of that necessity there is reason to complain.  It is surely
+not without just reproach, that a nation, of which the commerce is
+hourly extending, and the wealth encreasing, denies any
+participation of its prosperity to its literary societies; and
+while its merchants or its nobles are raising palaces, suffers its
+universities to moulder into dust.
+
+Of the two colleges yet standing, one is by the institution of its
+founder appropriated to Divinity.  It is said to be capable of
+containing fifty students; but more than one must occupy a chamber.
+The library, which is of late erection, is not very spacious, but
+elegant and luminous.
+
+The doctor, by whom it was shewn, hoped to irritate or subdue my
+English vanity by telling me, that we had no such repository of
+books in England.
+
+Saint Andrews seems to be a place eminently adapted to study and
+education, being situated in a populous, yet a cheap country, and
+exposing the minds and manners of young men neither to the levity
+and dissoluteness of a capital city, nor to the gross luxury of a
+town of commerce, places naturally unpropitious to learning; in one
+the desire of knowledge easily gives way to the love of pleasure,
+and in the other, is in danger of yielding to the love of money.
+
+The students however are represented as at this time not exceeding
+a hundred.  Perhaps it may be some obstruction to their increase
+that there is no episcopal chapel in the place.  I saw no reason
+for imputing their paucity to the present professors; nor can the
+expence of an academical education be very reasonably objected.  A
+student of the highest class may keep his annual session, or as the
+English call it, his term, which lasts seven months, for about
+fifteen pounds, and one of lower rank for less than ten; in which
+board, lodging, and instruction are all included.
+
+The chief magistrate resident in the university, answering to our
+vice-chancellor, and to the rector magnificus on the continent, had
+commonly the title of Lord Rector; but being addressed only as Mr.
+Rector in an inauguratory speech by the present chancellor, he has
+fallen from his former dignity of style.  Lordship was very
+liberally annexed by our ancestors to any station or character of
+dignity:  They said, the Lord General, and Lord Ambassador; so we
+still say, my Lord, to the judge upon the circuit, and yet retain
+in our Liturgy the Lords of the Council.
+
+In walking among the ruins of religious buildings, we came to two
+vaults over which had formerly stood the house of the sub-prior.
+One of the vaults was inhabited by an old woman, who claimed the
+right of abode there, as the widow of a man whose ancestors had
+possessed the same gloomy mansion for no less than four
+generations.  The right, however it began, was considered as
+established by legal prescription, and the old woman lives
+undisturbed.  She thinks however that she has a claim to something
+more than sufferance; for as her husband's name was Bruce, she is
+allied to royalty, and told Mr. Boswell that when there were
+persons of quality in the place, she was distinguished by some
+notice; that indeed she is now neglected, but she spins a thread,
+has the company of her cat, and is troublesome to nobody.
+
+Having now seen whatever this ancient city offered to our
+curiosity, we left it with good wishes, having reason to be highly
+pleased with the attention that was paid us.  But whoever surveys
+the world must see many things that give him pain.  The kindness of
+the professors did not contribute to abate the uneasy remembrance
+of an university declining, a college alienated, and a church
+profaned and hastening to the ground.
+
+St. Andrews indeed has formerly suffered more atrocious ravages and
+more extensive destruction, but recent evils affect with greater
+force.  We were reconciled to the sight of archiepiscopal ruins.
+The distance of a calamity from the present time seems to preclude
+the mind from contact or sympathy.  Events long past are barely
+known; they are not considered.  We read with as little emotion the
+violence of Knox and his followers, as the irruptions of Alaric and
+the Goths.  Had the university been destroyed two centuries ago, we
+should not have regretted it; but to see it pining in decay and
+struggling for life, fills the mind with mournful images and
+ineffectual wishes.
+
+
+
+ABERBROTHICK
+
+
+
+As we knew sorrow and wishes to be vain, it was now our business to
+mind our way.  The roads of Scotland afford little diversion to the
+traveller, who seldom sees himself either encountered or overtaken,
+and who has nothing to contemplate but grounds that have no visible
+boundaries, or are separated by walls of loose stone.  From the
+bank of the Tweed to St. Andrews I had never seen a single tree,
+which I did not believe to have grown up far within the present
+century.  Now and then about a gentleman's house stands a small
+plantation, which in Scotch is called a policy, but of these there
+are few, and those few all very young.  The variety of sun and
+shade is here utterly unknown.  There is no tree for either shelter
+or timber.  The oak and the thorn is equally a stranger, and the
+whole country is extended in uniform nakedness, except that in the
+road between Kirkaldy and Cowpar, I passed for a few yards between
+two hedges.  A tree might be a show in Scotland as a horse in
+Venice.  At St. Andrews Mr. Boswell found only one, and recommended
+it to my notice; I told him that it was rough and low, or looked as
+if I thought so.  This, said he, is nothing to another a few miles
+off.  I was still less delighted to hear that another tree was not
+to be seen nearer.  Nay, said a gentleman that stood by, I know but
+of this and that tree in the county.
+
+The Lowlands of Scotland had once undoubtedly an equal portion of
+woods with other countries.  Forests are every where gradually
+diminished, as architecture and cultivation prevail by the increase
+of people and the introduction of arts.  But I believe few regions
+have been denuded like this, where many centuries must have passed
+in waste without the least thought of future supply.  Davies
+observes in his account of Ireland, that no Irishman had ever
+planted an orchard.  For that negligence some excuse might be drawn
+from an unsettled state of life, and the instability of property;
+but in Scotland possession has long been secure, and inheritance
+regular, yet it may be doubted whether before the Union any man
+between Edinburgh and England had ever set a tree.
+
+Of this improvidence no other account can be given than that it
+probably began in times of tumult, and continued because it had
+begun.  Established custom is not easily broken, till some great
+event shakes the whole system of things, and life seems to
+recommence upon new principles.  That before the Union the Scots
+had little trade and little money, is no valid apology; for
+plantation is the least expensive of all methods of improvement.
+To drop a seed into the ground can cost nothing, and the trouble is
+not great of protecting the young plant, till it is out of danger;
+though it must be allowed to have some difficulty in places like
+these, where they have neither wood for palisades, nor thorns for
+hedges.
+
+Our way was over the Firth of Tay, where, though the water was not
+wide, we paid four shillings for ferrying the chaise.  In Scotland
+the necessaries of life are easily procured, but superfluities and
+elegancies are of the same price at least as in England, and
+therefore may be considered as much dearer.
+
+We stopped a while at Dundee, where I remember nothing remarkable,
+and mounting our chaise again, came about the close of the day to
+Aberbrothick.
+
+The monastery of Aberbrothick is of great renown in the history of
+Scotland.  Its ruins afford ample testimony of its ancient
+magnificence:  Its extent might, I suppose, easily be found by
+following the walls among the grass and weeds, and its height is
+known by some parts yet standing.  The arch of one of the gates is
+entire, and of another only so far dilapidated as to diversify the
+appearance.  A square apartment of great loftiness is yet standing;
+its use I could not conjecture, as its elevation was very
+disproportionate to its area.  Two corner towers, particularly
+attracted our attention.  Mr. Boswell, whose inquisitiveness is
+seconded by great activity, scrambled in at a high window, but
+found the stairs within broken, and could not reach the top.  Of
+the other tower we were told that the inhabitants sometimes climbed
+it, but we did not immediately discern the entrance, and as the
+night was gathering upon us, thought proper to desist.  Men skilled
+in architecture might do what we did not attempt:  They might
+probably form an exact ground-plot of this venerable edifice.  They
+may from some parts yet standing conjecture its general form, and
+perhaps by comparing it with other buildings of the same kind and
+the same age, attain an idea very near to truth.  I should scarcely
+have regretted my journey, had it afforded nothing more than the
+sight of Aberbrothick.
+
+
+
+MONTROSE
+
+
+
+Leaving these fragments of magnificence, we travelled on to
+Montrose, which we surveyed in the morning, and found it well
+built, airy, and clean.  The townhouse is a handsome fabrick with a
+portico.  We then went to view the English chapel, and found a
+small church, clean to a degree unknown in any other part of
+Scotland, with commodious galleries, and what was yet less
+expected, with an organ.
+
+At our inn we did not find a reception such as we thought
+proportionate to the commercial opulence of the place; but Mr.
+Boswell desired me to observe that the innkeeper was an Englishman,
+and I then defended him as well as I could.
+
+When I had proceeded thus far, I had opportunities of observing
+what I had never heard, that there are many beggars in Scotland.
+In Edinburgh the proportion is, I think, not less than in London,
+and in the smaller places it is far greater than in English towns
+of the same extent.  It must, however, be allowed that they are not
+importunate, nor clamorous.  They solicit silently, or very
+modestly, and therefore though their behaviour may strike with more
+force the heart of a stranger, they are certainly in danger of
+missing the attention of their countrymen.  Novelty has always some
+power, an unaccustomed mode of begging excites an unaccustomed
+degree of pity.  But the force of novelty is by its own nature soon
+at an end; the efficacy of outcry and perseverance is permanent and
+certain.
+
+The road from Montrose exhibited a continuation of the same
+appearances.  The country is still naked, the hedges are of stone,
+and the fields so generally plowed that it is hard to imagine where
+grass is found for the horses that till them.  The harvest, which
+was almost ripe, appeared very plentiful.
+
+Early in the afternoon Mr. Boswell observed that we were at no
+great distance from the house of lord Monboddo.  The magnetism of
+his conversation easily drew us out of our way, and the
+entertainment which we received would have been a sufficient
+recompense for a much greater deviation.
+
+The roads beyond Edinburgh, as they are less frequented, must be
+expected to grow gradually rougher; but they were hitherto by no
+means incommodious.  We travelled on with the gentle pace of a
+Scotch driver, who having no rivals in expedition, neither gives
+himself nor his horses unnecessary trouble.  We did not affect the
+impatience we did not feel, but were satisfied with the company of
+each other as well riding in the chaise, as sitting at an inn.  The
+night and the day are equally solitary and equally safe; for where
+there are so few travellers, why should there be robbers.
+
+
+
+ABERDEEN
+
+
+
+We came somewhat late to Aberdeen, and found the inn so full, that
+we had some difficulty in obtaining admission, till Mr. Boswell
+made himself known:  His name overpowered all objection, and we
+found a very good house and civil treatment.
+
+I received the next day a very kind letter from Sir Alexander
+Gordon, whom I had formerly known in London, and after a cessation
+of all intercourse for near twenty years met here professor of
+physic in the King's College.  Such unexpected renewals of
+acquaintance may be numbered among the most pleasing incidents of
+life.
+
+The knowledge of one professor soon procured me the notice of the
+rest, and I did not want any token of regard, being conducted
+wherever there was any thing which I desired to see, and
+entertained at once with the novelty of the place, and the kindness
+of communication.
+
+To write of the cities of our own island with the solemnity of
+geographical description, as if we had been cast upon a newly
+discovered coast, has the appearance of very frivolous ostentation;
+yet as Scotland is little known to the greater part of those who
+may read these observations, it is not superfluous to relate, that
+under the name of Aberdeen are comprised two towns standing about a
+mile distant from each other, but governed, I think, by the same
+magistrates.
+
+Old Aberdeen is the ancient episcopal city, in which are still to
+be seen the remains of the cathedral.  It has the appearance of a
+town in decay, having been situated in times when commerce was yet
+unstudied, with very little attention to the commodities of the
+harbour.
+
+New Aberdeen has all the bustle of prosperous trade, and all the
+shew of increasing opulence.  It is built by the water-side.  The
+houses are large and lofty, and the streets spacious and clean.
+They build almost wholly with the granite used in the new pavement
+of the streets of London, which is well known not to want hardness,
+yet they shape it easily.  It is beautiful and must be very
+lasting.
+
+What particular parts of commerce are chiefly exercised by the
+merchants of Aberdeen, I have not inquired.  The manufacture which
+forces itself upon a stranger's eye is that of knit-stockings, on
+which the women of the lower class are visibly employed.
+
+In each of these towns there is a college, or in stricter language,
+an university; for in both there are professors of the same parts
+of learning, and the colleges hold their sessions and confer
+degrees separately, with total independence of one on the other.
+
+In old Aberdeen stands the King's College, of which the first
+president was Hector Boece, or Boethius, who may be justly
+reverenced as one of the revivers of elegant learning.  When he
+studied at Paris, he was acquainted with Erasmus, who afterwards
+gave him a public testimony of his esteem, by inscribing to him a
+catalogue of his works.  The stile of Boethius, though, perhaps,
+not always rigorously pure, is formed with great diligence upon
+ancient models, and wholly uninfected with monastic barbarity.  His
+history is written with elegance and vigour, but his fabulousness
+and credulity are justly blamed.  His fabulousness, if he was the
+author of the fictions, is a fault for which no apology can be
+made; but his credulity may be excused in an age, when all men were
+credulous.  Learning was then rising on the world; but ages so long
+accustomed to darkness, were too much dazzled with its light to see
+any thing distinctly.  The first race of scholars, in the fifteenth
+century, and some time after, were, for the most part, learning to
+speak, rather than to think, and were therefore more studious of
+elegance than of truth.  The contemporaries of Boethius thought it
+sufficient to know what the ancients had delivered.  The
+examination of tenets and of facts was reserved for another
+generation.
+
+
+Boethius, as president of the university, enjoyed a revenue of
+forty Scottish marks, about two pounds four shillings and sixpence
+of sterling money.  In the present age of trade and taxes, it is
+difficult even for the imagination so to raise the value of money,
+or so to diminish the demands of life, as to suppose four and forty
+shillings a year, an honourable stipend; yet it was probably equal,
+not only to the needs, but to the rank of Boethius.  The wealth of
+England was undoubtedly to that of Scotland more than five to one,
+and it is known that Henry the eighth, among whose faults avarice
+was never reckoned, granted to Roger Ascham, as a reward of his
+learning, a pension of ten pounds a year.
+
+The other, called the Marischal College, is in the new town.  The
+hall is large and well lighted.  One of its ornaments is the
+picture of Arthur Johnston, who was principal of the college, and
+who holds among the Latin poets of Scotland the next place to the
+elegant Buchanan.
+
+In the library I was shewn some curiosities; a Hebrew manuscript of
+exquisite penmanship, and a Latin translation of Aristotle's
+Politicks by Leonardus Aretinus, written in the Roman character
+with nicety and beauty, which, as the art of printing has made them
+no longer necessary, are not now to be found.  This was one of the
+latest performances of the transcribers, for Aretinus died but
+about twenty years before typography was invented.  This version
+has been printed, and may be found in libraries, but is little
+read; for the same books have been since translated both by
+Victorius and Lambinus, who lived in an age more cultivated, but
+perhaps owed in part to Aretinus that they were able to excel him.
+Much is due to those who first broke the way to knowledge, and left
+only to their successors the task of smoothing it.
+
+In both these colleges the methods of instruction are nearly the
+same; the lectures differing only by the accidental difference of
+diligence, or ability in the professors.  The students wear scarlet
+gowns and the professors black, which is, I believe, the academical
+dress in all the Scottish universities, except that of Edinburgh,
+where the scholars are not distinguished by any particular habit.
+In the King's College there is kept a public table, but the
+scholars of the Marischal College are boarded in the town.  The
+expence of living is here, according to the information that I
+could obtain, somewhat more than at St. Andrews.
+
+The course of education is extended to four years, at the end of
+which those who take a degree, who are not many, become masters of
+arts, and whoever is a master may, if he pleases, immediately
+commence doctor.  The title of doctor, however, was for a
+considerable time bestowed only on physicians.  The advocates are
+examined and approved by their own body; the ministers were not
+ambitious of titles, or were afraid of being censured for ambition;
+and the doctorate in every faculty was commonly given or sold into
+other countries.  The ministers are now reconciled to distinction,
+and as it must always happen that some will excel others, have
+thought graduation a proper testimony of uncommon abilities or
+acquisitions.
+
+The indiscriminate collation of degrees has justly taken away that
+respect which they originally claimed as stamps, by which the
+literary value of men so distinguished was authoritatively denoted.
+That academical honours, or any others should be conferred with
+exact proportion to merit, is more than human judgment or human
+integrity have given reason to expect.  Perhaps degrees in
+universities cannot be better adjusted by any general rule than by
+the length of time passed in the public profession of learning.  An
+English or Irish doctorate cannot be obtained by a very young man,
+and it is reasonable to suppose, what is likewise by experience
+commonly found true, that he who is by age qualified to be a
+doctor, has in so much time gained learning sufficient not to
+disgrace the title, or wit sufficient not to desire it.
+
+The Scotch universities hold but one term or session in the year.
+That of St. Andrews continues eight months, that of Aberdeen only
+five, from the first of November to the first of April.
+
+In Aberdeen there is an English Chapel, in which the congregation
+was numerous and splendid.  The form of public worship used by the
+church of England is in Scotland legally practised in licensed
+chapels served by clergymen of English or Irish ordination, and by
+tacit connivance quietly permitted in separate congregations
+supplied with ministers by the successors of the bishops who were
+deprived at the Revolution.
+
+We came to Aberdeen on Saturday August 21.  On Monday we were
+invited into the town-hall, where I had the freedom of the city
+given me by the Lord Provost.  The honour conferred had all the
+decorations that politeness could add, and what I am afraid I
+should not have had to say of any city south of the Tweed, I found
+no petty officer bowing for a fee.
+
+The parchment containing the record of admission is, with the seal
+appending, fastened to a riband and worn for one day by the new
+citizen in his hat.
+
+By a lady who saw us at the chapel, the Earl of Errol was informed
+of our arrival, and we had the honour of an invitation to his seat,
+called Slanes Castle, as I am told, improperly, from the castle of
+that name, which once stood at a place not far distant.
+
+The road beyond Aberdeen grew more stony, and continued equally
+naked of all vegetable decoration.  We travelled over a tract of
+ground near the sea, which, not long ago, suffered a very uncommon,
+and unexpected calamity.  The sand of the shore was raised by a
+tempest in such quantities, and carried to such a distance, that an
+estate was overwhelmed and lost.  Such and so hopeless was the
+barrenness superinduced, that the owner, when he was required to
+pay the usual tax, desired rather to resign the ground.
+
+
+
+SLANES CASTLE, THE BULLER OF BUCHAN
+
+
+
+We came in the afternoon to Slanes Castle, built upon the margin of
+the sea, so that the walls of one of the towers seem only a
+continuation of a perpendicular rock, the foot of which is beaten
+by the waves.  To walk round the house seemed impracticable.  From
+the windows the eye wanders over the sea that separates Scotland
+from Norway, and when the winds beat with violence must enjoy all
+the terrifick grandeur of the tempestuous ocean.  I would not for
+my amusement wish for a storm; but as storms, whether wished or
+not, will sometimes happen, I may say, without violation of
+humanity, that I should willingly look out upon them from Slanes
+Castle.
+
+When we were about to take our leave, our departure was prohibited
+by the countess till we should have seen two places upon the coast,
+which she rightly considered as worthy of curiosity, Dun Buy, and
+the Buller of Buchan, to which Mr. Boyd very kindly conducted us.
+
+Dun Buy, which in Erse is said to signify the Yellow Rock, is a
+double protuberance of stone, open to the main sea on one side, and
+parted from the land by a very narrow channel on the other.  It has
+its name and its colour from the dung of innumerable sea-fowls,
+which in the Spring chuse this place as convenient for incubation,
+and have their eggs and their young taken in great abundance.  One
+of the birds that frequent this rock has, as we were told, its body
+not larger than a duck's, and yet lays eggs as large as those of a
+goose.  This bird is by the inhabitants named a Coot.  That which
+is called Coot in England, is here a Cooter.
+
+Upon these rocks there was nothing that could long detain
+attention, and we soon turned our eyes to the Buller, or Bouilloir
+of Buchan, which no man can see with indifference, who has either
+sense of danger or delight in rarity.  It is a rock perpendicularly
+tubulated, united on one side with a high shore, and on the other
+rising steep to a great height, above the main sea.  The top is
+open, from which may be seen a dark gulf of water which flows into
+the cavity, through a breach made in the lower part of the
+inclosing rock.  It has the appearance of a vast well bordered with
+a wall.  The edge of the Buller is not wide, and to those that walk
+round, appears very narrow.  He that ventures to look downward
+sees, that if his foot should slip, he must fall from his dreadful
+elevation upon stones on one side, or into water on the other.  We
+however went round, and were glad when the circuit was completed.
+
+When we came down to the sea, we saw some boats, and rowers, and
+resolved to explore the Buller at the bottom.  We entered the arch,
+which the water had made, and found ourselves in a place, which,
+though we could not think ourselves in danger, we could scarcely
+survey without some recoil of the mind.  The bason in which we
+floated was nearly circular, perhaps thirty yards in diameter.  We
+were inclosed by a natural wall, rising steep on every side to a
+height which produced the idea of insurmountable confinement.  The
+interception of all lateral light caused a dismal gloom.  Round us
+was a perpendicular rock, above us the distant sky, and below an
+unknown profundity of water.  If I had any malice against a walking
+spirit, instead of laying him in the Red-sea, I would condemn him
+to reside in the Buller of Buchan.
+
+But terrour without danger is only one of the sports of fancy, a
+voluntary agitation of the mind that is permitted no longer than it
+pleases.  We were soon at leisure to examine the place with minute
+inspection, and found many cavities which, as the waterman told us,
+went backward to a depth which they had never explored.  Their
+extent we had not time to try; they are said to serve different
+purposes.  Ladies come hither sometimes in the summer with
+collations, and smugglers make them storehouses for clandestine
+merchandise.  It is hardly to be doubted but the pirates of ancient
+times often used them as magazines of arms, or repositories of
+plunder.
+
+To the little vessels used by the northern rovers, the Buller may
+have served as a shelter from storms, and perhaps as a retreat from
+enemies; the entrance might have been stopped, or guarded with
+little difficulty, and though the vessels that were stationed
+within would have been battered with stones showered on them from
+above, yet the crews would have lain safe in the caverns.
+
+Next morning we continued our journey, pleased with our reception
+at Slanes Castle, of which we had now leisure to recount the
+grandeur and the elegance; for our way afforded us few topics of
+conversation.  The ground was neither uncultivated nor unfruitful;
+but it was still all arable.  Of flocks or herds there was no
+appearance.  I had now travelled two hundred miles in Scotland, and
+seen only one tree not younger than myself.
+
+
+
+BAMFF
+
+
+
+We dined this day at the house of Mr. Frazer of Streichton, who
+shewed us in his grounds some stones yet standing of a druidical
+circle, and what I began to think more worthy of notice, some
+forest trees of full growth.
+
+At night we came to Bamff, where I remember nothing that
+particularly claimed my attention.  The ancient towns of Scotland
+have generally an appearance unusual to Englishmen.  The houses,
+whether great or small, are for the most part built of stones.
+Their ends are now and then next the streets, and the entrance into
+them is very often by a flight of steps, which reaches up to the
+second story, the floor which is level with the ground being
+entered only by stairs descending within the house.
+
+The art of joining squares of glass with lead is little used in
+Scotland, and in some places is totally forgotten.  The frames of
+their windows are all of wood.  They are more frugal of their glass
+than the English, and will often, in houses not otherwise mean,
+compose a square of two pieces, not joining like cracked glass, but
+with one edge laid perhaps half an inch over the other.  Their
+windows do not move upon hinges, but are pushed up and drawn down
+in grooves, yet they are seldom accommodated with weights and
+pullies.  He that would have his window open must hold it with his
+hand, unless what may be sometimes found among good contrivers,
+there be a nail which he may stick into a hole, to keep it from
+falling.
+
+What cannot be done without some uncommon trouble or particular
+expedient, will not often be done at all.  The incommodiousness of
+the Scotch windows keeps them very closely shut.  The necessity of
+ventilating human habitations has not yet been found by our
+northern neighbours; and even in houses well built and elegantly
+furnished, a stranger may be sometimes forgiven, if he allows
+himself to wish for fresher air.
+
+These diminutive observations seem to take away something from the
+dignity of writing, and therefore are never communicated but with
+hesitation, and a little fear of abasement and contempt.  But it
+must be remembered, that life consists not of a series of
+illustrious actions, or elegant enjoyments; the greater part of our
+time passes in compliance with necessities, in the performance of
+daily duties, in the removal of small inconveniences, in the
+procurement of petty pleasures; and we are well or ill at ease, as
+the main stream of life glides on smoothly, or is ruffled by small
+obstacles and frequent interruption.  The true state of every
+nation is the state of common life.  The manners of a people are
+not to be found in the schools of learning, or the palaces of
+greatness, where the national character is obscured or obliterated
+by travel or instruction, by philosophy or vanity; nor is public
+happiness to be estimated by the assemblies of the gay, or the
+banquets of the rich.  The great mass of nations is neither rich
+nor gay:  they whose aggregate constitutes the people, are found in
+the streets, and the villages, in the shops and farms; and from
+them collectively considered, must the measure of general
+prosperity be taken.  As they approach to delicacy a nation is
+refined, as their conveniences are multiplied, a nation, at least a
+commercial nation, must be denominated wealthy.
+
+
+
+ELGIN
+
+
+
+Finding nothing to detain us at Bamff, we set out in the morning,
+and having breakfasted at Cullen, about noon came to Elgin, where
+in the inn, that we supposed the best, a dinner was set before us,
+which we could not eat.  This was the first time, and except one,
+the last, that I found any reason to complain of a Scotish table;
+and such disappointments, I suppose, must be expected in every
+country, where there is no great frequency of travellers.
+
+The ruins of the cathedral of Elgin afforded us another proof of
+the waste of reformation.  There is enough yet remaining to shew,
+that it was once magnificent.  Its whole plot is easily traced.  On
+the north side of the choir, the chapter-house, which is roofed
+with an arch of stone, remains entire; and on the south side,
+another mass of building, which we could not enter, is preserved by
+the care of the family of Gordon; but the body of the church is a
+mass of fragments.
+
+A paper was here put into our hands, which deduced from sufficient
+authorities the history of this venerable ruin.  The church of
+Elgin had, in the intestine tumults of the barbarous ages, been
+laid waste by the irruption of a highland chief, whom the bishop
+had offended; but it was gradually restored to the state, of which
+the traces may be now discerned, and was at last not destroyed by
+the tumultuous violence of Knox, but more shamefully suffered to
+dilapidate by deliberate robbery and frigid indifference.  There is
+still extant, in the books of the council, an order, of which I
+cannot remember the date, but which was doubtless issued after the
+Reformation, directing that the lead, which covers the two
+cathedrals of Elgin and Aberdeen, shall be taken away, and
+converted into money for the support of the army.  A Scotch army
+was in those times very cheaply kept; yet the lead of two churches
+must have born so small a proportion to any military expence, that
+it is hard not to believe the reason alleged to be merely popular,
+and the money intended for some private purse.  The order however
+was obeyed; the two churches were stripped, and the lead was
+shipped to be sold in Holland.  I hope every reader will rejoice
+that this cargo of sacrilege was lost at sea.
+
+Let us not however make too much haste to despise our neighbours.
+Our own cathedrals are mouldering by unregarded dilapidation.  It
+seems to be part of the despicable philosophy of the time to
+despise monuments of sacred magnificence, and we are in danger of
+doing that deliberately, which the Scots did not do but in the
+unsettled state of an imperfect constitution.
+
+Those who had once uncovered the cathedrals never wished to cover
+them again; and being thus made useless, they were, first
+neglected, and perhaps, as the stone was wanted, afterwards
+demolished.
+
+Elgin seems a place of little trade, and thinly inhabited.  The
+episcopal cities of Scotland, I believe, generally fell with their
+churches, though some of them have since recovered by a situation
+convenient for commerce.  Thus Glasgow, though it has no longer an
+archbishop, has risen beyond its original state by the opulence of
+its traders; and Aberdeen, though its ancient stock had decayed,
+flourishes by a new shoot in another place.
+
+In the chief street of Elgin, the houses jut over the lowest story,
+like the old buildings of timber in London, but with greater
+prominence; so that there is sometimes a walk for a considerable
+length under a cloister, or portico, which is now indeed frequently
+broken, because the new houses have another form, but seems to have
+been uniformly continued in the old city.
+
+
+
+FORES.  CALDER.  FORT GEORGE
+
+
+
+We went forwards the same day to Fores, the town to which Macbeth
+was travelling, when he met the weird sisters in his way.  This to
+an Englishman is classic ground.  Our imaginations were heated, and
+our thoughts recalled to their old amusements.
+
+We had now a prelude to the Highlands.  We began to leave fertility
+and culture behind us, and saw for a great length of road nothing
+but heath; yet at Fochabars, a seat belonging to the duke of
+Gordon, there is an orchard, which in Scotland I had never seen
+before, with some timber trees, and a plantation of oaks.
+
+At Fores we found good accommodation, but nothing worthy of
+particular remark, and next morning entered upon the road, on which
+Macbeth heard the fatal prediction; but we travelled on not
+interrupted by promises of kingdoms, and came to Nairn, a royal
+burgh, which, if once it flourished, is now in a state of miserable
+decay; but I know not whether its chief annual magistrate has not
+still the title of Lord Provost.
+
+At Nairn we may fix the verge of the Highlands; for here I first
+saw peat fires, and first heard the Erse language.  We had no
+motive to stay longer than to breakfast, and went forward to the
+house of Mr. Macaulay, the minister who published an account of St.
+Kilda, and by his direction visited Calder Castle, from which
+Macbeth drew his second title.  It has been formerly a place of
+strength.  The draw-bridge is still to be seen, but the moat is now
+dry.  The tower is very ancient:  Its walls are of great thickness,
+arched on the top with stone, and surrounded with battlements.  The
+rest of the house is later, though far from modern.
+
+We were favoured by a gentleman, who lives in the castle, with a
+letter to one of the officers at Fort George, which being the most
+regular fortification in the island, well deserves the notice of a
+traveller, who has never travelled before.  We went thither next
+day, found a very kind reception, were led round the works by a
+gentleman, who explained the use of every part, and entertained by
+Sir Eyre Coote, the governour, with such elegance of conversation
+as left us no attention to the delicacies of his table.
+
+Of Fort George I shall not attempt to give any account.  I cannot
+delineate it scientifically, and a loose and popular description is
+of use only when the imagination is to be amused.  There was every
+where an appearance of the utmost neatness and regularity.  But my
+suffrage is of little value, because this and Fort Augustus are the
+only garrisons that I ever saw.
+
+We did not regret the time spent at the fort, though in consequence
+of our delay we came somewhat late to Inverness, the town which may
+properly be called the capital of the Highlands.  Hither the
+inhabitants of the inland parts come to be supplied with what they
+cannot make for themselves:  Hither the young nymphs of the
+mountains and valleys are sent for education, and as far as my
+observation has reached, are not sent in vain.
+
+
+
+INVERNESS
+
+
+
+Inverness was the last place which had a regular communication by
+high roads with the southern counties.  All the ways beyond it
+have, I believe, been made by the soldiers in this century.  At
+Inverness therefore Cromwell, when he subdued Scotland, stationed a
+garrison, as at the boundary of the Highlands.  The soldiers seem
+to have incorporated afterwards with the inhabitants, and to have
+peopled the place with an English race; for the language of this
+town has been long considered as peculiarly elegant.
+
+Here is a castle, called the castle of Macbeth, the walls of which
+are yet standing.  It was no very capacious edifice, but stands
+upon a rock so high and steep, that I think it was once not
+accessible, but by the help of ladders, or a bridge.  Over against
+it, on another hill, was a fort built by Cromwell, now totally
+demolished; for no faction of Scotland loved the name of Cromwell,
+or had any desire to continue his memory.
+
+Yet what the Romans did to other nations, was in a great degree
+done by Cromwell to the Scots; he civilized them by conquest, and
+introduced by useful violence the arts of peace.  I was told at
+Aberdeen that the people learned from Cromwell's soldiers to make
+shoes and to plant kail.
+
+How they lived without kail, it is not easy to guess:  They
+cultivate hardly any other plant for common tables, and when they
+had not kail they probably had nothing.  The numbers that go
+barefoot are still sufficient to shew that shoes may be spared:
+They are not yet considered as necessaries of life; for tall boys,
+not otherwise meanly dressed, run without them in the streets; and
+in the islands the sons of gentlemen pass several of their first
+years with naked feet.
+
+I know not whether it be not peculiar to the Scots to have attained
+the liberal, without the manual arts, to have excelled in
+ornamental knowledge, and to have wanted not only the elegancies,
+but the conveniences of common life.  Literature soon after its
+revival found its way to Scotland, and from the middle of the
+sixteenth century, almost to the middle of the seventeenth, the
+politer studies were very diligently pursued.  The Latin poetry of
+Deliciae Poetarum Scotorum would have done honour to any nation, at
+least till the publication of May's Supplement the English had very
+little to oppose.
+
+Yet men thus ingenious and inquisitive were content to live in
+total ignorance of the trades by which human wants are supplied,
+and to supply them by the grossest means.  Till the Union made them
+acquainted with English manners, the culture of their lands was
+unskilful, and their domestick life unformed; their tables were
+coarse as the feasts of Eskimeaux, and their houses filthy as the
+cottages of Hottentots.
+
+Since they have known that their condition was capable of
+improvement, their progress in useful knowledge has been rapid and
+uniform.  What remains to be done they will quickly do, and then
+wonder, like me, why that which was so necessary and so easy was so
+long delayed.  But they must be for ever content to owe to the
+English that elegance and culture, which, if they had been vigilant
+and active, perhaps the English might have owed to them.
+
+Here the appearance of life began to alter.  I had seen a few women
+with plaids at Aberdeen; but at Inverness the Highland manners are
+common.  There is I think a kirk, in which only the Erse language
+is used.  There is likewise an English chapel, but meanly built,
+where on Sunday we saw a very decent congregation.
+
+We were now to bid farewel to the luxury of travelling, and to
+enter a country upon which perhaps no wheel has ever rolled.  We
+could indeed have used our post-chaise one day longer, along the
+military road to Fort Augustus, but we could have hired no horses
+beyond Inverness, and we were not so sparing of ourselves, as to
+lead them, merely that we might have one day longer the indulgence
+of a carriage.
+
+At Inverness therefore we procured three horses for ourselves and a
+servant, and one more for our baggage, which was no very heavy
+load.  We found in the course of our journey the convenience of
+having disencumbered ourselves, by laying aside whatever we could
+spare; for it is not to be imagined without experience, how in
+climbing crags, and treading bogs, and winding through narrow and
+obstructed passages, a little bulk will hinder, and a little weight
+will burthen; or how often a man that has pleased himself at home
+with his own resolution, will, in the hour of darkness and fatigue,
+be content to leave behind him every thing but himself.
+
+
+
+LOUGH NESS
+
+
+
+We took two Highlanders to run beside us, partly to shew us the
+way, and partly to take back from the sea-side the horses, of which
+they were the owners.  One of them was a man of great liveliness
+and activity, of whom his companion said, that he would tire any
+horse in Inverness.  Both of them were civil and ready-handed.
+Civility seems part of the national character of Highlanders.
+Every chieftain is a monarch, and politeness, the natural product
+of royal government, is diffused from the laird through the whole
+clan.  But they are not commonly dexterous:  their narrowness of
+life confines them to a few operations, and they are accustomed to
+endure little wants more than to remove them.
+
+We mounted our steeds on the thirtieth of August, and directed our
+guides to conduct us to Fort Augustus.  It is built at the head of
+Lough Ness, of which Inverness stands at the outlet.  The way
+between them has been cut by the soldiers, and the greater part of
+it runs along a rock, levelled with great labour and exactness,
+near the water-side.
+
+Most of this day's journey was very pleasant.  The day, though
+bright, was not hot; and the appearance of the country, if I had
+not seen the Peak, would have been wholly new.  We went upon a
+surface so hard and level, that we had little care to hold the
+bridle, and were therefore at full leisure for contemplation.  On
+the left were high and steep rocks shaded with birch, the hardy
+native of the North, and covered with fern or heath.  On the right
+the limpid waters of Lough Ness were beating their bank, and waving
+their surface by a gentle agitation.  Beyond them were rocks
+sometimes covered with verdure, and sometimes towering in horrid
+nakedness.  Now and then we espied a little cornfield, which served
+to impress more strongly the general barrenness.
+
+Lough Ness is about twenty-four miles long, and from one mile to
+two miles broad.  It is remarkable that Boethius, in his
+description of Scotland, gives it twelve miles of breadth.  When
+historians or geographers exhibit false accounts of places far
+distant, they may be forgiven, because they can tell but what they
+are told; and that their accounts exceed the truth may be justly
+supposed, because most men exaggerate to others, if not to
+themselves:  but Boethius lived at no great distance; if he never
+saw the lake, he must have been very incurious, and if he had seen
+it, his veracity yielded to very slight temptations.
+
+Lough Ness, though not twelve miles broad, is a very remarkable
+diffusion of water without islands.  It fills a large hollow
+between two ridges of high rocks, being supplied partly by the
+torrents which fall into it on either side, and partly, as is
+supposed, by springs at the bottom.  Its water is remarkably clear
+and pleasant, and is imagined by the natives to be medicinal.  We
+were told, that it is in some places a hundred and forty fathoms
+deep, a profundity scarcely credible, and which probably those that
+relate it have never sounded.  Its fish are salmon, trout, and
+pike.
+
+It was said at fort Augustus, that Lough Ness is open in the
+hardest winters, though a lake not far from it is covered with ice.
+In discussing these exceptions from the course of nature, the first
+question is, whether the fact be justly stated.  That which is
+strange is delightful, and a pleasing error is not willingly
+detected.  Accuracy of narration is not very common, and there are
+few so rigidly philosophical, as not to represent as perpetual,
+what is only frequent, or as constant, what is really casual.  If
+it be true that Lough Ness never freezes, it is either sheltered by
+its high banks from the cold blasts, and exposed only to those
+winds which have more power to agitate than congeal; or it is kept
+in perpetual motion by the rush of streams from the rocks that
+inclose it.  Its profundity though it should be such as is
+represented can have little part in this exemption; for though deep
+wells are not frozen, because their water is secluded from the
+external air, yet where a wide surface is exposed to the full
+influence of a freezing atmosphere, I know not why the depth should
+keep it open.  Natural philosophy is now one of the favourite
+studies of the Scottish nation, and Lough Ness well deserves to be
+diligently examined.
+
+The road on which we travelled, and which was itself a source of
+entertainment, is made along the rock, in the direction of the
+lough, sometimes by breaking off protuberances, and sometimes by
+cutting the great mass of stone to a considerable depth.  The
+fragments are piled in a loose wall on either side, with apertures
+left at very short spaces, to give a passage to the wintry
+currents.  Part of it is bordered with low trees, from which our
+guides gathered nuts, and would have had the appearance of an
+English lane, except that an English lane is almost always dirty.
+It has been made with great labour, but has this advantage, that it
+cannot, without equal labour, be broken up.
+
+Within our sight there were goats feeding or playing.  The
+mountains have red deer, but they came not within view; and if what
+is said of their vigilance and subtlety be true, they have some
+claim to that palm of wisdom, which the eastern philosopher, whom
+Alexander interrogated, gave to those beasts which live furthest
+from men.
+
+Near the way, by the water side, we espied a cottage.  This was the
+first Highland Hut that I had seen; and as our business was with
+life and manners, we were willing to visit it.  To enter a
+habitation without leave, seems to be not considered here as
+rudeness or intrusion.  The old laws of hospitality still give this
+licence to a stranger.
+
+A hut is constructed with loose stones, ranged for the most part
+with some tendency to circularity.  It must be placed where the
+wind cannot act upon it with violence, because it has no cement;
+and where the water will run easily away, because it has no floor
+but the naked ground.  The wall, which is commonly about six feet
+high, declines from the perpendicular a little inward.  Such
+rafters as can be procured are then raised for a roof, and covered
+with heath, which makes a strong and warm thatch, kept from flying
+off by ropes of twisted heath, of which the ends, reaching from the
+center of the thatch to the top of the wall, are held firm by the
+weight of a large stone.  No light is admitted but at the entrance,
+and through a hole in the thatch, which gives vent to the smoke.
+This hole is not directly over the fire, lest the rain should
+extinguish it; and the smoke therefore naturally fills the place
+before it escapes.  Such is the general structure of the houses in
+which one of the nations of this opulent and powerful island has
+been hitherto content to live.  Huts however are not more uniform
+than palaces; and this which we were inspecting was very far from
+one of the meanest, for it was divided into several apartments; and
+its inhabitants possessed such property as a pastoral poet might
+exalt into riches.
+
+When we entered, we found an old woman boiling goats-flesh in a
+kettle.  She spoke little English, but we had interpreters at hand;
+and she was willing enough to display her whole system of economy.
+She has five children, of which none are yet gone from her.  The
+eldest, a boy of thirteen, and her husband, who is eighty years
+old, were at work in the wood.  Her two next sons were gone to
+Inverness to buy meal, by which oatmeal is always meant.  Meal she
+considered as expensive food, and told us, that in Spring, when the
+goats gave milk, the children could live without it.  She is
+mistress of sixty goats, and I saw many kids in an enclosure at the
+end of her house.  She had also some poultry.  By the lake we saw a
+potatoe-garden, and a small spot of ground on which stood four
+shucks, containing each twelve sheaves of barley.  She has all this
+from the labour of their own hands, and for what is necessary to be
+bought, her kids and her chickens are sent to market.
+
+With the true pastoral hospitality, she asked us to sit down and
+drink whisky.  She is religious, and though the kirk is four miles
+off, probably eight English miles, she goes thither every Sunday.
+We gave her a shilling, and she begged snuff; for snuff is the
+luxury of a Highland cottage.
+
+Soon afterwards we came to the General's Hut, so called because it
+was the temporary abode of Wade, while he superintended the works
+upon the road.  It is now a house of entertainment for passengers,
+and we found it not ill stocked with provisions.
+
+
+
+FALL OF FIERS
+
+
+
+Towards evening we crossed, by a bridge, the river which makes the
+celebrated fall of Fiers.  The country at the bridge strikes the
+imagination with all the gloom and grandeur of Siberian solitude.
+The way makes a flexure, and the mountains, covered with trees,
+rise at once on the left hand and in the front.  We desired our
+guides to shew us the fall, and dismounting, clambered over very
+rugged crags, till I began to wish that our curiosity might have
+been gratified with less trouble and danger.  We came at last to a
+place where we could overlook the river, and saw a channel torn, as
+it seems, through black piles of stone, by which the stream is
+obstructed and broken, till it comes to a very steep descent, of
+such dreadful depth, that we were naturally inclined to turn aside
+our eyes.
+
+But we visited the place at an unseasonable time, and found it
+divested of its dignity and terror.  Nature never gives every thing
+at once.  A long continuance of dry weather, which made the rest of
+the way easy and delightful, deprived us of the pleasure expected
+from the fall of Fiers.  The river having now no water but what the
+springs supply, showed us only a swift current, clear and shallow,
+fretting over the asperities of the rocky bottom, and we were left
+to exercise our thoughts, by endeavouring to conceive the effect of
+a thousand streams poured from the mountains into one channel,
+struggling for expansion in a narrow passage, exasperated by rocks
+rising in their way, and at last discharging all their violence of
+waters by a sudden fall through the horrid chasm.
+
+The way now grew less easy, descending by an uneven declivity, but
+without either dirt or danger.  We did not arrive at Fort Augustus
+till it was late.  Mr. Boswell, who, between his father's merit and
+his own, is sure of reception wherever he comes, sent a servant
+before to beg admission and entertainment for that night.  Mr.
+Trapaud, the governor, treated us with that courtesy which is so
+closely connected with the military character.  He came out to meet
+us beyond the gates, and apologized that, at so late an hour, the
+rules of a garrison suffered him to give us entrance only at the
+postern.
+
+
+
+FORT AUGUSTUS
+
+
+
+In the morning we viewed the fort, which is much less than that of
+St. George, and is said to be commanded by the neighbouring hills.
+It was not long ago taken by the Highlanders.  But its situation
+seems well chosen for pleasure, if not for strength; it stands at
+the head of the lake, and, by a sloop of sixty tuns, is supplied
+from Inverness with great convenience.
+
+We were now to cross the Highlands towards the western coast, and
+to content ourselves with such accommodations, as a way so little
+frequented could afford.  The journey was not formidable, for it
+was but of two days, very unequally divided, because the only
+house, where we could be entertained, was not further off than a
+third of the way.  We soon came to a high hill, which we mounted by
+a military road, cut in traverses, so that as we went upon a higher
+stage, we saw the baggage following us below in a contrary
+direction.  To make this way, the rock has been hewn to a level
+with labour that might have broken the perseverance of a Roman
+legion.
+
+The country is totally denuded of its wood, but the stumps both of
+oaks and firs, which are still found, shew that it has been once a
+forest of large timber.  I do not remember that we saw any animals,
+but we were told that, in the mountains, there are stags, roebucks,
+goats and rabbits.
+
+We did not perceive that this tract was possessed by human beings,
+except that once we saw a corn field, in which a lady was walking
+with some gentlemen.  Their house was certainly at no great
+distance, but so situated that we could not descry it.
+
+Passing on through the dreariness of solitude, we found a party of
+soldiers from the fort, working on the road, under the
+superintendence of a serjeant.  We told them how kindly we had been
+treated at the garrison, and as we were enjoying the benefit of
+their labours, begged leave to shew our gratitude by a small
+present.
+
+
+
+ANOCH
+
+
+
+Early in the afternoon we came to Anoch, a village in Glenmollison
+of three huts, one of which is distinguished by a chimney.  Here we
+were to dine and lodge, and were conducted through the first room,
+that had the chimney, into another lighted by a small glass window.
+The landlord attended us with great civility, and told us what he
+could give us to eat and drink.  I found some books on a shelf,
+among which were a volume or more of Prideaux's Connection.
+
+This I mentioned as something unexpected, and perceived that I did
+not please him.  I praised the propriety of his language, and was
+answered that I need not wonder, for he had learned it by grammar.
+
+By subsequent opportunities of observation, I found that my host's
+diction had nothing peculiar.  Those Highlanders that can speak
+English, commonly speak it well, with few of the words, and little
+of the tone by which a Scotchman is distinguished.  Their language
+seems to have been learned in the army or the navy, or by some
+communication with those who could give them good examples of
+accent and pronunciation.  By their Lowland neighbours they would
+not willingly be taught; for they have long considered them as a
+mean and degenerate race.  These prejudices are wearing fast away;
+but so much of them still remains, that when I asked a very learned
+minister in the islands, which they considered as their most savage
+clans:  'Those,' said he, 'that live next the Lowlands.'
+
+As we came hither early in the day, we had time sufficient to
+survey the place.  The house was built like other huts of loose
+stones, but the part in which we dined and slept was lined with
+turf and wattled with twigs, which kept the earth from falling.
+Near it was a garden of turnips and a field of potatoes.  It stands
+in a glen, or valley, pleasantly watered by a winding river.  But
+this country, however it may delight the gazer or amuse the
+naturalist, is of no great advantage to its owners.  Our landlord
+told us of a gentleman, who possesses lands, eighteen Scotch miles
+in length, and three in breadth; a space containing at least a
+hundred square English miles.  He has raised his rents, to the
+danger of depopulating his farms, and he fells his timber, and by
+exerting every art of augmentation, has obtained an yearly revenue
+of four hundred pounds, which for a hundred square miles is three
+halfpence an acre.
+
+Some time after dinner we were surprised by the entrance of a young
+woman, not inelegant either in mien or dress, who asked us whether
+we would have tea.  We found that she was the daughter of our host,
+and desired her to make it.  Her conversation, like her appearance,
+was gentle and pleasing.  We knew that the girls of the Highlands
+are all gentlewomen, and treated her with great respect, which she
+received as customary and due, and was neither elated by it, nor
+confused, but repaid my civilities without embarassment, and told
+me how much I honoured her country by coming to survey it.
+
+She had been at Inverness to gain the common female qualifications,
+and had, like her father, the English pronunciation.  I presented
+her with a book, which I happened to have about me, and should not
+be pleased to think that she forgets me.
+
+In the evening the soldiers, whom we had passed on the road, came
+to spend at our inn the little money that we had given them.  They
+had the true military impatience of coin in their pockets, and had
+marched at least six miles to find the first place where liquor
+could be bought.  Having never been before in a place so wild and
+unfrequented, I was glad of their arrival, because I knew that we
+had made them friends, and to gain still more of their good will,
+we went to them, where they were carousing in the barn, and added
+something to our former gift.  All that we gave was not much, but
+it detained them in the barn, either merry or quarrelling, the
+whole night, and in the morning they went back to their work, with
+great indignation at the bad qualities of whisky.
+
+We had gained so much the favour of our host, that, when we left
+his house in the morning, he walked by us a great way, and
+entertained us with conversation both on his own condition, and
+that of the country.  His life seemed to be merely pastoral, except
+that he differed from some of the ancient Nomades in having a
+settled dwelling.  His wealth consists of one hundred sheep, as
+many goats, twelve milk-cows, and twenty-eight beeves ready for the
+drover.
+
+From him we first heard of the general dissatisfaction, which is
+now driving the Highlanders into the other hemisphere; and when I
+asked him whether they would stay at home, if they were well
+treated, he answered with indignation, that no man willingly left
+his native country.  Of the farm, which he himself occupied, the
+rent had, in twenty-five years, been advanced from five to twenty
+pounds, which he found himself so little able to pay, that he would
+be glad to try his fortune in some other place.  Yet he owned the
+reasonableness of raising the Highland rents in a certain degree,
+and declared himself willing to pay ten pounds for the ground which
+he had formerly had for five.
+
+Our host having amused us for a time, resigned us to our guides.
+The journey of this day was long, not that the distance was great,
+but that the way was difficult.  We were now in the bosom of the
+Highlands, with full leisure to contemplate the appearance and
+properties of mountainous regions, such as have been, in many
+countries, the last shelters of national distress, and are every
+where the scenes of adventures, stratagems, surprises and escapes.
+
+Mountainous countries are not passed but with difficulty, not
+merely from the labour of climbing; for to climb is not always
+necessary:  but because that which is not mountain is commonly bog,
+through which the way must be picked with caution.  Where there are
+hills, there is much rain, and the torrents pouring down into the
+intermediate spaces, seldom find so ready an outlet, as not to
+stagnate, till they have broken the texture of the ground.
+
+Of the hills, which our journey offered to the view on either side,
+we did not take the height, nor did we see any that astonished us
+with their loftiness.  Towards the summit of one, there was a white
+spot, which I should have called a naked rock, but the guides, who
+had better eyes, and were acquainted with the phenomena of the
+country, declared it to be snow.  It had already lasted to the end
+of August, and was likely to maintain its contest with the sun,
+till it should be reinforced by winter.
+
+The height of mountains philosophically considered is properly
+computed from the surface of the next sea; but as it affects the
+eye or imagination of the passenger, as it makes either a spectacle
+or an obstruction, it must be reckoned from the place where the
+rise begins to make a considerable angle with the plain.  In
+extensive continents the land may, by gradual elevation, attain
+great height, without any other appearance than that of a plane
+gently inclined, and if a hill placed upon such raised ground be
+described, as having its altitude equal to the whole space above
+the sea, the representation will be fallacious.
+
+These mountains may be properly enough measured from the inland
+base; for it is not much above the sea.  As we advanced at evening
+towards the western coast, I did not observe the declivity to be
+greater than is necessary for the discharge of the inland waters.
+
+We passed many rivers and rivulets, which commonly ran with a clear
+shallow stream over a hard pebbly bottom.  These channels, which
+seem so much wider than the water that they convey would naturally
+require, are formed by the violence of wintry floods, produced by
+the accumulation of innumerable streams that fall in rainy weather
+from the hills, and bursting away with resistless impetuosity, make
+themselves a passage proportionate to their mass.
+
+Such capricious and temporary waters cannot be expected to produce
+many fish.  The rapidity of the wintry deluge sweeps them away, and
+the scantiness of the summer stream would hardly sustain them above
+the ground.  This is the reason why in fording the northern rivers,
+no fishes are seen, as in England, wandering in the water.
+
+Of the hills many may be called with Homer's Ida 'abundant in
+springs', but few can deserve the epithet which he bestows upon
+Pelion by 'waving their leaves.'  They exhibit very little variety;
+being almost wholly covered with dark heath, and even that seems to
+be checked in its growth.  What is not heath is nakedness, a little
+diversified by now and then a stream rushing down the steep.  An
+eye accustomed to flowery pastures and waving harvests is
+astonished and repelled by this wide extent of hopeless sterility.
+The appearance is that of matter incapable of form or usefulness,
+dismissed by nature from her care and disinherited of her favours,
+left in its original elemental state, or quickened only with one
+sullen power of useless vegetation.
+
+It will very readily occur, that this uniformity of barrenness can
+afford very little amusement to the traveller; that it is easy to
+sit at home and conceive rocks and heath, and waterfalls; and that
+these journeys are useless labours, which neither impregnate the
+imagination, nor enlarge the understanding.  It is true that of far
+the greater part of things, we must content ourselves with such
+knowledge as description may exhibit, or analogy supply; but it is
+true likewise, that these ideas are always incomplete, and that at
+least, till we have compared them with realities, we do not know
+them to be just.  As we see more, we become possessed of more
+certainties, and consequently gain more principles of reasoning,
+and found a wider basis of analogy.
+
+Regions mountainous and wild, thinly inhabited, and little
+cultivated, make a great part of the earth, and he that has never
+seen them, must live unacquainted with much of the face of nature,
+and with one of the great scenes of human existence.
+
+As the day advanced towards noon, we entered a narrow valley not
+very flowery, but sufficiently verdant.  Our guides told us, that
+the horses could not travel all day without rest or meat, and
+intreated us to stop here, because no grass would be found in any
+other place.  The request was reasonable and the argument cogent.
+We therefore willingly dismounted and diverted ourselves as the
+place gave us opportunity.
+
+I sat down on a bank, such as a writer of Romance might have
+delighted to feign.  I had indeed no trees to whisper over my head,
+but a clear rivulet streamed at my feet.  The day was calm, the air
+soft, and all was rudeness, silence, and solitude.  Before me, and
+on either side, were high hills, which by hindering the eye from
+ranging, forced the mind to find entertainment for itself.  Whether
+I spent the hour well I know not; for here I first conceived the
+thought of this narration.
+
+We were in this place at ease and by choice, and had no evils to
+suffer or to fear; yet the imaginations excited by the view of an
+unknown and untravelled wilderness are not such as arise in the
+artificial solitude of parks and gardens, a flattering notion of
+self-sufficiency, a placid indulgence of voluntary delusions, a
+secure expansion of the fancy, or a cool concentration of the
+mental powers.  The phantoms which haunt a desert are want, and
+misery, and danger; the evils of dereliction rush upon the
+thoughts; man is made unwillingly acquainted with his own weakness,
+and meditation shows him only how little he can sustain, and how
+little he can perform.  There were no traces of inhabitants, except
+perhaps a rude pile of clods called a summer hut, in which a
+herdsman had rested in the favourable seasons.  Whoever had been in
+the place where I then sat, unprovided with provisions and ignorant
+of the country, might, at least before the roads were made, have
+wandered among the rocks, till he had perished with hardship,
+before he could have found either food or shelter.  Yet what are
+these hillocks to the ridges of Taurus, or these spots of wildness
+to the desarts of America?
+
+It was not long before we were invited to mount, and continued our
+journey along the side of a lough, kept full by many streams, which
+with more or less rapidity and noise, crossed the road from the
+hills on the other hand.  These currents, in their diminished
+state, after several dry months, afford, to one who has always
+lived in level countries, an unusual and delightful spectacle; but
+in the rainy season, such as every winter may be expected to bring,
+must precipitate an impetuous and tremendous flood.  I suppose the
+way by which we went, is at that time impassable.
+
+
+
+GLENSHEALS
+
+
+
+The lough at last ended in a river broad and shallow like the rest,
+but that it may be passed when it is deeper, there is a bridge over
+it.  Beyond it is a valley called Glensheals, inhabited by the clan
+of Macrae.  Here we found a village called Auknasheals, consisting
+of many huts, perhaps twenty, built all of dry-stone, that is,
+stones piled up without mortar.
+
+We had, by the direction of the officers at Fort Augustus, taken
+bread for ourselves, and tobacco for those Highlanders who might
+show us any kindness.  We were now at a place where we could obtain
+milk, but we must have wanted bread if we had not brought it.  The
+people of this valley did not appear to know any English, and our
+guides now became doubly necessary as interpreters.  A woman, whose
+hut was distinguished by greater spaciousness and better
+architecture, brought out some pails of milk.  The villagers
+gathered about us in considerable numbers, I believe without any
+evil intention, but with a very savage wildness of aspect and
+manner.  When our meal was over, Mr. Boswell sliced the bread, and
+divided it amongst them, as he supposed them never to have tasted a
+wheaten loaf before.  He then gave them little pieces of twisted
+tobacco, and among the children we distributed a small handful of
+halfpence, which they received with great eagerness.  Yet I have
+been since told, that the people of that valley are not indigent;
+and when we mentioned them afterwards as needy and pitiable, a
+Highland lady let us know, that we might spare our commiseration;
+for the dame whose milk we drank had probably more than a dozen
+milk-cows.  She seemed unwilling to take any price, but being
+pressed to make a demand, at last named a shilling.  Honesty is not
+greater where elegance is less.  One of the bystanders, as we were
+told afterwards, advised her to ask for more, but she said a
+shilling was enough.  We gave her half a crown, and I hope got some
+credit for our behaviour; for the company said, if our interpreters
+did not flatter us, that they had not seen such a day since the old
+laird of Macleod passed through their country.
+
+The Macraes, as we heard afterwards in the Hebrides, were
+originally an indigent and subordinate clan, and having no farms
+nor stock, were in great numbers servants to the Maclellans, who,
+in the war of Charles the First, took arms at the call of the
+heroic Montrose, and were, in one of his battles, almost all
+destroyed.  The women that were left at home, being thus deprived
+of their husbands, like the Scythian ladies of old, married their
+servants, and the Macraes became a considerable race.
+
+
+
+THE HIGHLANDS
+
+
+
+As we continued our journey, we were at leisure to extend our
+speculations, and to investigate the reason of those peculiarities
+by which such rugged regions as these before us are generally
+distinguished.
+
+Mountainous countries commonly contain the original, at least the
+oldest race of inhabitants, for they are not easily conquered,
+because they must be entered by narrow ways, exposed to every power
+of mischief from those that occupy the heights; and every new ridge
+is a new fortress, where the defendants have again the same
+advantages.  If the assailants either force the strait, or storm
+the summit, they gain only so much ground; their enemies are fled
+to take possession of the next rock, and the pursuers stand at
+gaze, knowing neither where the ways of escape wind among the
+steeps, nor where the bog has firmness to sustain them:  besides
+that, mountaineers have an agility in climbing and descending
+distinct from strength or courage, and attainable only by use.
+
+If the war be not soon concluded, the invaders are dislodged by
+hunger; for in those anxious and toilsome marches, provisions
+cannot easily be carried, and are never to be found.  The wealth of
+mountains is cattle, which, while the men stand in the passes, the
+women drive away.  Such lands at last cannot repay the expence of
+conquest, and therefore perhaps have not been so often invaded by
+the mere ambition of dominion; as by resentment of robberies and
+insults, or the desire of enjoying in security the more fruitful
+provinces.
+
+As mountains are long before they are conquered, they are likewise
+long before they are civilized.  Men are softened by intercourse
+mutually profitable, and instructed by comparing their own notions
+with those of others.  Thus Caesar found the maritime parts of
+Britain made less barbarous by their commerce with the Gauls.  Into
+a barren and rough tract no stranger is brought either by the hope
+of gain or of pleasure.  The inhabitants having neither commodities
+for sale, nor money for purchase, seldom visit more polished
+places, or if they do visit them, seldom return.
+
+It sometimes happens that by conquest, intermixture, or gradual
+refinement, the cultivated parts of a country change their
+language.  The mountaineers then become a distinct nation, cut off
+by dissimilitude of speech from conversation with their neighbours.
+Thus in Biscay, the original Cantabrian, and in Dalecarlia, the old
+Swedish still subsists.  Thus Wales and the Highlands speak the
+tongue of the first inhabitants of Britain, while the other parts
+have received first the Saxon, and in some degree afterwards the
+French, and then formed a third language between them.
+
+That the primitive manners are continued where the primitive
+language is spoken, no nation will desire me to suppose, for the
+manners of mountaineers are commonly savage, but they are rather
+produced by their situation than derived from their ancestors.
+
+Such seems to be the disposition of man, that whatever makes a
+distinction produces rivalry.  England, before other causes of
+enmity were found, was disturbed for some centuries by the contests
+of the northern and southern counties; so that at Oxford, the peace
+of study could for a long time be preserved only by chusing
+annually one of the Proctors from each side of the Trent.  A tract
+intersected by many ridges of mountains, naturally divides its
+inhabitants into petty nations, which are made by a thousand causes
+enemies to each other.  Each will exalt its own chiefs, each will
+boast the valour of its men, or the beauty of its women, and every
+claim of superiority irritates competition; injuries will sometimes
+be done, and be more injuriously defended; retaliation will
+sometimes be attempted, and the debt exacted with too much
+interest.
+
+In the Highlands it was a law, that if a robber was sheltered from
+justice, any man of the same clan might be taken in his place.
+This was a kind of irregular justice, which, though necessary in
+savage times, could hardly fail to end in a feud, and a feud once
+kindled among an idle people with no variety of pursuits to divert
+their thoughts, burnt on for ages either sullenly glowing in secret
+mischief, or openly blazing into public violence.  Of the effects
+of this violent judicature, there are not wanting memorials.  The
+cave is now to be seen to which one of the Campbells, who had
+injured the Macdonalds, retired with a body of his own clan.  The
+Macdonalds required the offender, and being refused, made a fire at
+the mouth of the cave, by which he and his adherents were
+suffocated together.
+
+Mountaineers are warlike, because by their feuds and competitions
+they consider themselves as surrounded with enemies, and are always
+prepared to repel incursions, or to make them.  Like the Greeks in
+their unpolished state, described by Thucydides, the Highlanders,
+till lately, went always armed, and carried their weapons to
+visits, and to church.
+
+Mountaineers are thievish, because they are poor, and having
+neither manufactures nor commerce, can grow richer only by robbery.
+They regularly plunder their neighbours, for their neighbours are
+commonly their enemies; and having lost that reverence for
+property, by which the order of civil life is preserved, soon
+consider all as enemies, whom they do not reckon as friends, and
+think themselves licensed to invade whatever they are not obliged
+to protect.
+
+By a strict administration of the laws, since the laws have been
+introduced into the Highlands, this disposition to thievery is very
+much represt.  Thirty years ago no herd had ever been conducted
+through the mountains, without paying tribute in the night, to some
+of the clans; but cattle are now driven, and passengers travel
+without danger, fear, or molestation.
+
+Among a warlike people, the quality of highest esteem is personal
+courage, and with the ostentatious display of courage are closely
+connected promptitude of offence and quickness of resentment.  The
+Highlanders, before they were disarmed, were so addicted to
+quarrels, that the boys used to follow any publick procession or
+ceremony, however festive, or however solemn, in expectation of the
+battle, which was sure to happen before the company dispersed.
+
+Mountainous regions are sometimes so remote from the seat of
+government, and so difficult of access, that they are very little
+under the influence of the sovereign, or within the reach of
+national justice.  Law is nothing without power; and the sentence
+of a distant court could not be easily executed, nor perhaps very
+safely promulgated, among men ignorantly proud and habitually
+violent, unconnected with the general system, and accustomed to
+reverence only their own lords.  It has therefore been necessary to
+erect many particular jurisdictions, and commit the punishment of
+crimes, and the decision of right to the proprietors of the country
+who could enforce their own decrees.  It immediately appears that
+such judges will be often ignorant, and often partial; but in the
+immaturity of political establishments no better expedient could be
+found.  As government advances towards perfection, provincial
+judicature is perhaps in every empire gradually abolished.
+
+Those who had thus the dispensation of law, were by consequence
+themselves lawless.  Their vassals had no shelter from outrages and
+oppressions; but were condemned to endure, without resistance, the
+caprices of wantonness, and the rage of cruelty.
+
+In the Highlands, some great lords had an hereditary jurisdiction
+over counties; and some chieftains over their own lands; till the
+final conquest of the Highlands afforded an opportunity of crushing
+all the local courts, and of extending the general benefits of
+equal law to the low and the high, in the deepest recesses and
+obscurest corners.
+
+While the chiefs had this resemblance of royalty, they had little
+inclination to appeal, on any question, to superior judicatures.  A
+claim of lands between two powerful lairds was decided like a
+contest for dominion between sovereign powers.  They drew their
+forces into the field, and right attended on the strongest.  This
+was, in ruder times, the common practice, which the kings of
+Scotland could seldom control.
+
+Even so lately as in the last years of King William, a battle was
+fought at Mull Roy, on a plain a few miles to the south of
+Inverness, between the clans of Mackintosh and Macdonald of
+Keppoch.  Col.  Macdonald, the head of a small clan, refused to pay
+the dues demanded from him by Mackintosh, as his superior lord.
+They disdained the interposition of judges and laws, and calling
+each his followers to maintain the dignity of the clan, fought a
+formal battle, in which several considerable men fell on the side
+of Mackintosh, without a complete victory to either.  This is said
+to have been the last open war made between the clans by their own
+authority.
+
+The Highland lords made treaties, and formed alliances, of which
+some traces may still be found, and some consequences still remain
+as lasting evidences of petty regality.  The terms of one of these
+confederacies were, that each should support the other in the
+right, or in the wrong, except against the king.
+
+The inhabitants of mountains form distinct races, and are careful
+to preserve their genealogies.  Men in a small district necessarily
+mingle blood by intermarriages, and combine at last into one
+family, with a common interest in the honour and disgrace of every
+individual.  Then begins that union of affections, and co-operation
+of endeavours, that constitute a clan.  They who consider
+themselves as ennobled by their family, will think highly of their
+progenitors, and they who through successive generations live
+always together in the same place, will preserve local stories and
+hereditary prejudices.  Thus every Highlander can talk of his
+ancestors, and recount the outrages which they suffered from the
+wicked inhabitants of the next valley.
+
+Such are the effects of habitation among mountains, and such were
+the qualities of the Highlanders, while their rocks secluded them
+from the rest of mankind, and kept them an unaltered and
+discriminated race.  They are now losing their distinction, and
+hastening to mingle with the general community.
+
+
+
+GLENELG
+
+
+
+We left Auknasheals and the Macraes its the afternoon, and in the
+evening came to Ratiken, a high hill on which a road is cut, but so
+steep and narrow, that it is very difficult.  There is now a design
+of making another way round the bottom.  Upon one of the
+precipices, my horse, weary with the steepness of the rise,
+staggered a little, and I called in haste to the Highlander to hold
+him.  This was the only moment of my journey, in which I thought
+myself endangered.
+
+Having surmounted the hill at last, we were told that at Glenelg,
+on the sea-side, we should come to a house of lime and slate and
+glass.  This image of magnificence raised our expectation.  At last
+we came to our inn weary and peevish, and began to inquire for meat
+and beds.
+
+Of the provisions the negative catalogue was very copious.  Here
+was no meat, no milk, no bread, no eggs, no wine.  We did not
+express much satisfaction.  Here however we were to stay.  Whisky
+we might have, and I believe at last they caught a fowl and killed
+it.  We had some bread, and with that we prepared ourselves to be
+contented, when we had a very eminent proof of Highland
+hospitality.  Along some miles of the way, in the evening, a
+gentleman's servant had kept us company on foot with very little
+notice on our part.  He left us near Glenelg, and we thought on him
+no more till he came to us again, in about two hours, with a
+present from his master of rum and sugar.  The man had mentioned
+his company, and the gentleman, whose name, I think, is Gordon,
+well knowing the penury of the place, had this attention to two
+men, whose names perhaps he had not heard, by whom his kindness was
+not likely to be ever repaid, and who could be recommended to him
+only by their necessities.
+
+We were now to examine our lodging.  Out of one of the beds, on
+which we were to repose, started up, at our entrance, a man black
+as a Cyclops from the forge.  Other circumstances of no elegant
+recital concurred to disgust us.  We had been frighted by a lady at
+Edinburgh, with discouraging representations of Highland lodgings.
+Sleep, however, was necessary.  Our Highlanders had at last found
+some hay, with which the inn could not supply them.  I directed
+them to bring a bundle into the room, and slept upon it in my
+riding coat.  Mr. Boswell being more delicate, laid himself sheets
+with hay over and under him, and lay in linen like a gentleman.
+
+
+
+SKY.  ARMIDEL
+
+
+
+In the morning, September the second, we found ourselves on the
+edge of the sea.  Having procured a boat, we dismissed our
+Highlanders, whom I would recommend to the service of any future
+travellers, and were ferried over to the Isle of Sky.  We landed at
+Armidel, where we were met on the sands by Sir Alexander Macdonald,
+who was at that time there with his lady, preparing to leave the
+island and reside at Edinburgh.
+
+Armidel is a neat house, built where the Macdonalds had once a
+seat, which was burnt in the commotions that followed the
+Revolution.  The walled orchard, which belonged to the former
+house, still remains.  It is well shaded by tall ash trees, of a
+species, as Mr. Janes the fossilist informed me, uncommonly
+valuable.  This plantation is very properly mentioned by Dr.
+Campbell, in his new account of the state of Britain, and deserves
+attention; because it proves that the present nakedness of the
+Hebrides is not wholly the fault of Nature.
+
+As we sat at Sir Alexander's table, we were entertained, according
+to the ancient usage of the North, with the melody of the bagpipe.
+Everything in those countries has its history.  As the bagpiper was
+playing, an elderly Gentleman informed us, that in some remote
+time, the Macdonalds of Glengary having been injured, or offended
+by the inhabitants of Culloden, and resolving to have justice or
+vengeance, came to Culloden on a Sunday, where finding their
+enemies at worship, they shut them up in the church, which they set
+on fire; and this, said he, is the tune that the piper played while
+they were burning.
+
+Narrations like this, however uncertain, deserve the notice of the
+traveller, because they are the only records of a nation that has
+no historians, and afford the most genuine representation of the
+life and character of the ancient Highlanders.
+
+Under the denomination of Highlander are comprehended in Scotland
+all that now speak the Erse language, or retain the primitive
+manners, whether they live among the mountains or in the islands;
+and in that sense I use the name, when there is not some apparent
+reason for making a distinction.
+
+In Sky I first observed the use of Brogues, a kind of artless
+shoes, stitched with thongs so loosely, that though they defend the
+foot from stones, they do not exclude water.  Brogues were formerly
+made of raw hides, with the hair inwards, and such are perhaps
+still used in rude and remote parts; but they are said not to last
+above two days.  Where life is somewhat improved, they are now made
+of leather tanned with oak bark, as in other places, or with the
+bark of birch, or roots of tormentil, a substance recommended in
+defect of bark, about forty years ago, to the Irish tanners, by one
+to whom the parliament of that kingdom voted a reward.  The leather
+of Sky is not completely penetrated by vegetable matter, and
+therefore cannot be very durable.
+
+My inquiries about brogues, gave me an early specimen of Highland
+information.  One day I was told, that to make brogues was a
+domestick art, which every man practised for himself, and that a
+pair of brogues was the work of an hour.  I supposed that the
+husband made brogues as the wife made an apron, till next day it
+was told me, that a brogue-maker was a trade, and that a pair would
+cost half a crown.  It will easily occur that these representations
+may both be true, and that, in some places, men may buy them, and
+in others, make them for themselves; but I had both the accounts in
+the same house within two days.
+
+Many of my subsequent inquiries upon more interesting topicks ended
+in the like uncertainty.  He that travels in the Highlands may
+easily saturate his soul with intelligence, if he will acquiesce in
+the first account.  The Highlander gives to every question an
+answer so prompt and peremptory, that skepticism itself is dared
+into silence, and the mind sinks before the bold reporter in
+unresisting credulity; but, if a second question be ventured, it
+breaks the enchantment; for it is immediately discovered, that what
+was told so confidently was told at hazard, and that such
+fearlessness of assertion was either the sport of negligence, or
+the refuge of ignorance.
+
+If individuals are thus at variance with themselves, it can be no
+wonder that the accounts of different men are contradictory.  The
+traditions of an ignorant and savage people have been for ages
+negligently heard, and unskilfully related.  Distant events must
+have been mingled together, and the actions of one man given to
+another.  These, however, are deficiencies in story, for which no
+man is now to be censured.  It were enough, if what there is yet
+opportunity of examining were accurately inspected, and justly
+represented; but such is the laxity of Highland conversation, that
+the inquirer is kept in continual suspense, and by a kind of
+intellectual retrogradation, knows less as he hears more.
+
+In the islands the plaid is rarely worn.  The law by which the
+Highlanders have been obliged to change the form of their dress,
+has, in all the places that we have visited, been universally
+obeyed.  I have seen only one gentleman completely clothed in the
+ancient habit, and by him it was worn only occasionally and
+wantonly.  The common people do not think themselves under any
+legal necessity of having coats; for they say that the law against
+plaids was made by Lord Hardwicke, and was in force only for his
+life:  but the same poverty that made it then difficult for them to
+change their clothing, hinders them now from changing it again.
+
+The fillibeg, or lower garment, is still very common, and the
+bonnet almost universal; but their attire is such as produces, in a
+sufficient degree, the effect intended by the law, of abolishing
+the dissimilitude of appearance between the Highlanders and the
+other inhabitants of Britain; and, if dress be supposed to have
+much influence, facilitates their coalition with their fellow-
+subjects.
+
+What we have long used we naturally like, and therefore the
+Highlanders were unwilling to lay aside their plaid, which yet to
+an unprejudiced spectator must appear an incommodious and
+cumbersome dress; for hanging loose upon the body, it must flutter
+in a quick motion, or require one of the hands to keep it close.
+The Romans always laid aside the gown when they had anything to do.
+It was a dress so unsuitable to war, that the same word which
+signified a gown signified peace.  The chief use of a plaid seems
+to be this, that they could commodiously wrap themselves in it,
+when they were obliged to sleep without a better cover.
+
+In our passage from Scotland to Sky, we were wet for the first time
+with a shower.  This was the beginning of the Highland winter,
+after which we were told that a succession of three dry days was
+not to be expected for many months.  The winter of the Hebrides
+consists of little more than rain and wind.  As they are surrounded
+by an ocean never frozen, the blasts that come to them over the
+water are too much softened to have the power of congelation.  The
+salt loughs, or inlets of the sea, which shoot very far into the
+island, never have any ice upon them, and the pools of fresh water
+will never bear the walker.  The snow that sometimes falls, is soon
+dissolved by the air, or the rain.
+
+This is not the description of a cruel climate, yet the dark months
+are here a time of great distress; because the summer can do little
+more than feed itself, and winter comes with its cold and its
+scarcity upon families very slenderly provided.
+
+
+
+CORIATACHAN IN SKY
+
+
+
+The third or fourth day after our arrival at Armidel, brought us an
+invitation to the isle of Raasay, which lies east of Sky.  It is
+incredible how soon the account of any event is propagated in these
+narrow countries by the love of talk, which much leisure produces,
+and the relief given to the mind in the penury of insular
+conversation by a new topick.  The arrival of strangers at a place
+so rarely visited, excites rumour, and quickens curiosity.  I know
+not whether we touched at any corner, where Fame had not already
+prepared us a reception.
+
+To gain a commodious passage to Raasay, it was necessary to pass
+over a large part of Sky.  We were furnished therefore with horses
+and a guide.  In the Islands there are no roads, nor any marks by
+which a stranger may find his way.  The horseman has always at his
+side a native of the place, who, by pursuing game, or tending
+cattle, or being often employed in messages or conduct, has learned
+where the ridge of the hill has breadth sufficient to allow a horse
+and his rider a passage, and where the moss or bog is hard enough
+to bear them.  The bogs are avoided as toilsome at least, if not
+unsafe, and therefore the journey is made generally from precipice
+to precipice; from which if the eye ventures to look down, it sees
+below a gloomy cavity, whence the rush of water is sometimes heard.
+
+But there seems to be in all this more alarm than danger.  The
+Highlander walks carefully before, and the horse, accustomed to the
+ground, follows him with little deviation.  Sometimes the hill is
+too steep for the horseman to keep his seat, and sometimes the moss
+is too tremulous to bear the double weight of horse and man.  The
+rider then dismounts, and all shift as they can.
+
+Journies made in this manner are rather tedious than long.  A very
+few miles require several hours.  From Armidel we came at night to
+Coriatachan, a house very pleasantly situated between two brooks,
+with one of the highest hills of the island behind it.  It is the
+residence of Mr. Mackinnon, by whom we were treated with very
+liberal hospitality, among a more numerous and elegant company than
+it could have been supposed easy to collect.
+
+The hill behind the house we did not climb.  The weather was rough,
+and the height and steepness discouraged us.  We were told that
+there is a cairne upon it.  A cairne is a heap of stones thrown
+upon the grave of one eminent for dignity of birth, or splendour of
+atchievements.  It is said that by digging, an urn is always found
+under these cairnes:  they must therefore have been thus piled by a
+people whose custom was to burn the dead.  To pile stones is, I
+believe, a northern custom, and to burn the body was the Roman
+practice; nor do I know when it was that these two acts of
+sepulture were united.
+
+The weather was next day too violent for the continuation of our
+journey; but we had no reason to complain of the interruption.  We
+saw in every place, what we chiefly desired to know, the manners of
+the people.  We had company, and, if we had chosen retirement, we
+might have had books.
+
+I never was in any house of the Islands, where I did not find books
+in more languages than one, if I staid long enough to want them,
+except one from which the family was removed.  Literature is not
+neglected by the higher rank of the Hebridians.
+
+It need not, I suppose, be mentioned, that in countries so little
+frequented as the Islands, there are no houses where travellers are
+entertained for money.  He that wanders about these wilds, either
+procures recommendations to those whose habitations lie near his
+way, or, when night and weariness come upon him, takes the chance
+of general hospitality.  If he finds only a cottage, he can expect
+little more than shelter; for the cottagers have little more for
+themselves:  but if his good fortune brings him to the residence of
+a gentleman, he will be glad of a storm to prolong his stay.  There
+is, however, one inn by the sea-side at Sconsor, in Sky, where the
+post-office is kept.
+
+At the tables where a stranger is received, neither plenty nor
+delicacy is wanting.  A tract of land so thinly inhabited, must
+have much wild-fowl; and I scarcely remember to have seen a dinner
+without them.  The moorgame is every where to be had.  That the sea
+abounds with fish, needs not be told, for it supplies a great part
+of Europe.  The Isle of Sky has stags and roebucks, but no hares.
+They sell very numerous droves of oxen yearly to England, and
+therefore cannot be supposed to want beef at home.  Sheep and goats
+are in great numbers, and they have the common domestick fowls.
+
+But as here is nothing to be bought, every family must kill its own
+meat, and roast part of it somewhat sooner than Apicius would
+prescribe.  Every kind of flesh is undoubtedly excelled by the
+variety and emulation of English markets; but that which is not
+best may be yet very far from bad, and he that shall complain of
+his fare in the Hebrides, has improved his delicacy more than his
+manhood.
+
+Their fowls are not like those plumped for sale by the poulterers
+of London, but they are as good as other places commonly afford,
+except that the geese, by feeding in the sea, have universally a
+fishy rankness.
+
+These geese seem to be of a middle race, between the wild and
+domestick kinds.  They are so tame as to own a home, and so wild as
+sometimes to fly quite away.
+
+Their native bread is made of oats, or barley.  Of oatmeal they
+spread very thin cakes, coarse and hard, to which unaccustomed
+palates are not easily reconciled.  The barley cakes are thicker
+and softer; I began to eat them without unwillingness; the
+blackness of their colour raises some dislike, but the taste is not
+disagreeable.  In most houses there is wheat flower, with which we
+were sure to be treated, if we staid long enough to have it kneaded
+and baked.  As neither yeast nor leaven are used among them, their
+bread of every kind is unfermented.  They make only cakes, and
+never mould a loaf.
+
+A man of the Hebrides, for of the women's diet I can give no
+account, as soon as he appears in the morning, swallows a glass of
+whisky; yet they are not a drunken race, at least I never was
+present at much intemperance; but no man is so abstemious as to
+refuse the morning dram, which they call a skalk.
+
+The word whisky signifies water, and is applied by way of eminence
+to strong water, or distilled liquor.  The spirit drunk in the
+North is drawn from barley.  I never tasted it, except once for
+experiment at the inn in Inverary, when I thought it preferable to
+any English malt brandy.  It was strong, but not pungent, and was
+free from the empyreumatick taste or smell.  What was the process I
+had no opportunity of inquiring, nor do I wish to improve the art
+of making poison pleasant.
+
+Not long after the dram, may be expected the breakfast, a meal in
+which the Scots, whether of the lowlands or mountains, must be
+confessed to excel us.  The tea and coffee are accompanied not only
+with butter, but with honey, conserves, and marmalades.  If an
+epicure could remove by a wish, in quest of sensual gratifications,
+wherever he had supped he would breakfast in Scotland.
+
+In the islands however, they do what I found it not very easy to
+endure.  They pollute the tea-table by plates piled with large
+slices of cheshire cheese, which mingles its less grateful odours
+with the fragrance of the tea.
+
+Where many questions are to be asked, some will be omitted.  I
+forgot to inquire how they were supplied with so much exotic
+luxury.  Perhaps the French may bring them wine for wool, and the
+Dutch give them tea and coffee at the fishing season, in exchange
+for fresh provision.  Their trade is unconstrained; they pay no
+customs, for there is no officer to demand them; whatever therefore
+is made dear only by impost, is obtained here at an easy rate.
+
+A dinner in the Western Islands differs very little from a dinner
+in England, except that in the place of tarts, there are always set
+different preparations of milk.  This part of their diet will admit
+some improvement.  Though they have milk, and eggs, and sugar, few
+of them know how to compound them in a custard.  Their gardens
+afford them no great variety, but they have always some vegetables
+on the table.  Potatoes at least are never wanting, which, though
+they have not known them long, are now one of the principal parts
+of their food.  They are not of the mealy, but the viscous kind.
+
+Their more elaborate cookery, or made dishes, an Englishman at the
+first taste is not likely to approve, but the culinary compositions
+of every country are often such as become grateful to other nations
+only by degrees; though I have read a French author, who, in the
+elation of his heart, says, that French cookery pleases all
+foreigners, but foreign cookery never satisfies a Frenchman.
+
+Their suppers are, like their dinners, various and plentiful.  The
+table is always covered with elegant linen.  Their plates for
+common use are often of that kind of manufacture which is called
+cream coloured, or queen's ware.  They use silver on all occasions
+where it is common in England, nor did I ever find the spoon of
+horn, but in one house.
+
+The knives are not often either very bright, or very sharp.  They
+are indeed instruments of which the Highlanders have not been long
+acquainted with the general use.  They were not regularly laid on
+the table, before the prohibition of arms, and the change of dress.
+Thirty years ago the Highlander wore his knife as a companion to
+his dirk or dagger, and when the company sat down to meat, the men
+who had knives, cut the flesh into small pieces for the women, who
+with their fingers conveyed it to their mouths.
+
+There was perhaps never any change of national manners so quick, so
+great, and so general, as that which has operated in the Highlands,
+by the last conquest, and the subsequent laws.  We came thither too
+late to see what we expected, a people of peculiar appearance, and
+a system of antiquated life.  The clans retain little now of their
+original character, their ferocity of temper is softened, their
+military ardour is extinguished, their dignity of independence is
+depressed, their contempt of government subdued, and the reverence
+for their chiefs abated.  Of what they had before the late conquest
+of their country, there remain only their language and their
+poverty.  Their language is attacked on every side.  Schools are
+erected, in which English only is taught, and there were lately
+some who thought it reasonable to refuse them a version of the holy
+scriptures, that they might have no monument of their mother-
+tongue.
+
+That their poverty is gradually abated, cannot be mentioned among
+the unpleasing consequences of subjection.  They are now acquainted
+with money, and the possibility of gain will by degrees make them
+industrious.  Such is the effect of the late regulations, that a
+longer journey than to the Highlands must be taken by him whose
+curiosity pants for savage virtues and barbarous grandeur.
+
+
+
+RAASAY
+
+
+
+At the first intermission of the stormy weather we were informed,
+that the boat, which was to convey us to Raasay, attended us on the
+coast.  We had from this time our intelligence facilitated, and our
+conversation enlarged, by the company of Mr. Macqueen, minister of
+a parish in Sky, whose knowledge and politeness give him a title
+equally to kindness and respect, and who, from this time, never
+forsook us till we were preparing to leave Sky, and the adjacent
+places.
+
+The boat was under the direction of Mr. Malcolm Macleod, a
+gentleman of Raasay.  The water was calm, and the rowers were
+vigorous; so that our passage was quick and pleasant.  When we came
+near the island, we saw the laird's house, a neat modern fabrick,
+and found Mr. Macleod, the proprietor of the Island, with many
+gentlemen, expecting us on the beach.  We had, as at all other
+places, some difficulty in landing.  The craggs were irregularly
+broken, and a false step would have been very mischievous.
+
+It seemed that the rocks might, with no great labour, have been
+hewn almost into a regular flight of steps; and as there are no
+other landing places, I considered this rugged ascent as the
+consequence of a form of life inured to hardships, and therefore
+not studious of nice accommodations.  But I know not whether, for
+many ages, it was not considered as a part of military policy, to
+keep the country not easily accessible.  The rocks are natural
+fortifications, and an enemy climbing with difficulty, was easily
+destroyed by those who stood high above him.
+
+Our reception exceeded our expectations.  We found nothing but
+civility, elegance, and plenty.  After the usual refreshments, and
+the usual conversation, the evening came upon us.  The carpet was
+then rolled off the floor; the musician was called, and the whole
+company was invited to dance, nor did ever fairies trip with
+greater alacrity.  The general air of festivity, which predominated
+in this place, so far remote from all those regions which the mind
+has been used to contemplate as the mansions of pleasure, struck
+the imagination with a delightful surprise, analogous to that which
+is felt at an unexpected emersion from darkness into light.
+
+When it was time to sup, the dance ceased, and six and thirty
+persons sat down to two tables in the same room.  After supper the
+ladies sung Erse songs, to which I listened as an English audience
+to an Italian opera, delighted with the sound of words which I did
+not understand.
+
+I inquired the subjects of the songs, and was told of one, that it
+was a love song, and of another, that it was a farewell composed by
+one of the Islanders that was going, in this epidemical fury of
+emigration, to seek his fortune in America.  What sentiments would
+arise, on such an occasion, in the heart of one who had not been
+taught to lament by precedent, I should gladly have known; but the
+lady, by whom I sat, thought herself not equal to the work of
+translating.
+
+Mr. Macleod is the proprietor of the islands of Raasay, Rona, and
+Fladda, and possesses an extensive district in Sky.  The estate has
+not, during four hundred years, gained or lost a single acre.  He
+acknowledges Macleod of Dunvegan as his chief, though his ancestors
+have formerly disputed the pre-eminence.
+
+One of the old Highland alliances has continued for two hundred
+years, and is still subsisting between Macleod of Raasay and
+Macdonald of Sky, in consequence of which, the survivor always
+inherits the arms of the deceased; a natural memorial of military
+friendship.  At the death of the late Sir James Macdonald, his
+sword was delivered to the present laird of Raasay.
+
+The family of Raasay consists of the laird, the lady, three sons
+and ten daughters.  For the sons there is a tutor in the house, and
+the lady is said to be very skilful and diligent in the education
+of her girls.  More gentleness of manners, or a more pleasing
+appearance of domestick society, is not found in the most polished
+countries.
+
+Raasay is the only inhabited island in Mr. Macleod's possession.
+Rona and Fladda afford only pasture for cattle, of which one
+hundred and sixty winter in Rona, under the superintendence of a
+solitary herdsman.
+
+The length of Raasay is, by computation, fifteen miles, and the
+breadth two.  These countries have never been measured, and the
+computation by miles is negligent and arbitrary.  We observed in
+travelling, that the nominal and real distance of places had very
+little relation to each other.  Raasay probably contains near a
+hundred square miles.  It affords not much ground, notwithstanding
+its extent, either for tillage, or pasture; for it is rough, rocky,
+and barren.  The cattle often perish by falling from the
+precipices.  It is like the other islands, I think, generally naked
+of shade, but it is naked by neglect; for the laird has an orchard,
+and very large forest trees grow about his house.  Like other hilly
+countries it has many rivulets.  One of the brooks turns a corn-
+mill, and at least one produces trouts.
+
+In the streams or fresh lakes of the Islands, I have never heard of
+any other fish than trouts and eels.  The trouts, which I have
+seen, are not large; the colour of their flesh is tinged as in
+England.  Of their eels I can give no account, having never tasted
+them; for I believe they are not considered as wholesome food.
+
+It is not very easy to fix the principles upon which mankind have
+agreed to eat some animals, and reject others; and as the principle
+is not evident, it is not uniform.  That which is selected as
+delicate in one country, is by its neighbours abhorred as
+loathsome.  The Neapolitans lately refused to eat potatoes in a
+famine.  An Englishman is not easily persuaded to dine on snails
+with an Italian, on frogs with a Frenchman, or on horseflesh with a
+Tartar.  The vulgar inhabitants of Sky, I know not whether of the
+other islands, have not only eels, but pork and bacon in
+abhorrence, and accordingly I never saw a hog in the Hebrides,
+except one at Dunvegan.
+
+Raasay has wild fowl in abundance, but neither deer, hares, nor
+rabbits.  Why it has them not, might be asked, but that of such
+questions there is no end.  Why does any nation want what it might
+have?  Why are not spices transplanted to America?  Why does tea
+continue to be brought from China?  Life improves but by slow
+degrees, and much in every place is yet to do.  Attempts have been
+made to raise roebucks in Raasay, but without effect.  The young
+ones it is extremely difficult to rear, and the old can very seldom
+be taken alive.
+
+Hares and rabbits might be more easily obtained.  That they have
+few or none of either in Sky, they impute to the ravage of the
+foxes, and have therefore set, for some years past, a price upon
+their heads, which, as the number was diminished, has been
+gradually raised, from three shillings and sixpence to a guinea, a
+sum so great in this part of the world, that, in a short time, Sky
+may be as free from foxes, as England from wolves.  The fund for
+these rewards is a tax of sixpence in the pound, imposed by the
+farmers on themselves, and said to be paid with great willingness.
+
+The beasts of prey in the Islands are foxes, otters, and weasels.
+The foxes are bigger than those of England; but the otters exceed
+ours in a far greater proportion.  I saw one at Armidel, of a size
+much beyond that which I supposed them ever to attain; and Mr.
+Maclean, the heir of Col, a man of middle stature, informed me that
+he once shot an otter, of which the tail reached the ground, when
+he held up the head to a level with his own.  I expected the otter
+to have a foot particularly formed for the art of swimming; but
+upon examination, I did not find it differing much from that of a
+spaniel.  As he preys in the sea, he does little visible mischief,
+and is killed only for his fur.  White otters are sometimes seen.
+
+In Raasay they might have hares and rabbits, for they have no
+foxes.  Some depredations, such as were never made before, have
+caused a suspicion that a fox has been lately landed in the Island
+by spite or wantonness.  This imaginary stranger has never yet been
+seen, and therefore, perhaps, the mischief was done by some other
+animal.  It is not likely that a creature so ungentle, whose head
+could have been sold in Sky for a guinea, should be kept alive only
+to gratify the malice of sending him to prey upon a neighbour:  and
+the passage from Sky is wider than a fox would venture to swim,
+unless he were chased by dogs into the sea, and perhaps than his
+strength would enable him to cross.  How beasts of prey came into
+any islands is not easy to guess.  In cold countries they take
+advantage of hard winters, and travel over the ice:  but this is a
+very scanty solution; for they are found where they have no
+discoverable means of coming.
+
+The corn of this island is but little.  I saw the harvest of a
+small field.  The women reaped the Corn, and the men bound up the
+sheaves.  The strokes of the sickle were timed by the modulation of
+the harvest song, in which all their voices were united.  They
+accompany in the Highlands every action, which can be done in equal
+time, with an appropriated strain, which has, they say, not much
+meaning; but its effects are regularity and cheerfulness.  The
+ancient proceleusmatick song, by which the rowers of gallies were
+animated, may be supposed to have been of this kind.  There is now
+an oar-song used by the Hebridians.
+
+The ground of Raasay seems fitter for cattle than for corn, and of
+black cattle I suppose the number is very great.  The Laird himself
+keeps a herd of four hundred, one hundred of which are annually
+sold.  Of an extensive domain, which he holds in his own hands, he
+considers the sale of cattle as repaying him the rent, and supports
+the plenty of a very liberal table with the remaining product.
+
+Raasay is supposed to have been very long inhabited.  On one side
+of it they show caves, into which the rude nations of the first
+ages retreated from the weather.  These dreary vaults might have
+had other uses.  There is still a cavity near the house called the
+oar-cave, in which the seamen, after one of those piratical
+expeditions, which in rougher times were very frequent, used, as
+tradition tells, to hide their oars.  This hollow was near the sea,
+that nothing so necessary might be far to be fetched; and it was
+secret, that enemies, if they landed, could find nothing.  Yet it
+is not very evident of what use it was to hide their oars from
+those, who, if they were masters of the coast, could take away
+their boats.
+
+A proof much stronger of the distance at which the first possessors
+of this island lived from the present time, is afforded by the
+stone heads of arrows which are very frequently picked up.  The
+people call them Elf-bolts, and believe that the fairies shoot them
+at the cattle.  They nearly resemble those which Mr. Banks has
+lately brought from the savage countries in the Pacifick Ocean, and
+must have been made by a nation to which the use of metals was
+unknown.
+
+The number of this little community has never been counted by its
+ruler, nor have I obtained any positive account, consistent with
+the result of political computation.  Not many years ago, the late
+Laird led out one hundred men upon a military expedition.  The
+sixth part of a people is supposed capable of bearing arms:  Raasay
+had therefore six hundred inhabitants.  But because it is not
+likely, that every man able to serve in the field would follow the
+summons, or that the chief would leave his lands totally
+defenceless, or take away all the hands qualified for labour, let
+it be supposed, that half as many might be permitted to stay at
+home.  The whole number will then be nine hundred, or nine to a
+square mile; a degree of populousness greater than those tracts of
+desolation can often show.  They are content with their country,
+and faithful to their chiefs, and yet uninfected with the fever of
+migration.
+
+Near the house, at Raasay, is a chapel unroofed and ruinous, which
+has long been used only as a place of burial.  About the churches,
+in the Islands, are small squares inclosed with stone, which belong
+to particular families, as repositories for the dead.  At Raasay
+there is one, I think, for the proprietor, and one for some
+collateral house.
+
+It is told by Martin, that at the death of the Lady of the Island,
+it has been here the custom to erect a cross.  This we found not to
+be true.  The stones that stand about the chapel at a small
+distance, some of which perhaps have crosses cut upon them, are
+believed to have been not funeral monuments, but the ancient
+boundaries of the sanctuary or consecrated ground.
+
+Martin was a man not illiterate:  he was an inhabitant of Sky, and
+therefore was within reach of intelligence, and with no great
+difficulty might have visited the places which he undertakes to
+describe; yet with all his opportunities, he has often suffered
+himself to be deceived.  He lived in the last century, when the
+chiefs of the clans had lost little of their original influence.
+The mountains were yet unpenetrated, no inlet was opened to foreign
+novelties, and the feudal institution operated upon life with their
+full force.  He might therefore have displayed a series of
+subordination and a form of government, which, in more luminous and
+improved regions, have been long forgotten, and have delighted his
+readers with many uncouth customs that are now disused, and wild
+opinions that prevail no longer.  But he probably had not knowledge
+of the world sufficient to qualify him for judging what would
+deserve or gain the attention of mankind.  The mode of life which
+was familiar to himself, he did not suppose unknown to others, nor
+imagined that he could give pleasure by telling that of which it
+was, in his little country, impossible to be ignorant.
+
+What he has neglected cannot now be performed.  In nations, where
+there is hardly the use of letters, what is once out of sight is
+lost for ever.  They think but little, and of their few thoughts,
+none are wasted on the past, in which they are neither interested
+by fear nor hope.  Their only registers are stated observances and
+practical representations.  For this reason an age of ignorance is
+an age of ceremony.  Pageants, and processions, and commemorations,
+gradually shrink away, as better methods come into use of recording
+events, and preserving rights.
+
+It is not only in Raasay that the chapel is unroofed and useless;
+through the few islands which we visited, we neither saw nor heard
+of any house of prayer, except in Sky, that was not in ruins.  The
+malignant influence of Calvinism has blasted ceremony and decency
+together; and if the remembrance of papal superstition is
+obliterated, the monuments of papal piety are likewise effaced.
+
+It has been, for many years, popular to talk of the lazy devotion
+of the Romish clergy; over the sleepy laziness of men that erected
+churches, we may indulge our superiority with a new triumph, by
+comparing it with the fervid activity of those who suffer them to
+fall.
+
+Of the destruction of churches, the decay of religion must in time
+be the consequence; for while the publick acts of the ministry are
+now performed in houses, a very small number can be present; and as
+the greater part of the Islanders make no use of books, all must
+necessarily live in total ignorance who want the opportunity of
+vocal instruction.
+
+From these remains of ancient sanctity, which are every where to be
+found, it has been conjectured, that, for the last two centuries,
+the inhabitants of the Islands have decreased in number.  This
+argument, which supposes that the churches have been suffered to
+fall, only because they were no longer necessary, would have some
+force, if the houses of worship still remaining were sufficient for
+the people.  But since they have now no churches at all, these
+venerable fragments do not prove the people of former times to have
+been more numerous, but to have been more devout.  If the
+inhabitants were doubled with their present principles, it appears
+not that any provision for publick worship would be made.  Where
+the religion of a country enforces consecrated buildings, the
+number of those buildings may be supposed to afford some
+indication, however uncertain, of the populousness of the place;
+but where by a change of manners a nation is contented to live
+without them, their decay implies no diminution of inhabitants.
+
+Some of these dilapidations are said to be found in islands now
+uninhabited; but I doubt whether we can thence infer that they were
+ever peopled.  The religion of the middle age, is well known to
+have placed too much hope in lonely austerities.  Voluntary
+solitude was the great act of propitiation, by which crimes were
+effaced, and conscience was appeased; it is therefore not unlikely,
+that oratories were often built in places where retirement was sure
+to have no disturbance.
+
+Raasay has little that can detain a traveller, except the Laird and
+his family; but their power wants no auxiliaries.  Such a seat of
+hospitality, amidst the winds and waters, fills the imagination
+with a delightful contrariety of images.  Without is the rough
+ocean and the rocky land, the beating billows and the howling
+storm:  within is plenty and elegance, beauty and gaiety, the song
+and the dance.  In Raasay, if I could have found an Ulysses, I had
+fancied a Phoeacia.
+
+
+
+DUNVEGAN
+
+
+
+At Raasay, by good fortune, Macleod, so the chief of the clan is
+called, was paying a visit, and by him we were invited to his seat
+at Dunvegan.  Raasay has a stout boat, built in Norway, in which,
+with six oars, he conveyed us back to Sky.  We landed at Port Re,
+so called, because James the Fifth of Scotland, who had curiosity
+to visit the Islands, came into it.  The port is made by an inlet
+of the sea, deep and narrow, where a ship lay waiting to dispeople
+Sky, by carrying the natives away to America.
+
+In coasting Sky, we passed by the cavern in which it was the
+custom, as Martin relates, to catch birds in the night, by making a
+fire at the entrance.  This practice is disused; for the birds, as
+is known often to happen, have changed their haunts.
+
+Here we dined at a publick house, I believe the only inn of the
+island, and having mounted our horses, travelled in the manner
+already described, till we came to Kingsborough, a place
+distinguished by that name, because the King lodged here when he
+landed at Port Re.  We were entertained with the usual hospitality
+by Mr. Macdonald and his lady, Flora Macdonald, a name that will be
+mentioned in history, and if courage and fidelity be virtues,
+mentioned with honour.  She is a woman of middle stature, soft
+features, gentle manners, and elegant presence.
+
+In the morning we sent our horses round a promontory to meet us,
+and spared ourselves part of the day's fatigue, by crossing an arm
+of the sea.  We had at last some difficulty in coming to Dunvegan;
+for our way led over an extensive moor, where every step was to be
+taken with caution, and we were often obliged to alight, because
+the ground could not be trusted.  In travelling this watery flat, I
+perceived that it had a visible declivity, and might without much
+expence or difficulty be drained.  But difficulty and expence are
+relative terms, which have different meanings in different places.
+
+To Dunvegan we came, very willing to be at rest, and found our
+fatigue amply recompensed by our reception.  Lady Macleod, who had
+lived many years in England, was newly come hither with her son and
+four daughters, who knew all the arts of southern elegance, and all
+the modes of English economy.  Here therefore we settled, and did
+not spoil the present hour with thoughts of departure.
+
+Dunvegan is a rocky prominence, that juts out into a bay, on the
+west side of Sky.  The house, which is the principal seat of
+Macleod, is partly old and partly modern; it is built upon the
+rock, and looks upon the water.  It forms two sides of a small
+square:  on the third side is the skeleton of a castle of unknown
+antiquity, supposed to have been a Norwegian fortress, when the
+Danes were masters of the Islands.  It is so nearly entire, that it
+might have easily been made habitable, were there not an ominous
+tradition in the family, that the owner shall not long outlive the
+reparation.  The grandfather of the present Laird, in defiance of
+prediction, began the work, but desisted in a little time, and
+applied his money to worse uses.
+
+As the inhabitants of the Hebrides lived, for many ages, in
+continual expectation of hostilities, the chief of every clan
+resided in a fortress.  This house was accessible only from the
+water, till the last possessor opened an entrance by stairs upon
+the land.
+
+They had formerly reason to be afraid, not only of declared wars
+and authorized invaders, or of roving pirates, which, in the
+northern seas, must have been very common; but of inroads and
+insults from rival clans, who, in the plenitude of feudal
+independence, asked no leave of their Sovereign to make war on one
+another.  Sky has been ravaged by a feud between the two mighty
+powers of Macdonald and Macleod.  Macdonald having married a
+Macleod upon some discontent dismissed her, perhaps because she had
+brought him no children.  Before the reign of James the Fifth, a
+Highland Laird made a trial of his wife for a certain time, and if
+she did not please him, he was then at liberty to send her away.
+This however must always have offended, and Macleod resenting the
+injury, whatever were its circumstances, declared, that the wedding
+had been solemnized without a bonfire, but that the separation
+should be better illuminated; and raising a little army, set fire
+to the territories of Macdonald, who returned the visit, and
+prevailed.
+
+Another story may show the disorderly state of insular
+neighbourhood.  The inhabitants of the Isle of Egg, meeting a boat
+manned by Macleods, tied the crew hand and foot, and set them a-
+drift.  Macleod landed upon Egg, and demanded the offenders; but
+the inhabitants refusing to surrender them, retreated to a cavern,
+into which they thought their enemies unlikely to follow them.
+Macleod choked them with smoke, and left them lying dead by
+families as they stood.
+
+Here the violence of the weather confined us for some time, not at
+all to our discontent or inconvenience.  We would indeed very
+willingly have visited the Islands, which might be seen from the
+house scattered in the sea, and I was particularly desirous to have
+viewed Isay; but the storms did not permit us to launch a boat, and
+we were condemned to listen in idleness to the wind, except when we
+were better engaged by listening to the ladies.
+
+We had here more wind than waves, and suffered the severity of a
+tempest, without enjoying its magnificence.  The sea being broken
+by the multitude of islands, does not roar with so much noise, nor
+beat the shore with such foamy violence, as I have remarked on the
+coast of Sussex.  Though, while I was in the Hebrides, the wind was
+extremely turbulent, I never saw very high billows.
+
+The country about Dunvegan is rough and barren.  There are no
+trees, except in the orchard, which is a low sheltered spot
+surrounded with a wall.
+
+When this house was intended to sustain a siege, a well was made in
+the court, by boring the rock downwards, till water was found,
+which though so near to the sea, I have not heard mentioned as
+brackish, though it has some hardness, or other qualities, which
+make it less fit for use; and the family is now better supplied
+from a stream, which runs by the rock, from two pleasing water-
+falls.
+
+Here we saw some traces of former manners, and heard some standing
+traditions.  In the house is kept an ox's horn, hollowed so as to
+hold perhaps two quarts, which the heir of Macleod was expected to
+swallow at one draught, as a test of his manhood, before he was
+permitted to bear arms, or could claim a seat among the men.  It is
+held that the return of the Laird to Dunvegan, after any
+considerable absence, produces a plentiful capture of herrings; and
+that, if any woman crosses the water to the opposite Island, the
+herrings will desert the coast.  Boetius tells the same of some
+other place.  This tradition is not uniform.  Some hold that no
+woman may pass, and others that none may pass but a Macleod.
+
+Among other guests, which the hospitality of Dunvegan brought to
+the table, a visit was paid by the Laird and Lady of a small island
+south of Sky, of which the proper name is Muack, which signifies
+swine.  It is commonly called Muck, which the proprietor not
+liking, has endeavoured, without effect, to change to Monk.  It is
+usual to call gentlemen in Scotland by the name of their
+possessions, as Raasay, Bernera, Loch Buy, a practice necessary in
+countries inhabited by clans, where all that live in the same
+territory have one name, and must be therefore discriminated by
+some addition.  This gentleman, whose name, I think, is Maclean,
+should be regularly called Muck; but the appellation, which he
+thinks too coarse for his Island, he would like still less for
+himself, and he is therefore addressed by the title of, Isle of
+Muck.
+
+This little Island, however it be named, is of considerable value.
+It is two English miles long, and three quarters of a mile broad,
+and consequently contains only nine hundred and sixty English
+acres.  It is chiefly arable.  Half of this little dominion the
+Laird retains in his own hand, and on the other half, live one
+hundred and sixty persons, who pay their rent by exported corn.
+What rent they pay, we were not told, and could not decently
+inquire.  The proportion of the people to the land is such, as the
+most fertile countries do not commonly maintain.
+
+The Laird having all his people under his immediate view, seems to
+be very attentive to their happiness.  The devastation of the
+small-pox, when it visits places where it comes seldom, is well
+known.  He has disarmed it of its terrour at Muack, by inoculating
+eighty of his people.  The expence was two shillings and sixpence a
+head.  Many trades they cannot have among them, but upon occasion,
+he fetches a smith from the Isle of Egg, and has a tailor from the
+main land, six times a year.  This island well deserved to be seen,
+but the Laird's absence left us no opportunity.
+
+Every inhabited island has its appendant and subordinate islets.
+Muck, however small, has yet others smaller about it, one of which
+has only ground sufficient to afford pasture for three wethers.
+
+At Dunvegan I had tasted lotus, and was in danger of forgetting
+that I was ever to depart, till Mr. Boswell sagely reproached me
+with my sluggishness and softness.  I had no very forcible defence
+to make; and we agreed to pursue our journey.  Macleod accompanied
+us to Ulinish, where we were entertained by the sheriff of the
+Island.
+
+
+
+ULINISH
+
+
+
+Mr. Macqueen travelled with us, and directed our attention to all
+that was worthy of observation.  With him we went to see an ancient
+building, called a dun or borough.  It was a circular inclosure,
+about forty-two feet in diameter, walled round with loose stones,
+perhaps to the height of nine feet.  The walls were very thick,
+diminishing a little toward the top, and though in these countries,
+stone is not brought far, must have been raised with much labour.
+Within the great circle were several smaller rounds of wall, which
+formed distinct apartments.  Its date, and its use are unknown.
+Some suppose it the original seat of the chiefs of the Macleods.
+Mr. Macqueen thought it a Danish fort.
+
+The entrance is covered with flat stones, and is narrow, because it
+was necessary that the stones which lie over it, should reach from
+one wall to the other; yet, strait as the passage is, they seem
+heavier than could have been placed where they now lie, by the
+naked strength of as many men as might stand about them.  They were
+probably raised by putting long pieces of wood under them, to which
+the action of a long line of lifters might be applied.  Savages, in
+all countries, have patience proportionate to their unskilfulness,
+and are content to attain their end by very tedious methods.
+
+If it was ever roofed, it might once have been a dwelling, but as
+there is no provision for water, it could not have been a fortress.
+In Sky, as in every other place, there is an ambition of exalting
+whatever has survived memory, to some important use, and referring
+it to very remote ages.  I am inclined to suspect, that in lawless
+times, when the inhabitants of every mountain stole the cattle of
+their neighbour, these inclosures were used to secure the herds and
+flocks in the night.  When they were driven within the wall, they
+might be easily watched, and defended as long as could be needful;
+for the robbers durst not wait till the injured clan should find
+them in the morning.
+
+The interior inclosures, if the whole building were once a house,
+were the chambers of the chief inhabitants.  If it was a place of
+security for cattle, they were probably the shelters of the
+keepers.
+
+From the Dun we were conducted to another place of security, a cave
+carried a great way under ground, which had been discovered by
+digging after a fox.  These caves, of which many have been found,
+and many probably remain concealed, are formed, I believe, commonly
+by taking advantage of a hollow, where banks or rocks rise on
+either side.  If no such place can be found, the ground must be cut
+away.  The walls are made by piling stones against the earth, on
+either side.  It is then roofed by larger stones laid across the
+cavern, which therefore cannot be wide.  Over the roof, turfs were
+placed, and grass was suffered to grow; and the mouth was concealed
+by bushes, or some other cover.
+
+These caves were represented to us as the cabins of the first rude
+inhabitants, of which, however, I am by no means persuaded.  This
+was so low, that no man could stand upright in it.  By their
+construction they are all so narrow, that two can never pass along
+them together, and being subterraneous, they must be always damp.
+They are not the work of an age much ruder than the present; for
+they are formed with as much art as the construction of a common
+hut requires.  I imagine them to have been places only of
+occasional use, in which the Islander, upon a sudden alarm, hid his
+utensils, or his cloaths, and perhaps sometimes his wife and
+children.
+
+This cave we entered, but could not proceed the whole length, and
+went away without knowing how far it was carried.  For this
+omission we shall be blamed, as we perhaps have blamed other
+travellers; but the day was rainy, and the ground was damp.  We had
+with us neither spades nor pickaxes, and if love of ease surmounted
+our desire of knowledge, the offence has not the invidiousness of
+singularity.
+
+Edifices, either standing or ruined, are the chief records of an
+illiterate nation.  In some part of this journey, at no great
+distance from our way, stood a shattered fortress, of which the
+learned minister, to whose communication we are much indebted, gave
+us an account.
+
+Those, said he, are the walls of a place of refuge, built in the
+time of James the Sixth, by Hugh Macdonald, who was next heir to
+the dignity and fortune of his chief.  Hugh, being so near his
+wish, was impatient of delay; and had art and influence sufficient
+to engage several gentlemen in a plot against the Laird's life.
+Something must be stipulated on both sides; for they would not dip
+their hands in blood merely for Hugh's advancement.  The compact
+was formerly written, signed by the conspirators, and placed in the
+hands of one Macleod.
+
+It happened that Macleod had sold some cattle to a drover, who, not
+having ready money, gave him a bond for payment.  The debt was
+discharged, and the bond re-demanded; which Macleod, who could not
+read, intending to put into his hands, gave him the conspiracy.
+The drover, when he had read the paper, delivered it privately to
+Macdonald; who, being thus informed of his danger, called his
+friends together, and provided for his safety.  He made a public
+feast, and inviting Hugh Macdonald and his confederates, placed
+each of them at the table between two men of known fidelity.  The
+compact of conspiracy was then shewn, and every man confronted with
+his own name.  Macdonald acted with great moderation.  He upbraided
+Hugh, both with disloyalty and ingratitude; but told the rest, that
+he considered them as men deluded and misinformed.  Hugh was sworn
+to fidelity, and dismissed with his companions; but he was not
+generous enough to be reclaimed by lenity; and finding no longer
+any countenance among the gentlemen, endeavoured to execute the
+same design by meaner hands.  In this practice he was detected,
+taken to Macdonald's castle, and imprisoned in the dungeon.  When
+he was hungry, they let down a plentiful meal of salted meat; and
+when, after his repast, he called for drink, conveyed to him a
+covered cup, which, when he lifted the lid, he found empty.  From
+that time they visited him no more, but left him to perish in
+solitude and darkness.
+
+We were then told of a cavern by the sea-side, remarkable for the
+powerful reverberation of sounds.  After dinner we took a boat, to
+explore this curious cavity.  The boatmen, who seemed to be of a
+rank above that of common drudges, inquired who the strangers were,
+and being told we came one from Scotland, and the other from
+England, asked if the Englishman could recount a long genealogy.
+What answer was given them, the conversation being in Erse, I was
+not much inclined to examine.
+
+They expected no good event of the voyage; for one of them declared
+that he heard the cry of an English ghost.  This omen I was not
+told till after our return, and therefore cannot claim the dignity
+of despising it.
+
+The sea was smooth.  We never left the shore, and came without any
+disaster to the cavern, which we found rugged and misshapen, about
+one hundred and eighty feet long, thirty wide in the broadest part,
+and in the loftiest, as we guessed, about thirty high.  It was now
+dry, but at high water the sea rises in it near six feet.  Here I
+saw what I had never seen before, limpets and mussels in their
+natural state.  But, as a new testimony to the veracity of common
+fame, here was no echo to be heard.
+
+We then walked through a natural arch in the rock, which might have
+pleased us by its novelty, had the stones, which incumbered our
+feet, given us leisure to consider it.  We were shown the gummy
+seed of the kelp, that fastens itself to a stone, from which it
+grows into a strong stalk.
+
+In our return, we found a little boy upon the point of rock,
+catching with his angle, a supper for the family.  We rowed up to
+him, and borrowed his rod, with which Mr. Boswell caught a cuddy.
+
+The cuddy is a fish of which I know not the philosophical name.  It
+is not much bigger than a gudgeon, but is of great use in these
+Islands, as it affords the lower people both food, and oil for
+their lamps.  Cuddies are so abundant, at sometimes of the year,
+that they are caught like whitebait in the Thames, only by dipping
+a basket and drawing it back.
+
+If it were always practicable to fish, these Islands could never be
+in much danger from famine; but unhappily in the winter, when other
+provision fails, the seas are commonly too rough for nets, or
+boats.
+
+
+
+TALISKER IN SKY
+
+
+
+From Ulinish, our next stage was to Talisker, the house of colonel
+Macleod, an officer in the Dutch service, who, in this time of
+universal peace, has for several years been permitted to be absent
+from his regiment.  Having been bred to physick, he is consequently
+a scholar, and his lady, by accompanying him in his different
+places of residence, is become skilful in several languages.
+Talisker is the place beyond all that I have seen, from which the
+gay and the jovial seem utterly excluded; and where the hermit
+might expect to grow old in meditation, without possibility of
+disturbance or interruption.  It is situated very near the sea, but
+upon a coast where no vessel lands but when it is driven by a
+tempest on the rocks.  Towards the land are lofty hills streaming
+with water-falls.  The garden is sheltered by firs or pines, which
+grow there so prosperously, that some, which the present inhabitant
+planted, are very high and thick.
+
+At this place we very happily met Mr. Donald Maclean, a young
+gentleman, the eldest son of the Laird of Col, heir to a very great
+extent of land, and so desirous of improving his inheritance, that
+he spent a considerable time among the farmers of Hertfordshire,
+and Hampshire, to learn their practice.  He worked with his own
+hands at the principal operations of agriculture, that he might not
+deceive himself by a false opinion of skill, which, if he should
+find it deficient at home, he had no means of completing.  If the
+world has agreed to praise the travels and manual labours of the
+Czar of Muscovy, let Col have his share of the like applause, in
+the proportion of his dominions to the empire of Russia.
+
+This young gentleman was sporting in the mountains of Sky, and when
+he was weary with following his game, repaired for lodging to
+Talisker.  At night he missed one of his dogs, and when he went to
+seek him in the morning, found two eagles feeding on his carcass.
+
+Col, for he must be named by his possessions, hearing that our
+intention was to visit Jona, offered to conduct us to his chief,
+Sir Allan Maclean, who lived in the isle of Inch Kenneth, and would
+readily find us a convenient passage.  From this time was formed an
+acquaintance, which being begun by kindness, was accidentally
+continued by constraint; we derived much pleasure from it, and I
+hope have given him no reason to repent it.
+
+The weather was now almost one continued storm, and we were to
+snatch some happy intermission to be conveyed to Mull, the third
+Island of the Hebrides, lying about a degree south of Sky, whence
+we might easily find our way to Inch Kenneth, where Sir Allan
+Maclean resided, and afterward to Jona.
+
+For this purpose, the most commodious station that we could take
+was Armidel, which Sir Alexander Macdonald had now left to a
+gentleman, who lived there as his factor or steward.
+
+In our way to Armidel was Coriatachan, where we had already been,
+and to which therefore we were very willing to return.  We staid
+however so long at Talisker, that a great part of our journey was
+performed in the gloom of the evening.  In travelling even thus
+almost without light thro' naked solitude, when there is a guide
+whose conduct may be trusted, a mind not naturally too much
+disposed to fear, may preserve some degree of cheerfulness; but
+what must be the solicitude of him who should be wandering, among
+the craggs and hollows, benighted, ignorant, and alone?
+
+The fictions of the Gothick romances were not so remote from
+credibility as they are now thought.  In the full prevalence of the
+feudal institution, when violence desolated the world, and every
+baron lived in a fortress, forests and castles were regularly
+succeeded by each other, and the adventurer might very suddenly
+pass from the gloom of woods, or the ruggedness of moors, to seats
+of plenty, gaiety, and magnificence.  Whatever is imaged in the
+wildest tale, if giants, dragons, and enchantment be excepted,
+would be felt by him, who, wandering in the mountains without a
+guide, or upon the sea without a pilot, should be carried amidst
+his terror and uncertainty, to the hospitality and elegance of
+Raasay or Dunvegan.
+
+To Coriatachan at last we came, and found ourselves welcomed as
+before.  Here we staid two days, and made such inquiries as
+curiosity suggested.  The house was filled with company, among whom
+Mr. Macpherson and his sister distinguished themselves by their
+politeness and accomplishments.  By him we were invited to Ostig, a
+house not far from Armidel, where we might easily hear of a boat,
+when the weather would suffer us to leave the Island.
+
+
+
+OSTIG IN SKY
+
+
+
+At Ostig, of which Mr. Macpherson is minister, we were entertained
+for some days, then removed to Armidel, where we finished our
+observations on the island of Sky.
+
+As this Island lies in the fifty-seventh degree, the air cannot be
+supposed to have much warmth.  The long continuance of the sun
+above the horizon, does indeed sometimes produce great heat in
+northern latitudes; but this can only happen in sheltered places,
+where the atmosphere is to a certain degree stagnant, and the same
+mass of air continues to receive for many hours the rays of the
+sun, and the vapours of the earth.  Sky lies open on the west and
+north to a vast extent of ocean, and is cooled in the summer by
+perpetual ventilation, but by the same blasts is kept warm in
+winter.  Their weather is not pleasing.  Half the year is deluged
+with rain.  From the autumnal to the vernal equinox, a dry day is
+hardly known, except when the showers are suspended by a tempest.
+Under such skies can be expected no great exuberance of vegetation.
+Their winter overtakes their summer, and their harvest lies upon
+the ground drenched with rain.  The autumn struggles hard to
+produce some of our early fruits.  I gathered gooseberries in
+September; but they were small, and the husk was thick.
+
+Their winter is seldom such as puts a full stop to the growth of
+plants, or reduces the cattle to live wholly on the surplusage of
+the summer.  In the year Seventy-one they had a severe season,
+remembered by the name of the Black Spring, from which the island
+has not yet recovered.  The snow lay long upon the ground, a
+calamity hardly known before.  Part of their cattle died for want,
+part were unseasonably sold to buy sustenance for the owners; and,
+what I have not read or heard of before, the kine that survived
+were so emaciated and dispirited, that they did not require the
+male at the usual time.  Many of the roebucks perished.
+
+The soil, as in other countries, has its diversities.  In some
+parts there is only a thin layer of earth spread upon a rock, which
+bears nothing but short brown heath, and perhaps is not generally
+capable of any better product.  There are many bogs or mosses of
+greater or less extent, where the soil cannot be supposed to want
+depth, though it is too wet for the plow.  But we did not observe
+in these any aquatick plants.  The vallies and the mountains are
+alike darkened with heath.  Some grass, however, grows here and
+there, and some happier spots of earth are capable of tillage.
+
+Their agriculture is laborious, and perhaps rather feeble than
+unskilful.  Their chief manure is seaweed, which, when they lay it
+to rot upon the field, gives them a better crop than those of the
+Highlands.  They heap sea shells upon the dunghill, which in time
+moulder into a fertilising substance.  When they find a vein of
+earth where they cannot use it, they dig it up, and add it to the
+mould of a more commodious place.
+
+Their corn grounds often lie in such intricacies among the craggs,
+that there is no room for the action of a team and plow.  The soil
+is then turned up by manual labour, with an instrument called a
+crooked spade, of a form and weight which to me appeared very
+incommodious, and would perhaps be soon improved in a country where
+workmen could be easily found and easily paid.  It has a narrow
+blade of iron fixed to a long and heavy piece of wood, which must
+have, about a foot and a half above the iron, a knee or flexure
+with the angle downwards.  When the farmer encounters a stone which
+is the great impediment of his operations, he drives the blade
+under it, and bringing the knee or angle to the ground, has in the
+long handle a very forcible lever.
+
+According to the different mode of tillage, farms are distinguished
+into long land and short land.  Long land is that which affords
+room for a plow, and short land is turned up by the spade.
+
+The grain which they commit to the furrows thus tediously formed,
+is either oats or barley.  They do not sow barley without very
+copious manure, and then they expect from it ten for one, an
+increase equal to that of better countries; but the culture is so
+operose that they content themselves commonly with oats; and who
+can relate without compassion, that after all their diligence they
+are to expect only a triple increase?  It is in vain to hope for
+plenty, when a third part of the harvest must be reserved for seed.
+
+When their grain is arrived at the state which they must consider
+as ripeness, they do not cut, but pull the barley:  to the oats
+they apply the sickle.  Wheel carriages they have none, but make a
+frame of timber, which is drawn by one horse with the two points
+behind pressing on the ground.  On this they sometimes drag home
+their sheaves, but often convey them home in a kind of open panier,
+or frame of sticks upon the horse's back.
+
+Of that which is obtained with so much difficulty, nothing surely
+ought to be wasted; yet their method of clearing their oats from
+the husk is by parching them in the straw.  Thus with the genuine
+improvidence of savages, they destroy that fodder for want of which
+their cattle may perish.  From this practice they have two petty
+conveniences.  They dry the grain so that it is easily reduced to
+meal, and they escape the theft of the thresher.  The taste
+contracted from the fire by the oats, as by every other scorched
+substance, use must long ago have made grateful.  The oats that are
+not parched must be dried in a kiln.
+
+The barns of Sky I never saw.  That which Macleod of Raasay had
+erected near his house was so contrived, because the harvest is
+seldom brought home dry, as by perpetual perflation to prevent the
+mow from heating.
+
+Of their gardens I can judge only from their tables.  I did not
+observe that the common greens were wanting, and suppose, that by
+choosing an advantageous exposition, they can raise all the more
+hardy esculent plants.  Of vegetable fragrance or beauty they are
+not yet studious.  Few vows are made to Flora in the Hebrides.
+
+They gather a little hay, but the grass is mown late; and is so
+often almost dry and again very wet, before it is housed, that it
+becomes a collection of withered stalks without taste or fragrance;
+it must be eaten by cattle that have nothing else, but by most
+English farmers would be thrown away.
+
+In the Islands I have not heard that any subterraneous treasures
+have been discovered, though where there are mountains, there are
+commonly minerals.  One of the rocks in Col has a black vein,
+imagined to consist of the ore of lead; but it was never yet opened
+or essayed.  In Sky a black mass was accidentally picked up, and
+brought into the house of the owner of the land, who found himself
+strongly inclined to think it a coal, but unhappily it did not burn
+in the chimney.  Common ores would be here of no great value; for
+what requires to be separated by fire, must, if it were found, be
+carried away in its mineral state, here being no fewel for the
+smelting-house or forge.  Perhaps by diligent search in this world
+of stone, some valuable species of marble might be discovered.  But
+neither philosophical curiosity, nor commercial industry, have yet
+fixed their abode here, where the importunity of immediate want
+supplied but for the day, and craving on the morrow, has left
+little room for excursive knowledge or the pleasing fancies of
+distant profit.
+
+They have lately found a manufacture considerably lucrative.  Their
+rocks abound with kelp, a sea-plant, of which the ashes are melted
+into glass.  They burn kelp in great quantities, and then send it
+away in ships, which come regularly to purchase them.  This new
+source of riches has raised the rents of many maritime farms; but
+the tenants pay, like all other tenants, the additional rent with
+great unwillingness; because they consider the profits of the kelp
+as the mere product of personal labour, to which the landlord
+contributes nothing.  However, as any man may be said to give, what
+he gives the power of gaining, he has certainly as much right to
+profit from the price of kelp as of any thing else found or raised
+upon his ground.
+
+This new trade has excited a long and eager litigation between
+Macdonald and Macleod, for a ledge of rocks, which, till the value
+of kelp was known, neither of them desired the reputation of
+possessing.
+
+The cattle of Sky are not so small as is commonly believed.  Since
+they have sent their beeves in great numbers to southern marts,
+they have probably taken more care of their breed.  At stated times
+the annual growth of cattle is driven to a fair, by a general
+drover, and with the money, which he returns to the farmer, the
+rents are paid.
+
+The price regularly expected, is from two to three pounds a head:
+there was once one sold for five pounds.  They go from the Islands
+very lean, and are not offered to the butcher, till they have been
+long fatted in English pastures.
+
+Of their black cattle, some are without horns, called by the Scots
+humble cows, as we call a bee an humble bee, that wants a sting.
+Whether this difference be specifick, or accidental, though we
+inquired with great diligence, we could not be informed.  We are
+not very sure that the bull is ever without horns, though we have
+been told, that such bulls there are.  What is produced by putting
+a horned and unhorned male and female together, no man has ever
+tried, that thought the result worthy of observation.
+
+Their horses are, like their cows, of a moderate size.  I had no
+difficulty to mount myself commodiously by the favour of the
+gentlemen.  I heard of very little cows in Barra, and very little
+horses in Rum, where perhaps no care is taken to prevent that
+diminution of size, which must always happen, where the greater and
+the less copulate promiscuously, and the young animal is restrained
+from growth by penury of sustenance.
+
+The goat is the general inhabitant of the earth, complying with
+every difference of climate, and of soil.  The goats of the
+Hebrides are like others:  nor did I hear any thing of their sheep,
+to be particularly remarked.
+
+In the penury of these malignant regions, nothing is left that can
+be converted to food.  The goats and the sheep are milked like the
+cows.  A single meal of a goat is a quart, and of a sheep a pint.
+Such at least was the account, which I could extract from those of
+whom I am not sure that they ever had inquired.
+
+The milk of goats is much thinner than that of cows, and that of
+sheep is much thicker.  Sheeps milk is never eaten before it is
+boiled:  as it is thick, it must be very liberal of curd, and the
+people of St. Kilda form it into small cheeses.
+
+The stags of the mountains are less than those of our parks, or
+forests, perhaps not bigger than our fallow deer.  Their flesh has
+no rankness, nor is inferiour in flavour to our common venison.
+The roebuck I neither saw nor tasted.  These are not countries for
+a regular chase.  The deer are not driven with horns and hounds.  A
+sportsman, with his gun in his hand, watches the animal, and when
+he has wounded him, traces him by the blood.
+
+They have a race of brinded greyhounds, larger and stronger than
+those with which we course hares, and those are the only dogs used
+by them for the chase.
+
+Man is by the use of fire-arms made so much an overmatch for other
+animals, that in all countries, where they are in use, the wild
+part of the creation sensibly diminishes.  There will probably not
+be long, either stags or roebucks in the Islands.  All the beasts
+of chase would have been lost long ago in countries well inhabited,
+had they not been preserved by laws for the pleasure of the rich.
+
+There are in Sky neither rats nor mice, but the weasel is so
+frequent, that he is heard in houses rattling behind chests or
+beds, as rats in England.  They probably owe to his predominance
+that they have no other vermin; for since the great rat took
+possession of this part of the world, scarce a ship can touch at
+any port, but some of his race are left behind.  They have within
+these few years began to infest the isle of Col, where being left
+by some trading vessel, they have increased for want of weasels to
+oppose them.
+
+The inhabitants of Sky, and of the other Islands, which I have
+seen, are commonly of the middle stature, with fewer among them
+very tall or very short, than are seen in England, or perhaps, as
+their numbers are small, the chances of any deviation from the
+common measure are necessarily few.  The tallest men that I saw are
+among those of higher rank.  In regions of barrenness and scarcity,
+the human race is hindered in its growth by the same causes as
+other animals.
+
+The ladies have as much beauty here as in other places, but bloom
+and softness are not to be expected among the lower classes, whose
+faces are exposed to the rudeness of the climate, and whose
+features are sometimes contracted by want, and sometimes hardened
+by the blasts.  Supreme beauty is seldom found in cottages or work-
+shops, even where no real hardships are suffered.  To expand the
+human face to its full perfection, it seems necessary that the mind
+should co-operate by placidness of content, or consciousness of
+superiority.
+
+Their strength is proportionate to their size, but they are
+accustomed to run upon rough ground, and therefore can with great
+agility skip over the bog, or clamber the mountain.  For a campaign
+in the wastes of America, soldiers better qualified could not have
+been found.  Having little work to do, they are not willing, nor
+perhaps able to endure a long continuance of manual labour, and are
+therefore considered as habitually idle.
+
+Having never been supplied with those accommodations, which life
+extensively diversified with trades affords, they supply their
+wants by very insufficient shifts, and endure many inconveniences,
+which a little attention would easily relieve.  I have seen a horse
+carrying home the harvest on a crate.  Under his tail was a stick
+for a crupper, held at the two ends by twists of straw.  Hemp will
+grow in their islands, and therefore ropes may be had.  If they
+wanted hemp, they might make better cordage of rushes, or perhaps
+of nettles, than of straw.
+
+Their method of life neither secures them perpetual health, nor
+exposes them to any particular diseases.  There are physicians in
+the Islands, who, I believe, all practise chirurgery, and all
+compound their own medicines.
+
+It is generally supposed, that life is longer in places where there
+are few opportunities of luxury; but I found no instance here of
+extraordinary longevity.  A cottager grows old over his oaten
+cakes, like a citizen at a turtle feast.  He is indeed seldom
+incommoded by corpulence.  Poverty preserves him from sinking under
+the burden of himself, but he escapes no other injury of time.
+Instances of long life are often related, which those who hear them
+are more willing to credit than examine.  To be told that any man
+has attained a hundred years, gives hope and comfort to him who
+stands trembling on the brink of his own climacterick.
+
+Length of life is distributed impartially to very different modes
+of life in very different climates; and the mountains have no
+greater examples of age and health than the low lands, where I was
+introduced to two ladies of high quality; one of whom, in her
+ninety-fourth year, presided at her table with the full exercise of
+all her powers; and the other has attained her eighty-fourth,
+without any diminution of her vivacity, and with little reason to
+accuse time of depredations on her beauty.
+
+In the Islands, as in most other places, the inhabitants are of
+different rank, and one does not encroach here upon another.  Where
+there is no commerce nor manufacture, he that is born poor can
+scarcely become rich; and if none are able to buy estates, he that
+is born to land cannot annihilate his family by selling it.  This
+was once the state of these countries.  Perhaps there is no
+example, till within a century and half, of any family whose estate
+was alienated otherwise than by violence or forfeiture.  Since
+money has been brought amongst them, they have found, like others,
+the art of spending more than they receive; and I saw with grief
+the chief of a very ancient clan, whose Island was condemned by law
+to be sold for the satisfaction of his creditors.
+
+The name of highest dignity is Laird, of which there are in the
+extensive Isle of Sky only three, Macdonald, Macleod, and
+Mackinnon.  The Laird is the original owner of the land, whose
+natural power must be very great, where no man lives but by
+agriculture; and where the produce of the land is not conveyed
+through the labyrinths of traffick, but passes directly from the
+hand that gathers it to the mouth that eats it.  The Laird has all
+those in his power that live upon his farms.  Kings can, for the
+most part, only exalt or degrade.  The Laird at pleasure can feed
+or starve, can give bread, or withold it.  This inherent power was
+yet strengthened by the kindness of consanguinity, and the
+reverence of patriarchal authority.  The Laird was the father of
+the Clan, and his tenants commonly bore his name.  And to these
+principles of original command was added, for many ages, an
+exclusive right of legal jurisdiction.
+
+This multifarious, and extensive obligation operated with force
+scarcely credible.  Every duty, moral or political, was absorbed in
+affection and adherence to the Chief.  Not many years have passed
+since the clans knew no law but the Laird's will.  He told them to
+whom they should be friends or enemies, what King they should obey,
+and what religion they should profess.
+
+When the Scots first rose in arms against the succession of the
+house of Hanover, Lovat, the Chief of the Frasers, was in exile for
+a rape.  The Frasers were very numerous, and very zealous against
+the government.  A pardon was sent to Lovat.  He came to the
+English camp, and the clan immediately deserted to him.
+
+Next in dignity to the Laird is the Tacksman; a large taker or
+lease-holder of land, of which he keeps part, as a domain, in his
+own hand, and lets part to under tenants.  The Tacksman is
+necessarily a man capable of securing to the Laird the whole rent,
+and is commonly a collateral relation.  These tacks, or subordinate
+possessions, were long considered as hereditary, and the occupant
+was distinguished by the name of the place at which he resided.  He
+held a middle station, by which the highest and the lowest orders
+were connected.  He paid rent and reverence to the Laird, and
+received them from the tenants.  This tenure still subsists, with
+its original operation, but not with the primitive stability.
+Since the islanders, no longer content to live, have learned the
+desire of growing rich, an ancient dependent is in danger of giving
+way to a higher bidder, at the expense of domestick dignity and
+hereditary power.  The stranger, whose money buys him preference,
+considers himself as paying for all that he has, and is indifferent
+about the Laird's honour or safety.  The commodiousness of money is
+indeed great; but there are some advantages which money cannot buy,
+and which therefore no wise man will by the love of money be
+tempted to forego.
+
+I have found in the hither parts of Scotland, men not defective in
+judgment or general experience, who consider the Tacksman as a
+useless burden of the ground, as a drone who lives upon the product
+of an estate, without the right of property, or the merit of
+labour, and who impoverishes at once the landlord and the tenant.
+The land, say they, is let to the Tacksman at six-pence an acre,
+and by him to the tenant at ten-pence.  Let the owner be the
+immediate landlord to all the tenants; if he sets the ground at
+eight-pence, he will increase his revenue by a fourth part, and the
+tenant's burthen will be diminished by a fifth.
+
+Those who pursue this train of reasoning, seem not sufficiently to
+inquire whither it will lead them, nor to know that it will equally
+shew the propriety of suppressing all wholesale trade, of shutting
+up the shops of every man who sells what he does not make, and of
+extruding all whose agency and profit intervene between the
+manufacturer and the consumer.  They may, by stretching their
+understandings a little wider, comprehend, that all those who by
+undertaking large quantities of manufacture, and affording
+employment to many labourers, make themselves considered as
+benefactors to the publick, have only been robbing their workmen
+with one hand, and their customers with the other.  If Crowley had
+sold only what he could make, and all his smiths had wrought their
+own iron with their own hammers, he would have lived on less, and
+they would have sold their work for more.  The salaries of
+superintendents and clerks would have been partly saved, and partly
+shared, and nails been sometimes cheaper by a farthing in a
+hundred.  But then if the smith could not have found an immediate
+purchaser, he must have deserted his anvil; if there had by
+accident at any time been more sellers than buyers, the workmen
+must have reduced their profit to nothing, by underselling one
+another; and as no great stock could have been in any hand, no
+sudden demand of large quantities could have been answered and the
+builder must have stood still till the nailer could supply him.
+
+According to these schemes, universal plenty is to begin and end in
+universal misery.  Hope and emulation will be utterly extinguished;
+and as all must obey the call of immediate necessity, nothing that
+requires extensive views, or provides for distant consequences will
+ever be performed.
+
+To the southern inhabitants of Scotland, the state of the mountains
+and the islands is equally unknown with that of Borneo or Sumatra:
+Of both they have only heard a little, and guess the rest.  They
+are strangers to the language and the manners, to the advantages
+and wants of the people, whose life they would model, and whose
+evils they would remedy.
+
+Nothing is less difficult than to procure one convenience by the
+forfeiture of another.  A soldier may expedite his march by
+throwing away his arms.  To banish the Tacksman is easy, to make a
+country plentiful by diminishing the people, is an expeditious mode
+of husbandry; but little abundance, which there is nobody to enjoy,
+contributes little to human happiness.
+
+As the mind must govern the hands, so in every society the man of
+intelligence must direct the man of labour.  If the Tacksmen be
+taken away, the Hebrides must in their present state be given up to
+grossness and ignorance; the tenant, for want of instruction, will
+be unskilful, and for want of admonition will be negligent.  The
+Laird in these wide estates, which often consist of islands remote
+from one another, cannot extend his personal influence to all his
+tenants; and the steward having no dignity annexed to his
+character, can have little authority among men taught to pay
+reverence only to birth, and who regard the Tacksman as their
+hereditary superior; nor can the steward have equal zeal for the
+prosperity of an estate profitable only to the Laird, with the
+Tacksman, who has the Laird's income involved in his own.
+
+The only gentlemen in the Islands are the Lairds, the Tacksmen, and
+the Ministers, who frequently improve their livings by becoming
+farmers.  If the Tacksmen be banished, who will be left to impart
+knowledge, or impress civility?  The Laird must always be at a
+distance from the greater part of his lands; and if he resides at
+all upon them, must drag his days in solitude, having no longer
+either a friend or a companion; he will therefore depart to some
+more comfortable residence, and leave the tenants to the wisdom and
+mercy of a factor.
+
+Of tenants there are different orders, as they have greater or less
+stock.  Land is sometimes leased to a small fellowship, who live in
+a cluster of huts, called a Tenants Town, and are bound jointly and
+separately for the payment of their rent.  These, I believe, employ
+in the care of their cattle, and the labour of tillage, a kind of
+tenants yet lower; who having a hut with grass for a certain number
+of cows and sheep, pay their rent by a stipulated quantity of
+labour.
+
+The condition of domestick servants, or the price of occasional
+labour, I do not know with certainty.  I was told that the maids
+have sheep, and are allowed to spin for their own clothing; perhaps
+they have no pecuniary wages, or none but in very wealthy families.
+The state of life, which has hitherto been purely pastoral, begins
+now to be a little variegated with commerce; but novelties enter by
+degrees, and till one mode has fully prevailed over the other, no
+settled notion can be formed.
+
+Such is the system of insular subordination, which, having little
+variety, cannot afford much delight in the view, nor long detain
+the mind in contemplation.  The inhabitants were for a long time
+perhaps not unhappy; but their content was a muddy mixture of pride
+and ignorance, an indifference for pleasures which they did not
+know, a blind veneration for their chiefs, and a strong conviction
+of their own importance.
+
+Their pride has been crushed by the heavy hand of a vindictive
+conqueror, whose seventies have been followed by laws, which,
+though they cannot be called cruel, have produced much discontent,
+because they operate upon the surface of life, and make every eye
+bear witness to subjection.  To be compelled to a new dress has
+always been found painful.
+
+Their Chiefs being now deprived of their jurisdiction, have already
+lost much of their influence; and as they gradually degenerate from
+patriarchal rulers to rapacious landlords, they will divest
+themselves of the little that remains.
+
+That dignity which they derived from an opinion of their military
+importance, the law, which disarmed them, has abated.  An old
+gentleman, delighting himself with the recollection of better days,
+related, that forty years ago, a Chieftain walked out attended by
+ten or twelve followers, with their arms rattling.  That animating
+rabble has now ceased.  The Chief has lost his formidable retinue;
+and the Highlander walks his heath unarmed and defenceless, with
+the peaceable submission of a French peasant or English cottager.
+
+Their ignorance grows every day less, but their knowledge is yet of
+little other use than to shew them their wants.  They are now in
+the period of education, and feel the uneasiness of discipline,
+without yet perceiving the benefit of instruction.
+
+The last law, by which the Highlanders are deprived of their arms,
+has operated with efficacy beyond expectation.  Of former statutes
+made with the same design, the execution had been feeble, and the
+effect inconsiderable.  Concealment was undoubtedly practised, and
+perhaps often with connivance.  There was tenderness, or
+partiality, on one side, and obstinacy on the other.  But the law,
+which followed the victory of Culloden, found the whole nation
+dejected and intimidated; informations were given without danger,
+and without fear, and the arms were collected with such rigour,
+that every house was despoiled of its defence.
+
+To disarm part of the Highlands, could give no reasonable occasion
+of complaint.  Every government must be allowed the power of taking
+away the weapon that is lifted against it.  But the loyal clans
+murmured, with some appearance of justice, that after having
+defended the King, they were forbidden for the future to defend
+themselves; and that the sword should be forfeited, which had been
+legally employed.  Their case is undoubtedly hard, but in political
+regulations, good cannot be complete, it can only be predominant.
+
+Whether by disarming a people thus broken into several tribes, and
+thus remote from the seat of power, more good than evil has been
+produced, may deserve inquiry.  The supreme power in every
+community has the right of debarring every individual, and every
+subordinate society from self-defence, only because the supreme
+power is able to defend them; and therefore where the governor
+cannot act, he must trust the subject to act for himself.  These
+Islands might be wasted with fire and sword before their sovereign
+would know their distress.  A gang of robbers, such as has been
+lately found confederating themselves in the Highlands, might lay a
+wide region under contribution.  The crew of a petty privateer
+might land on the largest and most wealthy of the Islands, and riot
+without control in cruelty and waste.  It was observed by one of
+the Chiefs of Sky, that fifty armed men might, without resistance
+ravage the country.  Laws that place the subjects in such a state,
+contravene the first principles of the compact of authority:  they
+exact obedience, and yield no protection.
+
+It affords a generous and manly pleasure to conceive a little
+nation gathering its fruits and tending its herds with fearless
+confidence, though it lies open on every side to invasion, where,
+in contempt of walls and trenches, every man sleeps securely with
+his sword beside him; where all on the first approach of hostility
+came together at the call to battle, as at a summons to a festal
+show; and committing their cattle to the care of those whom age or
+nature has disabled, engage the enemy with that competition for
+hazard and for glory, which operate in men that fight under the eye
+of those, whose dislike or kindness they have always considered as
+the greatest evil or the greatest good.
+
+This was, in the beginning of the present century, the state of the
+Highlands.  Every man was a soldier, who partook of national
+confidence, and interested himself in national honour.  To lose
+this spirit, is to lose what no small advantage will compensate.
+
+It may likewise deserve to be inquired, whether a great nation
+ought to be totally commercial? whether amidst the uncertainty of
+human affairs, too much attention to one mode of happiness may not
+endanger others? whether the pride of riches must not sometimes
+have recourse to the protection of courage? and whether, if it be
+necessary to preserve in some part of the empire the military
+spirit, it can subsist more commodiously in any place, than in
+remote and unprofitable provinces, where it can commonly do little
+harm, and whence it may be called forth at any sudden exigence?
+
+It must however be confessed, that a man, who places honour only in
+successful violence, is a very troublesome and pernicious animal in
+time of peace; and that the martial character cannot prevail in a
+whole people, but by the diminution of all other virtues.  He that
+is accustomed to resolve all right into conquest, will have very
+little tenderness or equity.  All the friendship in such a life can
+be only a confederacy of invasion, or alliance of defence.  The
+strong must flourish by force, and the weak subsist by stratagem.
+
+Till the Highlanders lost their ferocity, with their arms, they
+suffered from each other all that malignity could dictate, or
+precipitance could act.  Every provocation was revenged with blood,
+and no man that ventured into a numerous company, by whatever
+occasion brought together, was sure of returning without a wound.
+If they are now exposed to foreign hostilities, they may talk of
+the danger, but can seldom feel it.  If they are no longer martial,
+they are no longer quarrelsome.  Misery is caused for the most
+part, not by a heavy crush of disaster, but by the corrosion of
+less visible evils, which canker enjoyment, and undermine security.
+The visit of an invader is necessarily rare, but domestick
+animosities allow no cessation.
+
+The abolition of the local jurisdictions, which had for so many
+ages been exercised by the chiefs, has likewise its evil and its
+good.  The feudal constitution naturally diffused itself into long
+ramifications of subordinate authority.  To this general temper of
+the government was added the peculiar form of the country, broken
+by mountains into many subdivisions scarcely accessible but to the
+natives, and guarded by passes, or perplexed with intricacies,
+through which national justice could not find its way.
+
+The power of deciding controversies, and of punishing offences, as
+some such power there must always be, was intrusted to the Lairds
+of the country, to those whom the people considered as their
+natural judges.  It cannot be supposed that a rugged proprietor of
+the rocks, unprincipled and unenlightened, was a nice resolver of
+entangled claims, or very exact in proportioning punishment to
+offences.  But the more he indulged his own will, the more he held
+his vassals in dependence.  Prudence and innocence, without the
+favour of the Chief, conferred no security; and crimes involved no
+danger, when the judge was resolute to acquit.
+
+When the chiefs were men of knowledge and virtue, the convenience
+of a domestick judicature was great.  No long journies were
+necessary, nor artificial delays could be practised; the character,
+the alliances, and interests of the litigants were known to the
+court, and all false pretences were easily detected.  The sentence,
+when it was past, could not be evaded; the power of the Laird
+superseded formalities, and justice could not be defeated by
+interest or stratagem.
+
+I doubt not but that since the regular judges have made their
+circuits through the whole country, right has been every where more
+wisely, and more equally distributed; the complaint is, that
+litigation is grown troublesome, and that the magistrates are too
+few, and therefore often too remote for general convenience.
+
+Many of the smaller Islands have no legal officer within them.  I
+once asked, If a crime should be committed, by what authority the
+offender could be seized? and was told, that the Laird would exert
+his right; a right which he must now usurp, but which surely
+necessity must vindicate, and which is therefore yet exercised in
+lower degrees, by some of the proprietors, when legal processes
+cannot be obtained.
+
+In all greater questions, however, there is now happily an end to
+all fear or hope from malice or from favour.  The roads are secure
+in those places through which, forty years ago, no traveller could
+pass without a convoy.  All trials of right by the sword are
+forgotten, and the mean are in as little danger from the powerful
+as in other places.  No scheme of policy has, in any country, yet
+brought the rich and poor on equal terms into courts of judicature.
+Perhaps experience, improving on experience, may in time effect it.
+
+Those who have long enjoyed dignity and power, ought not to lose it
+without some equivalent.  There was paid to the Chiefs by the
+publick, in exchange for their privileges, perhaps a sum greater
+than most of them had ever possessed, which excited a thirst for
+riches, of which it shewed them the use.  When the power of birth
+and station ceases, no hope remains but from the prevalence of
+money.  Power and wealth supply the place of each other.  Power
+confers the ability of gratifying our desire without the consent of
+others.  Wealth enables us to obtain the consent of others to our
+gratification.  Power, simply considered, whatever it confers on
+one, must take from another.  Wealth enables its owner to give to
+others, by taking only from himself.  Power pleases the violent and
+proud:  wealth delights the placid and the timorous.  Youth
+therefore flies at power, and age grovels after riches.
+
+The Chiefs, divested of their prerogatives, necessarily turned
+their thoughts to the improvement of their revenues, and expect
+more rent, as they have less homage.  The tenant, who is far from
+perceiving that his condition is made better in the same
+proportion, as that of his landlord is made worse, does not
+immediately see why his industry is to be taxed more heavily than
+before.  He refuses to pay the demand, and is ejected; the ground
+is then let to a stranger, who perhaps brings a larger stock, but
+who, taking the land at its full price, treats with the Laird upon
+equal terms, and considers him not as a Chief, but as a trafficker
+in land.  Thus the estate perhaps is improved, but the clan is
+broken.
+
+It seems to be the general opinion, that the rents have been raised
+with too much eagerness.  Some regard must be paid to prejudice.
+Those who have hitherto paid but little, will not suddenly be
+persuaded to pay much, though they can afford it.  As ground is
+gradually improved, and the value of money decreases, the rent may
+be raised without any diminution of the farmer's profits:  yet it
+is necessary in these countries, where the ejection of a tenant is
+a greater evil, than in more populous places, to consider not
+merely what the land will produce, but with what ability the
+inhabitant can cultivate it.  A certain stock can allow but a
+certain payment; for if the land be doubled, and the stock remains
+the same, the tenant becomes no richer.  The proprietors of the
+Highlands might perhaps often increase their income, by subdividing
+the farms, and allotting to every occupier only so many acres as he
+can profitably employ, but that they want people.
+
+There seems now, whatever be the cause, to be through a great part
+of the Highlands a general discontent.  That adherence, which was
+lately professed by every man to the chief of his name, has now
+little prevalence; and he that cannot live as he desires at home,
+listens to the tale of fortunate islands, and happy regions, where
+every man may have land of his own, and eat the product of his
+labour without a superior.
+
+Those who have obtained grants of American lands, have, as is well
+known, invited settlers from all quarters of the globe; and among
+other places, where oppression might produce a wish for new
+habitations, their emissaries would not fail to try their
+persuasions in the Isles of Scotland, where at the time when the
+clans were newly disunited from their Chiefs, and exasperated by
+unprecedented exactions, it is no wonder that they prevailed.
+
+Whether the mischiefs of emigration were immediately perceived, may
+be justly questioned.  They who went first, were probably such as
+could best be spared; but the accounts sent by the earliest
+adventurers, whether true or false, inclined many to follow them;
+and whole neighbourhoods formed parties for removal; so that
+departure from their native country is no longer exile.  He that
+goes thus accompanied, carries with him all that makes life
+pleasant.  He sits down in a better climate, surrounded by his
+kindred and his friends:  they carry with them their language,
+their opinions, their popular songs, and hereditary merriment:
+they change nothing but the place of their abode; and of that
+change they perceive the benefit.
+
+This is the real effect of emigration, if those that go away
+together settle on the same spot, and preserve their ancient union.
+But some relate that these adventurous visitants of unknown
+regions, after a voyage passed in dreams of plenty and felicity,
+are dispersed at last upon a Sylvan wilderness, where their first
+years must be spent in toil, to clear the ground which is
+afterwards to be tilled, and that the whole effect of their
+undertakings is only more fatigue and equal scarcity.
+
+Both accounts may be suspected.  Those who are gone will endeavour
+by every art to draw others after them; for as their numbers are
+greater, they will provide better for themselves.  When Nova Scotia
+was first peopled, I remember a letter, published under the
+character of a New Planter, who related how much the climate put
+him in mind of Italy.  Such intelligence the Hebridians probably
+receive from their transmarine correspondents.  But with equal
+temptations of interest, and perhaps with no greater niceness of
+veracity, the owners of the Islands spread stories of American
+hardships to keep their people content at home.
+
+Some method to stop this epidemick desire of wandering, which
+spreads its contagion from valley to valley, deserves to be sought
+with great diligence.  In more fruitful countries, the removal of
+one only makes room for the succession of another:  but in the
+Hebrides, the loss of an inhabitant leaves a lasting vacuity; for
+nobody born in any other parts of the world will choose this
+country for his residence, and an Island once depopulated will
+remain a desert, as long as the present facility of travel gives
+every one, who is discontented and unsettled, the choice of his
+abode.
+
+Let it be inquired, whether the first intention of those who are
+fluttering on the wing, and collecting a flock that they may take
+their flight, be to attain good, or to avoid evil.  If they are
+dissatisfied with that part of the globe, which their birth has
+allotted them, and resolve not to live without the pleasures of
+happier climates; if they long for bright suns, and calm skies, and
+flowery fields, and fragrant gardens, I know not by what eloquence
+they can be persuaded, or by what offers they can be hired to stay.
+
+But if they are driven from their native country by positive evils,
+and disgusted by ill-treatment, real or imaginary, it were fit to
+remove their grievances, and quiet their resentment; since, if they
+have been hitherto undutiful subjects, they will not much mend
+their principles by American conversation.
+
+To allure them into the army, it was thought proper to indulge them
+in the continuance of their national dress.  If this concession
+could have any effect, it might easily be made.  That dissimilitude
+of appearance, which was supposed to keep them distinct from the
+rest of the nation, might disincline them from coalescing with the
+Pensylvanians, or people of Connecticut.  If the restitution of
+their arms will reconcile them to their country, let them have
+again those weapons, which will not be more mischievous at home
+than in the Colonies.  That they may not fly from the increase of
+rent, I know not whether the general good does not require that the
+landlords be, for a time, restrained in their demands, and kept
+quiet by pensions proportionate to their loss.
+
+To hinder insurrection, by driving away the people, and to govern
+peaceably, by having no subjects, is an expedient that argues no
+great profundity of politicks.  To soften the obdurate, to convince
+the mistaken, to mollify the resentful, are worthy of a statesman;
+but it affords a legislator little self-applause to consider, that
+where there was formerly an insurrection, there is now a
+wilderness.
+
+It has been a question often agitated without solution, why those
+northern regions are now so thinly peopled, which formerly
+overwhelmed with their armies the Roman empire.  The question
+supposes what I believe is not true, that they had once more
+inhabitants than they could maintain, and overflowed only because
+they were full.
+
+This is to estimate the manners of all countries and ages by our
+own.  Migration, while the state of life was unsettled, and there
+was little communication of intelligence between distant places,
+was among the wilder nations of Europe, capricious and casual.  An
+adventurous projector heard of a fertile coast unoccupied, and led
+out a colony; a chief of renown for bravery, called the young men
+together, and led them out to try what fortune would present.  When
+Caesar was in Gaul, he found the Helvetians preparing to go they
+knew not whither, and put a stop to their motions.  They settled
+again in their own country, where they were so far from wanting
+room, that they had accumulated three years provision for their
+march.
+
+The religion of the North was military; if they could not find
+enemies, it was their duty to make them:  they travelled in quest
+of danger, and willingly took the chance of Empire or Death.  If
+their troops were numerous, the countries from which they were
+collected are of vast extent, and without much exuberance of people
+great armies may be raised where every man is a soldier.  But their
+true numbers were never known.  Those who were conquered by them
+are their historians, and shame may have excited them to say, that
+they were overwhelmed with multitudes.  To count is a modern
+practice, the ancient method was to guess; and when numbers are
+guessed they are always magnified.
+
+Thus England has for several years been filled with the
+atchievements of seventy thousand Highlanders employed in America.
+I have heard from an English officer, not much inclined to favour
+them, that their behaviour deserved a very high degree of military
+praise; but their number has been much exaggerated.  One of the
+ministers told me, that seventy thousand men could not have been
+found in all the Highlands, and that more than twelve thousand
+never took the field.  Those that went to the American war, went to
+destruction.  Of the old Highland regiment, consisting of twelve
+hundred, only seventy-six survived to see their country again.
+
+The Gothick swarms have at least been multiplied with equal
+liberality.  That they bore no great proportion to the inhabitants,
+in whose countries they settled, is plain from the paucity of
+northern words now found in the provincial languages.  Their
+country was not deserted for want of room, because it was covered
+with forests of vast extent; and the first effect of plenitude of
+inhabitants is the destruction of wood.  As the Europeans spread
+over America the lands are gradually laid naked.
+
+I would not be understood to say, that necessity had never any part
+in their expeditions.  A nation, whose agriculture is scanty or
+unskilful, may be driven out by famine.  A nation of hunters may
+have exhausted their game.  I only affirm that the northern regions
+were not, when their irruptions subdued the Romans, overpeopled
+with regard to their real extent of territory, and power of
+fertility.  In a country fully inhabited, however afterward laid
+waste, evident marks will remain of its former populousness.  But
+of Scandinavia and Germany, nothing is known but that as we trace
+their state upwards into antiquity, their woods were greater, and
+their cultivated ground was less.
+
+That causes were different from want of room may produce a general
+disposition to seek another country is apparent from the present
+conduct of the Highlanders, who are in some places ready to
+threaten a total secession.  The numbers which have already gone,
+though like other numbers they may be magnified, are very great,
+and such as if they had gone together and agreed upon any certain
+settlement, might have founded an independent government in the
+depths of the western continent.  Nor are they only the lowest and
+most indigent; many men of considerable wealth have taken with them
+their train of labourers and dependants; and if they continue the
+feudal scheme of polity, may establish new clans in the other
+hemisphere.
+
+That the immediate motives of their desertion must be imputed to
+their landlords, may be reasonably concluded, because some Lairds
+of more prudence and less rapacity have kept their vassals
+undiminished.  From Raasa only one man had been seduced, and at Col
+there was no wish to go away.
+
+The traveller who comes hither from more opulent countries, to
+speculate upon the remains of pastoral life, will not much wonder
+that a common Highlander has no strong adherence to his native
+soil; for of animal enjoyments, or of physical good, he leaves
+nothing that he may not find again wheresoever he may be thrown.
+
+The habitations of men in the Hebrides may be distinguished into
+huts and houses.  By a house, I mean a building with one story over
+another; by a hut, a dwelling with only one floor.  The Laird, who
+formerly lived in a castle, now lives in a house; sometimes
+sufficiently neat, but seldom very spacious or splendid.  The
+Tacksmen and the Ministers have commonly houses.  Wherever there is
+a house, the stranger finds a welcome, and to the other evils of
+exterminating Tacksmen may be added the unavoidable cessation of
+hospitality, or the devolution of too heavy a burden on the
+Ministers.
+
+Of the houses little can be said.  They are small, and by the
+necessity of accumulating stores, where there are so few
+opportunities of purchase, the rooms are very heterogeneously
+filled.  With want of cleanliness it were ingratitude to reproach
+them.  The servants having been bred upon the naked earth, think
+every floor clean, and the quick succession of guests, perhaps not
+always over-elegant, does not allow much time for adjusting their
+apartments.
+
+Huts are of many gradations; from murky dens, to commodious
+dwellings.
+
+The wall of a common hut is always built without mortar, by a
+skilful adaptation of loose stones.  Sometimes perhaps a double
+wall of stones is raised, and the intermediate space filled with
+earth.  The air is thus completely excluded.  Some walls are, I
+think, formed of turfs, held together by a wattle, or texture of
+twigs.  Of the meanest huts, the first room is lighted by the
+entrance, and the second by the smoke hole.  The fire is usually
+made in the middle.  But there are huts, or dwellings of only one
+story, inhabited by gentlemen, which have walls cemented with
+mortar, glass windows, and boarded floors.  Of these all have
+chimneys, and some chimneys have grates.
+
+The house and the furniture are not always nicely suited.  We were
+driven once, by missing a passage, to the hut of a gentleman,
+where, after a very liberal supper, when I was conducted to my
+chamber, I found an elegant bed of Indian cotton, spread with fine
+sheets.  The accommodation was flattering; I undressed myself, and
+felt my feet in the mire.  The bed stood upon the bare earth, which
+a long course of rain had softened to a puddle.
+
+In pastoral countries the condition of the lowest rank of people is
+sufficiently wretched.  Among manufacturers, men that have no
+property may have art and industry, which make them necessary, and
+therefore valuable.  But where flocks and corn are the only wealth,
+there are always more hands than work, and of that work there is
+little in which skill and dexterity can be much distinguished.  He
+therefore who is born poor never can be rich.  The son merely
+occupies the place of the father, and life knows nothing of
+progression or advancement.
+
+The petty tenants, and labouring peasants, live in miserable
+cabins, which afford them little more than shelter from the storms.
+The Boor of Norway is said to make all his own utensils.  In the
+Hebrides, whatever might be their ingenuity, the want of wood
+leaves them no materials.  They are probably content with such
+accommodations as stones of different forms and sizes can afford
+them.
+
+Their food is not better than their lodging.  They seldom taste the
+flesh of land animals; for here are no markets.  What each man eats
+is from his own stock.  The great effect of money is to break
+property into small parts.  In towns, he that has a shilling may
+have a piece of meat; but where there is no commerce, no man can
+eat mutton but by killing a sheep.
+
+Fish in fair weather they need not want; but, I believe, man never
+lives long on fish, but by constraint; he will rather feed upon
+roots and berries.
+
+The only fewel of the Islands is peat.  Their wood is all consumed,
+and coal they have not yet found.  Peat is dug out of the marshes,
+from the depth of one foot to that of six.  That is accounted the
+best which is nearest the surface.  It appears to be a mass of
+black earth held together by vegetable fibres.  I know not whether
+the earth be bituminous, or whether the fibres be not the only
+combustible part; which, by heating the interposed earth red hot,
+make a burning mass.  The heat is not very strong nor lasting.  The
+ashes are yellowish, and in a large quantity.  When they dig peat,
+they cut it into square pieces, and pile it up to dry beside the
+house.  In some places it has an offensive smell.  It is like wood
+charked for the smith.  The common method of making peat fires, is
+by heaping it on the hearth; but it burns well in grates, and in
+the best houses is so used.
+
+The common opinion is, that peat grows again where it has been cut;
+which, as it seems to be chiefly a vegetable substance, is not
+unlikely to be true, whether known or not to those who relate it.
+
+There are water mills in Sky and Raasa; but where they are too far
+distant, the house-wives grind their oats with a quern, or hand-
+mill, which consists of two stones, about a foot and a half in
+diameter; the lower is a little convex, to which the concavity of
+the upper must be fitted.  In the middle of the upper stone is a
+round hole, and on one side is a long handle.  The grinder sheds
+the corn gradually into the hole with one hand, and works the
+handle round with the other.  The corn slides down the convexity of
+the lower stone, and by the motion of the upper is ground in its
+passage.  These stones are found in Lochabar.
+
+The Islands afford few pleasures, except to the hardy sportsman,
+who can tread the moor and climb the mountain.  The distance of one
+family from another, in a country where travelling has so much
+difficulty, makes frequent intercourse impracticable.  Visits last
+several days, and are commonly paid by water; yet I never saw a
+boat furnished with benches, or made commodious by any addition to
+the first fabric.  Conveniences are not missed where they never
+were enjoyed.
+
+The solace which the bagpipe can give, they have long enjoyed; but
+among other changes, which the last Revolution introduced, the use
+of the bagpipe begins to be forgotten.  Some of the chief families
+still entertain a piper, whose office was anciently hereditary.
+Macrimmon was piper to Macleod, and Rankin to Maclean of Col.
+
+The tunes of the bagpipe are traditional.  There has been in Sky,
+beyond all time of memory, a college of pipers, under the direction
+of Macrimmon, which is not quite extinct.  There was another in
+Mull, superintended by Rankin, which expired about sixteen years
+ago.  To these colleges, while the pipe retained its honour, the
+students of musick repaired for education.  I have had my dinner
+exhilarated by the bagpipe, at Armidale, at Dunvegan, and in Col.
+
+The general conversation of the Islanders has nothing particular.
+I did not meet with the inquisitiveness of which I have read, and
+suspect the judgment to have been rashly made.  A stranger of
+curiosity comes into a place where a stranger is seldom seen:  he
+importunes the people with questions, of which they cannot guess
+the motive, and gazes with surprise on things which they, having
+had them always before their eyes, do not suspect of any thing
+wonderful.  He appears to them like some being of another world,
+and then thinks it peculiar that they take their turn to inquire
+whence he comes, and whither he is going.
+
+The Islands were long unfurnished with instruction for youth, and
+none but the sons of gentlemen could have any literature.  There
+are now parochial schools, to which the lord of every manor pays a
+certain stipend.  Here the children are taught to read; but by the
+rule of their institution, they teach only English, so that the
+natives read a language which they may never use or understand.  If
+a parish, which often happens, contains several Islands, the school
+being but in one, cannot assist the rest.  This is the state of
+Col, which, however, is more enlightened than some other places;
+for the deficiency is supplied by a young gentleman, who, for his
+own improvement, travels every year on foot over the Highlands to
+the session at Aberdeen; and at his return, during the vacation,
+teaches to read and write in his native Island.
+
+In Sky there are two grammar schools, where boarders are taken to
+be regularly educated.  The price of board is from three pounds, to
+four pounds ten shillings a year, and that of instruction is half a
+crown a quarter.  But the scholars are birds of passage, who live
+at school only in the summer; for in winter provisions cannot be
+made for any considerable number in one place.  This periodical
+dispersion impresses strongly the scarcity of these countries.
+
+Having heard of no boarding-school for ladies nearer than
+Inverness, I suppose their education is generally domestick.  The
+elder daughters of the higher families are sent into the world, and
+may contribute by their acquisitions to the improvement of the
+rest.
+
+Women must here study to be either pleasing or useful.  Their
+deficiencies are seldom supplied by very liberal fortunes.  A
+hundred pounds is a portion beyond the hope of any but the Laird's
+daughter.  They do not indeed often give money with their
+daughters; the question is, How many cows a young lady will bring
+her husband.  A rich maiden has from ten to forty; but two cows are
+a decent fortune for one who pretends to no distinction.
+
+The religion of the Islands is that of the Kirk of Scotland.  The
+gentlemen with whom I conversed are all inclined to the English
+liturgy; but they are obliged to maintain the established Minister,
+and the country is too poor to afford payment to another, who must
+live wholly on the contribution of his audience.
+
+They therefore all attend the worship of the Kirk, as often as a
+visit from their Minister, or the practicability of travelling
+gives them opportunity; nor have they any reason to complain of
+insufficient pastors; for I saw not one in the Islands, whom I had
+reason to think either deficient in learning, or irregular in life:
+but found several with whom I could not converse without wishing,
+as my respect increased, that they had not been Presbyterians.
+
+The ancient rigour of puritanism is now very much relaxed, though
+all are not yet equally enlightened.  I sometimes met with
+prejudices sufficiently malignant, but they were prejudices of
+ignorance.  The Ministers in the Islands had attained such
+knowledge as may justly be admired in men, who have no motive to
+study, but generous curiosity, or, what is still better, desire of
+usefulness; with such politeness as so narrow a circle of converse
+could not have supplied, but to minds naturally disposed to
+elegance.
+
+Reason and truth will prevail at last.  The most learned of the
+Scottish Doctors would now gladly admit a form of prayer, if the
+people would endure it.  The zeal or rage of congregations has its
+different degrees.  In some parishes the Lord's Prayer is suffered:
+in others it is still rejected as a form; and he that should make
+it part of his supplication would be suspected of heretical
+pravity.
+
+The principle upon which extemporary prayer was originally
+introduced, is no longer admitted.  The Minister formerly, in the
+effusion of his prayer, expected immediate, and perhaps perceptible
+inspiration, and therefore thought it his duty not to think before
+what he should say.  It is now universally confessed, that men pray
+as they speak on other occasions, according to the general measure
+of their abilities and attainments.  Whatever each may think of a
+form prescribed by another, he cannot but believe that he can
+himself compose by study and meditation a better prayer than will
+rise in his mind at a sudden call; and if he has any hope of
+supernatural help, why may he not as well receive it when he writes
+as when he speaks?
+
+In the variety of mental powers, some must perform extemporary
+prayer with much imperfection; and in the eagerness and rashness of
+contradictory opinions, if publick liturgy be left to the private
+judgment of every Minister, the congregation may often be offended
+or misled.
+
+There is in Scotland, as among ourselves, a restless suspicion of
+popish machinations, and a clamour of numerous converts to the
+Romish religion.  The report is, I believe, in both parts of the
+Island equally false.  The Romish religion is professed only in Egg
+and Canna, two small islands, into which the Reformation never made
+its way.  If any missionaries are busy in the Highlands, their zeal
+entitles them to respect, even from those who cannot think
+favourably of their doctrine.
+
+The political tenets of the Islanders I was not curious to
+investigate, and they were not eager to obtrude.  Their
+conversation is decent and inoffensive.  They disdain to drink for
+their principles, and there is no disaffection at their tables.  I
+never heard a health offered by a Highlander that might not have
+circulated with propriety within the precincts of the King's
+palace.
+
+Legal government has yet something of novelty to which they cannot
+perfectly conform.  The ancient spirit, that appealed only to the
+sword, is yet among them.  The tenant of Scalpa, an island
+belonging to Macdonald, took no care to bring his rent; when the
+landlord talked of exacting payment, he declared his resolution to
+keep his ground, and drive all intruders from the Island, and
+continued to feed his cattle as on his own land, till it became
+necessary for the Sheriff to dislodge him by violence.
+
+The various kinds of superstition which prevailed here, as in all
+other regions of ignorance, are by the diligence of the Ministers
+almost extirpated.
+
+Of Browny, mentioned by Martin, nothing has been heard for many
+years.  Browny was a sturdy Fairy; who, if he was fed, and kindly
+treated, would, as they said, do a great deal of work.  They now
+pay him no wages, and are content to labour for themselves.
+
+In Troda, within these three-and-thirty years, milk was put every
+Saturday for Greogach, or 'the Old Man with the Long Beard.'
+Whether Greogach was courted as kind, or dreaded as terrible,
+whether they meant, by giving him the milk, to obtain good, or
+avert evil, I was not informed.  The Minister is now living by whom
+the practice was abolished.
+
+They have still among them a great number of charms for the cure of
+different diseases; they are all invocations, perhaps transmitted
+to them from the times of popery, which increasing knowledge will
+bring into disuse.
+
+They have opinions, which cannot be ranked with superstition,
+because they regard only natural effects.  They expect better crops
+of grain, by sowing their seed in the moon's increase.  The moon
+has great influence in vulgar philosophy.  In my memory it was a
+precept annually given in one of the English Almanacks, 'to kill
+hogs when the moon was increasing, and the bacon would prove the
+better in boiling.'
+
+We should have had little claim to the praise of curiosity, if we
+had not endeavoured with particular attention to examine the
+question of the Second Sight.  Of an opinion received for centuries
+by a whole nation, and supposed to be confirmed through its whole
+descent, by a series of successive facts, it is desirable that the
+truth should be established, or the fallacy detected.
+
+The Second Sight is an impression made either by the mind upon the
+eye, or by the eye upon the mind, by which things distant or future
+are perceived, and seen as if they were present.  A man on a
+journey far from home falls from his horse, another, who is perhaps
+at work about the house, sees him bleeding on the ground, commonly
+with a landscape of the place where the accident befalls him.
+Another seer, driving home his cattle, or wandering in idleness, or
+musing in the sunshine, is suddenly surprised by the appearance of
+a bridal ceremony, or funeral procession, and counts the mourners
+or attendants, of whom, if he knows them, he relates the names, if
+he knows them not, he can describe the dresses.  Things distant are
+seen at the instant when they happen.  Of things future I know not
+that there is any rule for determining the time between the Sight
+and the event.
+
+This receptive faculty, for power it cannot be called, is neither
+voluntary nor constant.  The appearances have no dependence upon
+choice:  they cannot be summoned, detained, or recalled.  The
+impression is sudden, and the effect often painful.
+
+By the term Second Sight, seems to be meant a mode of seeing,
+superadded to that which Nature generally bestows.  In the Earse it
+is called Taisch; which signifies likewise a spectre, or a vision.
+I know not, nor is it likely that the Highlanders ever examined,
+whether by Taisch, used for Second Sight, they mean the power of
+seeing, or the thing seen.
+
+I do not find it to be true, as it is reported, that to the Second
+Sight nothing is presented but phantoms of evil.  Good seems to
+have the same proportions in those visionary scenes, as it obtains
+in real life:  almost all remarkable events have evil for their
+basis; and are either miseries incurred, or miseries escaped.  Our
+sense is so much stronger of what we suffer, than of what we enjoy,
+that the ideas of pain predominate in almost every mind.  What is
+recollection but a revival of vexations, or history but a record of
+wars, treasons, and calamities?  Death, which is considered as the
+greatest evil, happens to all.  The greatest good, be it what it
+will, is the lot but of a part.
+
+That they should often see death is to be expected; because death
+is an event frequent and important.  But they see likewise more
+pleasing incidents.  A gentleman told me, that when he had once
+gone far from his own Island, one of his labouring servants
+predicted his return, and described the livery of his attendant,
+which he had never worn at home; and which had been, without any
+previous design, occasionally given him.
+
+Our desire of information was keen, and our inquiry frequent.  Mr.
+Boswell's frankness and gaiety made every body communicative; and
+we heard many tales of these airy shows, with more or less evidence
+and distinctness.
+
+It is the common talk of the Lowland Scots, that the notion of the
+Second Sight is wearing away with other superstitions; and that its
+reality is no longer supposed, but by the grossest people.  How far
+its prevalence ever extended, or what ground it has lost, I know
+not.  The Islanders of all degrees, whether of rank or
+understanding, universally admit it, except the Ministers, who
+universally deny it, and are suspected to deny it, in consequence
+of a system, against conviction.  One of them honestly told me,
+that he came to Sky with a resolution not to believe it.
+
+Strong reasons for incredulity will readily occur.  This faculty of
+seeing things out of sight is local, and commonly useless.  It is a
+breach of the common order of things, without any visible reason or
+perceptible benefit.  It is ascribed only to a people very little
+enlightened; and among them, for the most part, to the mean and the
+ignorant.
+
+To the confidence of these objections it may be replied, that by
+presuming to determine what is fit, and what is beneficial, they
+presuppose more knowledge of the universal system than man has
+attained; and therefore depend upon principles too complicated and
+extensive for our comprehension; and that there can be no security
+in the consequence, when the premises are not understood; that the
+Second Sight is only wonderful because it is rare, for, considered
+in itself, it involves no more difficulty than dreams, or perhaps
+than the regular exercise of the cogitative faculty; that a general
+opinion of communicative impulses, or visionary representations,
+has prevailed in all ages and all nations; that particular
+instances have been given, with such evidence, as neither Bacon nor
+Bayle has been able to resist; that sudden impressions, which the
+event has verified, have been felt by more than own or publish
+them; that the Second Sight of the Hebrides implies only the local
+frequency of a power, which is nowhere totally unknown; and that
+where we are unable to decide by antecedent reason, we must be
+content to yield to the force of testimony.
+
+By pretension to Second Sight, no profit was ever sought or gained.
+It is an involuntary affection, in which neither hope nor fear are
+known to have any part.  Those who profess to feel it, do not boast
+of it as a privilege, nor are considered by others as
+advantageously distinguished.  They have no temptation to feign;
+and their hearers have no motive to encourage the imposture.
+
+To talk with any of these seers is not easy.  There is one living
+in Sky, with whom we would have gladly conversed; but he was very
+gross and ignorant, and knew no English.  The proportion in these
+countries of the poor to the rich is such, that if we suppose the
+quality to be accidental, it can very rarely happen to a man of
+education; and yet on such men it has sometimes fallen.  There is
+now a Second Sighted gentleman in the Highlands, who complains of
+the terrors to which he is exposed.
+
+The foresight of the Seers is not always prescience; they are
+impressed with images, of which the event only shews them the
+meaning.  They tell what they have seen to others, who are at that
+time not more knowing than themselves, but may become at last very
+adequate witnesses, by comparing the narrative with its
+verification.
+
+To collect sufficient testimonies for the satisfaction of the
+publick, or of ourselves, would have required more time than we
+could bestow.  There is, against it, the seeming analogy of things
+confusedly seen, and little understood, and for it, the indistinct
+cry of national persuasion, which may be perhaps resolved at last
+into prejudice and tradition.  I never could advance my curiosity
+to conviction; but came away at last only willing to believe.
+
+As there subsists no longer in the Islands much of that peculiar
+and discriminative form of life, of which the idea had delighted
+our imagination, we were willing to listen to such accounts of past
+times as would be given us.  But we soon found what memorials were
+to be expected from an illiterate people, whose whole time is a
+series of distress; where every morning is labouring with
+expedients for the evening; and where all mental pains or pleasure
+arose from the dread of winter, the expectation of spring, the
+caprices of their Chiefs, and the motions of the neighbouring
+clans; where there was neither shame from ignorance, nor pride in
+knowledge; neither curiosity to inquire, nor vanity to communicate.
+
+The Chiefs indeed were exempt from urgent penury, and daily
+difficulties; and in their houses were preserved what accounts
+remained of past ages.  But the Chiefs were sometimes ignorant and
+careless, and sometimes kept busy by turbulence and contention; and
+one generation of ignorance effaces the whole series of unwritten
+history.  Books are faithful repositories, which may be a while
+neglected or forgotten; but when they are opened again, will again
+impart their instruction:  memory, once interrupted, is not to be
+recalled.  Written learning is a fixed luminary, which, after the
+cloud that had hidden it has past away, is again bright in its
+proper station.  Tradition is but a meteor, which, if once it
+falls, cannot be rekindled.
+
+It seems to be universally supposed, that much of the local history
+was preserved by the Bards, of whom one is said to have been
+retained by every great family.  After these Bards were some of my
+first inquiries; and I received such answers as, for a while, made
+me please myself with my increase of knowledge; for I had not then
+learned how to estimate the narration of a Highlander.
+
+They said that a great family had a Bard and a Senachi, who were
+the poet and historian of the house; and an old gentleman told me
+that he remembered one of each.  Here was a dawn of intelligence.
+Of men that had lived within memory, some certain knowledge might
+be attained.  Though the office had ceased, its effects might
+continue; the poems might be found, though there was no poet.
+
+Another conversation indeed informed me, that the same man was both
+Bard and Senachi.  This variation discouraged me; but as the
+practice might be different in different times, or at the same time
+in different families, there was yet no reason for supposing that I
+must necessarily sit down in total ignorance.
+
+Soon after I was told by a gentleman, who is generally acknowledged
+the greatest master of Hebridian antiquities, that there had indeed
+once been both Bards and Senachies; and that Senachi signified 'the
+man of talk,' or of conversation; but that neither Bard nor Senachi
+had existed for some centuries.  I have no reason to suppose it
+exactly known at what time the custom ceased, nor did it probably
+cease in all houses at once.  But whenever the practice of
+recitation was disused, the works, whether poetical or historical,
+perished with the authors; for in those times nothing had been
+written in the Earse language.
+
+Whether the 'Man of talk' was a historian, whose office was to tell
+truth, or a story-teller, like those which were in the last
+century, and perhaps are now among the Irish, whose trade was only
+to amuse, it now would be vain to inquire.
+
+Most of the domestick offices were, I believe, hereditary; and
+probably the laureat of a clan was always the son of the last
+laureat.  The history of the race could no otherwise be
+communicated, or retained; but what genius could be expected in a
+poet by inheritance?
+
+The nation was wholly illiterate.  Neither bards nor Senachies
+could write or read; but if they were ignorant, there was no danger
+of detection; they were believed by those whose vanity they
+flattered.
+
+The recital of genealogies, which has been considered as very
+efficacious to the preservation of a true series of ancestry, was
+anciently made, when the heir of the family came to manly age.
+This practice has never subsisted within time of memory, nor was
+much credit due to such rehearsers, who might obtrude fictitious
+pedigrees, either to please their masters, or to hide the
+deficiency of their own memories.
+
+Where the Chiefs of the Highlands have found the histories of their
+descent is difficult to tell; for no Earse genealogy was ever
+written.  In general this only is evident, that the principal house
+of a clan must be very ancient, and that those must have lived long
+in a place, of whom it is not known when they came thither.
+
+Thus hopeless are all attempts to find any traces of Highland
+learning.  Nor are their primitive customs and ancient manner of
+life otherwise than very faintly and uncertainly remembered by the
+present race.
+
+The peculiarities which strike the native of a commercial country,
+proceeded in a great measure from the want of money.  To the
+servants and dependents that were not domesticks, and if an
+estimate be made from the capacity of any of their old houses which
+I have seen, their domesticks could have been but few, were
+appropriated certain portions of land for their support.  Macdonald
+has a piece of ground yet, called the Bards or Senachies field.
+When a beef was killed for the house, particular parts were claimed
+as fees by the several officers, or workmen.  What was the right of
+each I have not learned.  The head belonged to the smith, and the
+udder of a cow to the piper:  the weaver had likewise his
+particular part; and so many pieces followed these prescriptive
+claims, that the Laird's was at last but little.
+
+The payment of rent in kind has been so long disused in England,
+that it is totally forgotten.  It was practised very lately in the
+Hebrides, and probably still continues, not only in St. Kilda,
+where money is not yet known, but in others of the smaller and
+remoter Islands.  It were perhaps to be desired, that no change in
+this particular should have been made.  When the Laird could only
+eat the produce of his lands, he was under the necessity of
+residing upon them; and when the tenant could not convert his stock
+into more portable riches, he could never be tempted away from his
+farm, from the only place where he could be wealthy.  Money
+confounds subordination, by overpowering the distinctions of rank
+and birth, and weakens authority by supplying power of resistance,
+or expedients for escape.  The feudal system is formed for a nation
+employed in agriculture, and has never long kept its hold where
+gold and silver have become common.
+
+Their arms were anciently the Glaymore, or great two-handed sword,
+and afterwards the two-edged sword and target, or buckler, which
+was sustained on the left arm.  In the midst of the target, which
+was made of wood, covered with leather, and studded with nails, a
+slender lance, about two feet long, was sometimes fixed; it was
+heavy and cumberous, and accordingly has for some time past been
+gradually laid aside.  Very few targets were at Culloden.  The
+dirk, or broad dagger, I am afraid, was of more use in private
+quarrels than in battles.  The Lochaber-ax is only a slight
+alteration of the old English bill.
+
+After all that has been said of the force and terrour of the
+Highland sword, I could not find that the art of defence was any
+part of common education.  The gentlemen were perhaps sometimes
+skilful gladiators, but the common men had no other powers than
+those of violence and courage.  Yet it is well known, that the
+onset of the Highlanders was very formidable.  As an army cannot
+consist of philosophers, a panick is easily excited by any unwonted
+mode of annoyance.  New dangers are naturally magnified; and men
+accustomed only to exchange bullets at a distance, and rather to
+hear their enemies than see them, are discouraged and amazed when
+they find themselves encountered hand to hand, and catch the gleam
+of steel flashing in their faces.
+
+The Highland weapons gave opportunity for many exertions of
+personal courage, and sometimes for single combats in the field;
+like those which occur so frequently in fabulous wars.  At Falkirk,
+a gentleman now living, was, I suppose after the retreat of the
+King's troops, engaged at a distance from the rest with an Irish
+dragoon.  They were both skilful swordsmen, and the contest was not
+easily decided:  the dragoon at last had the advantage, and the
+Highlander called for quarter; but quarter was refused him, and the
+fight continued till he was reduced to defend himself upon his
+knee.  At that instant one of the Macleods came to his rescue; who,
+as it is said, offered quarter to the dragoon, but he thought
+himself obliged to reject what he had before refused, and, as
+battle gives little time to deliberate, was immediately killed.
+
+Funerals were formerly solemnized by calling multitudes together,
+and entertaining them at great expence.  This emulation of useless
+cost has been for some time discouraged, and at last in the Isle of
+Sky is almost suppressed.
+
+Of the Earse language, as I understand nothing, I cannot say more
+than I have been told.  It is the rude speech of a barbarous
+people, who had few thoughts to express, and were content, as they
+conceived grossly, to be grossly understood.  After what has been
+lately talked of Highland Bards, and Highland genius, many will
+startle when they are told, that the Earse never was a written
+language; that there is not in the world an Earse manuscript a
+hundred years old; and that the sounds of the Highlanders were
+never expressed by letters, till some little books of piety were
+translated, and a metrical version of the Psalms was made by the
+Synod of Argyle.  Whoever therefore now writes in this language,
+spells according to his own perception of the sound, and his own
+idea of the power of the letters.  The Welsh and the Irish are
+cultivated tongues.  The Welsh, two hundred years ago, insulted
+their English neighbours for the instability of their Orthography;
+while the Earse merely floated in the breath of the people, and
+could therefore receive little improvement.
+
+When a language begins to teem with books, it is tending to
+refinement; as those who undertake to teach others must have
+undergone some labour in improving themselves, they set a
+proportionate value on their own thoughts, and wish to enforce them
+by efficacious expressions; speech becomes embodied and permanent;
+different modes and phrases are compared, and the best obtains an
+establishment.  By degrees one age improves upon another.
+Exactness is first obtained, and afterwards elegance.  But diction,
+merely vocal, is always in its childhood.  As no man leaves his
+eloquence behind him, the new generations have all to learn.  There
+may possibly be books without a polished language, but there can be
+no polished language without books.
+
+That the Bards could not read more than the rest of their
+countrymen, it is reasonable to suppose; because, if they had read,
+they could probably have written; and how high their compositions
+may reasonably be rated, an inquirer may best judge by considering
+what stores of imagery, what principles of ratiocination, what
+comprehension of knowledge, and what delicacy of elocution he has
+known any man attain who cannot read.  The state of the Bards was
+yet more hopeless.  He that cannot read, may now converse with
+those that can; but the Bard was a barbarian among barbarians, who,
+knowing nothing himself, lived with others that knew no more.
+
+There has lately been in the Islands one of these illiterate poets,
+who hearing the Bible read at church, is said to have turned the
+sacred history into verse.  I heard part of a dialogue, composed by
+him, translated by a young lady in Mull, and thought it had more
+meaning than I expected from a man totally uneducated; but he had
+some opportunities of knowledge; he lived among a learned people.
+After all that has been done for the instruction of the
+Highlanders, the antipathy between their language and literature
+still continues; and no man that has learned only Earse is, at this
+time, able to read.
+
+The Earse has many dialects, and the words used in some Islands are
+not always known in others.  In literate nations, though the
+pronunciation, and sometimes the words of common speech may differ,
+as now in England, compared with the South of Scotland, yet there
+is a written diction, which pervades all dialects, and is
+understood in every province.  But where the whole language is
+colloquial, he that has only one part, never gets the rest, as he
+cannot get it but by change of residence.
+
+In an unwritten speech, nothing that is not very short is
+transmitted from one generation to another.  Few have opportunities
+of hearing a long composition often enough to learn it, or have
+inclination to repeat it so often as is necessary to retain it; and
+what is once forgotten is lost for ever.  I believe there cannot be
+recovered, in the whole Earse language, five hundred lines of which
+there is any evidence to prove them a hundred years old.  Yet I
+hear that the father of Ossian boasts of two chests more of ancient
+poetry, which he suppresses, because they are too good for the
+English.
+
+He that goes into the Highlands with a mind naturally acquiescent,
+and a credulity eager for wonders, may come back with an opinion
+very different from mine; for the inhabitants knowing the ignorance
+of all strangers in their language and antiquities, perhaps are not
+very scrupulous adherents to truth; yet I do not say that they
+deliberately speak studied falsehood, or have a settled purpose to
+deceive.  They have inquired and considered little, and do not
+always feel their own ignorance.  They are not much accustomed to
+be interrogated by others; and seem never to have thought upon
+interrogating themselves; so that if they do not know what they
+tell to be true, they likewise do not distinctly perceive it to be
+false.
+
+Mr. Boswell was very diligent in his inquiries; and the result of
+his investigations was, that the answer to the second question was
+commonly such as nullified the answer to the first.
+
+We were a while told, that they had an old translation of the
+scriptures; and told it till it would appear obstinacy to inquire
+again.  Yet by continued accumulation of questions we found, that
+the translation meant, if any meaning there were, was nothing else
+than the Irish Bible.
+
+We heard of manuscripts that were, or that had been in the hands of
+somebody's father, or grandfather; but at last we had no reason to
+believe they were other than Irish.  Martin mentions Irish, but
+never any Earse manuscripts, to be found in the Islands in his
+time.
+
+I suppose my opinion of the poems of Ossian is already discovered.
+I believe they never existed in any other form than that which we
+have seen.  The editor, or author, never could shew the original;
+nor can it be shewn by any other; to revenge reasonable
+incredulity, by refusing evidence, is a degree of insolence, with
+which the world is not yet acquainted; and stubborn audacity is the
+last refuge of guilt.  It would be easy to shew it if he had it;
+but whence could it be had?  It is too long to be remembered, and
+the language formerly had nothing written.  He has doubtless
+inserted names that circulate in popular stories, and may have
+translated some wandering ballads, if any can be found; and the
+names, and some of the images being recollected, make an inaccurate
+auditor imagine, by the help of Caledonian bigotry, that he has
+formerly heard the whole.
+
+I asked a very learned Minister in Sky, who had used all arts to
+make me believe the genuineness of the book, whether at last he
+believed it himself? but he would not answer.  He wished me to be
+deceived, for the honour of his country; but would not directly and
+formally deceive me.  Yet has this man's testimony been publickly
+produced, as of one that held Fingal to be the work of Ossian.
+
+It is said, that some men of integrity profess to have heard parts
+of it, but they all heard them when they were boys; and it was
+never said that any of them could recite six lines.  They remember
+names, and perhaps some proverbial sentiments; and, having no
+distinct ideas, coin a resemblance without an original.  The
+persuasion of the Scots, however, is far from universal; and in a
+question so capable of proof, why should doubt be suffered to
+continue?  The editor has been heard to say, that part of the poem
+was received by him, in the Saxon character.  He has then found, by
+some peculiar fortune, an unwritten language, written in a
+character which the natives probably never beheld.
+
+I have yet supposed no imposture but in the publisher, yet I am far
+from certainty, that some translations have not been lately made,
+that may now be obtruded as parts of the original work.  Credulity
+on one part is a strong temptation to deceit on the other,
+especially to deceit of which no personal injury is the
+consequence, and which flatters the author with his own ingenuity.
+The Scots have something to plead for their easy reception of an
+improbable fiction; they are seduced by their fondness for their
+supposed ancestors.  A Scotchman must be a very sturdy moralist,
+who does not love Scotland better than truth:  he will always love
+it better than inquiry; and if falsehood flatters his vanity, will
+not be very diligent to detect it.  Neither ought the English to be
+much influenced by Scotch authority; for of the past and present
+state of the whole Earse nation, the Lowlanders are at least as
+ignorant as ourselves.  To be ignorant is painful; but it is
+dangerous to quiet our uneasiness by the delusive opiate of hasty
+persuasion.
+
+But this is the age, in which those who could not read, have been
+supposed to write; in which the giants of antiquated romance have
+been exhibited as realities.  If we know little of the ancient
+Highlanders, let us not fill the vacuity with Ossian.  If we had
+not searched the Magellanick regions, let us however forbear to
+people them with Patagons.
+
+Having waited some days at Armidel, we were flattered at last with
+a wind that promised to convey us to Mull.  We went on board a boat
+that was taking in kelp, and left the Isle of Sky behind us.  We
+were doomed to experience, like others, the danger of trusting to
+the wind, which blew against us, in a short time, with such
+violence, that we, being no seasoned sailors, were willing to call
+it a tempest.  I was sea-sick and lay down.  Mr. Boswell kept the
+deck.  The master knew not well whither to go; and our difficulties
+might perhaps have filled a very pathetick page, had not Mr.
+Maclean of Col, who, with every other qualification which insular
+life requires, is a very active and skilful mariner, piloted us
+safe into his own harbour.
+
+
+
+COL
+
+
+
+In the morning we found ourselves under the Isle of Col, where we
+landed; and passed the first day and night with Captain Maclean, a
+gentleman who has lived some time in the East Indies; but having
+dethroned no Nabob, is not too rich to settle in own country.
+
+Next day the wind was fair, and we might have had an easy passage
+to Mull; but having, contrarily to our own intention, landed upon a
+new Island, we would not leave it wholly unexamined.  We therefore
+suffered the vessel to depart without us, and trusted the skies for
+another wind.
+
+Mr. Maclean of Col, having a very numerous family, has, for some
+time past, resided at Aberdeen, that he may superintend their
+education, and leaves the young gentleman, our friend, to govern
+his dominions, with the full power of a Highland Chief.  By the
+absence of the Laird's family, our entertainment was made more
+difficult, because the house was in a great degree disfurnished;
+but young Col's kindness and activity supplied all defects, and
+procured us more than sufficient accommodation.
+
+Here I first mounted a little Highland steed; and if there had been
+many spectators, should have been somewhat ashamed of my figure in
+the march.  The horses of the Islands, as of other barren
+countries, are very low:  they are indeed musculous and strong,
+beyond what their size gives reason for expecting; but a bulky man
+upon one of their backs makes a very disproportionate appearance.
+
+From the habitation of Captain Maclean, we went to Grissipol, but
+called by the way on Mr. Hector Maclean, the Minister of Col, whom
+we found in a hut, that is, a house of only one floor, but with
+windows and chimney, and not inelegantly furnished.  Mr. Maclean
+has the reputation of great learning:  he is seventy-seven years
+old, but not infirm, with a look of venerable dignity, excelling
+what I remember in any other man.
+
+His conversation was not unsuitable to his appearance.  I lost some
+of his good-will, by treating a heretical writer with more regard
+than, in his opinion, a heretick could deserve.  I honoured his
+orthodoxy, and did not much censure his asperity.  A man who has
+settled his opinions, does not love to have the tranquillity of his
+conviction disturbed; and at seventy-seven it is time to be in
+earnest.
+
+Mention was made of the Earse translation of the New Testament,
+which has been lately published, and of which the learned Mr.
+Macqueen of Sky spoke with commendation; but Mr. Maclean said he
+did not use it, because he could make the text more intelligible to
+his auditors by an extemporary version.  From this I inferred, that
+the language of the translation was not the language of the Isle of
+Col.
+
+He has no publick edifice for the exercise of his ministry; and can
+officiate to no greater number, than a room can contain; and the
+room of a hut is not very large.  This is all the opportunity of
+worship that is now granted to the inhabitants of the Island, some
+of whom must travel thither perhaps ten miles.  Two chapels were
+erected by their ancestors, of which I saw the skeletons, which now
+stand faithful witnesses of the triumph of the Reformation.
+
+The want of churches is not the only impediment to piety:  there is
+likewise a want of Ministers.  A parish often contains more Islands
+than one; and each Island can have the Minister only in its own
+turn.  At Raasa they had, I think, a right to service only every
+third Sunday.  All the provision made by the present ecclesiastical
+constitution, for the inhabitants of about a hundred square miles,
+is a prayer and sermon in a little room, once in three weeks:  and
+even this parsimonious distribution is at the mercy of the weather;
+and in those Islands where the Minister does not reside, it is
+impossible to tell how many weeks or months may pass without any
+publick exercise of religion.
+
+
+
+GRISSIPOL IN COL
+
+
+
+After a short conversation with Mr. Maclean, we went on to
+Grissipol, a house and farm tenanted by Mr. Macsweyn, where I saw
+more of the ancient life of a Highlander, than I had yet found.
+Mrs. Macsweyn could speak no English, and had never seen any other
+places than the Islands of Sky, Mull, and Col:  but she was
+hospitable and good-humoured, and spread her table with sufficient
+liberality.  We found tea here, as in every other place, but our
+spoons were of horn.
+
+The house of Grissipol stands by a brook very clear and quick;
+which is, I suppose, one of the most copious streams in the Island.
+This place was the scene of an action, much celebrated in the
+traditional history of Col, but which probably no two relaters will
+tell alike.
+
+Some time, in the obscure ages, Macneil of Barra married the Lady
+Maclean, who had the Isle of Col for her jointure.  Whether Macneil
+detained Col, when the widow was dead, or whether she lived so long
+as to make her heirs impatient, is perhaps not now known.  The
+younger son, called John Gerves, or John the Giant, a man of great
+strength who was then in Ireland, either for safety, or for
+education, dreamed of recovering his inheritance; and getting some
+adventurers together, which, in those unsettled times, was not hard
+to do, invaded Col.  He was driven away, but was not discouraged,
+and collecting new followers, in three years came again with fifty
+men.  In his way he stopped at Artorinish in Morvern, where his
+uncle was prisoner to Macleod, and was then with his enemies in a
+tent.  Maclean took with him only one servant, whom he ordered to
+stay at the outside; and where he should see the tent pressed
+outwards, to strike with his dirk, it being the intention of
+Maclean, as any man provoked him, to lay hands upon him, and push
+him back.  He entered the tent alone, with his Lochabar-axe in his
+hand, and struck such terror into the whole assembly, that they
+dismissed his uncle.
+
+When he landed at Col, he saw the sentinel, who kept watch towards
+the sea, running off to Grissipol, to give Macneil, who was there
+with a hundred and twenty men, an account of the invasion.  He told
+Macgill, one of his followers, that if he intercepted that
+dangerous intelligence, by catching the courier, he would give him
+certain lands in Mull.  Upon this promise, Macgill pursued the
+messenger, and either killed, or stopped him; and his posterity,
+till very lately, held the lands in Mull.
+
+The alarm being thus prevented, he came unexpectedly upon Macneil.
+Chiefs were in those days never wholly unprovided for an enemy.  A
+fight ensued, in which one of their followers is said to have given
+an extraordinary proof of activity, by bounding backwards over the
+brook of Grissipol.  Macneil being killed, and many of his clan
+destroyed, Maclean took possession of the Island, which the
+Macneils attempted to conquer by another invasion, but were
+defeated and repulsed.
+
+Maclean, in his turn, invaded the estate of the Macneils, took the
+castle of Brecacig, and conquered the Isle of Barra, which he held
+for seven years, and then restored it to the heirs.
+
+
+
+CASTLE OF COL
+
+
+
+From Grissipol, Mr. Maclean conducted us to his father's seat; a
+neat new house, erected near the old castle, I think, by the last
+proprietor.  Here we were allowed to take our station, and lived
+very commodiously, while we waited for moderate weather and a fair
+wind, which we did not so soon obtain, but we had time to get some
+information of the present state of Col, partly by inquiry, and
+partly by occasional excursions.
+
+Col is computed to be thirteen miles in length, and three in
+breadth.  Both the ends are the property of the Duke of Argyle, but
+the middle belongs to Maclean, who is called Col, as the only
+Laird.
+
+Col is not properly rocky; it is rather one continued rock, of a
+surface much diversified with protuberances, and covered with a
+thin layer of earth, which is often broken, and discovers the
+stone.  Such a soil is not for plants that strike deep roots; and
+perhaps in the whole Island nothing has ever yet grown to the
+height of a table.  The uncultivated parts are clothed with heath,
+among which industry has interspersed spots of grass and corn; but
+no attempt has yet been made to raise a tree.  Young Col, who has a
+very laudable desire of improving his patrimony, purposes some time
+to plant an orchard; which, if it be sheltered by a wall, may
+perhaps succeed.  He has introduced the culture of turnips, of
+which he has a field, where the whole work was performed by his own
+hand.  His intention is to provide food for his cattle in the
+winter.  This innovation was considered by Mr. Macsweyn as the idle
+project of a young head, heated with English fancies; but he has
+now found that turnips will really grow, and that hungry sheep and
+cows will really eat them.
+
+By such acquisitions as these, the Hebrides may in time rise above
+their annual distress.  Wherever heath will grow, there is reason
+to think something better may draw nourishment; and by trying the
+production of other places, plants will be found suitable to every
+soil.
+
+Col has many lochs, some of which have trouts and eels, and others
+have never yet been stocked; another proof of the negligence of the
+Islanders, who might take fish in the inland waters, when they
+cannot go to sea.
+
+Their quadrupeds are horses, cows, sheep, and goats.  They have
+neither deer, hares, nor rabbits.  They have no vermin, except
+rats, which have been lately brought thither by sea, as to other
+places; and are free from serpents, frogs, and toads.
+
+The harvest in Col, and in Lewis, is ripe sooner than in Sky; and
+the winter in Col is never cold, but very tempestuous.  I know not
+that I ever heard the wind so loud in any other place; and Mr.
+Boswell observed, that its noise was all its own, for there were no
+trees to increase it.
+
+Noise is not the worst effect of the tempests; for they have thrown
+the sand from the shore over a considerable part of the land; and
+it is said still to encroach and destroy more and more pasture; but
+I am not of opinion, that by any surveys or landmarks, its limits
+have been ever fixed, or its progression ascertained.  If one man
+has confidence enough to say, that it advances, nobody can bring
+any proof to support him in denying it.  The reason why it is not
+spread to a greater extent, seems to be, that the wind and rain
+come almost together, and that it is made close and heavy by the
+wet before the storms can put it in motion.  So thick is the bed,
+and so small the particles, that if a traveller should be caught by
+a sudden gust in dry weather, he would find it very difficult to
+escape with life.
+
+For natural curiosities, I was shown only two great masses of
+stone, which lie loose upon the ground; one on the top of a hill,
+and the other at a small distance from the bottom.  They certainly
+were never put into their present places by human strength or
+skill; and though an earthquake might have broken off the lower
+stone, and rolled it into the valley, no account can be given of
+the other, which lies on the hill, unless, which I forgot to
+examine, there be still near it some higher rock, from which it
+might be torn.  All nations have a tradition, that their earliest
+ancestors were giants, and these stones are said to have been
+thrown up and down by a giant and his mistress.  There are so many
+more important things, of which human knowledge can give no
+account, that it may be forgiven us, if we speculate no longer on
+two stones in Col.
+
+This Island is very populous.  About nine-and-twenty years ago, the
+fencible men of Col were reckoned one hundred and forty, which is
+the sixth of eight hundred and forty; and probably some contrived
+to be left out of the list.  The Minister told us, that a few years
+ago the inhabitants were eight hundred, between the ages of seven
+and of seventy.  Round numbers are seldom exact.  But in this case
+the authority is good, and the errour likely to be little.  If to
+the eight hundred be added what the laws of computation require,
+they will be increased to at least a thousand; and if the
+dimensions of the country have been accurately related, every mile
+maintains more than twenty-five.
+
+This proportion of habitation is greater than the appearance of the
+country seems to admit; for wherever the eye wanders, it sees much
+waste and little cultivation.  I am more inclined to extend the
+land, of which no measure has ever been taken, than to diminish the
+people, who have been really numbered.  Let it be supposed, that a
+computed mile contains a mile and a half, as was commonly found
+true in the mensuration of the English roads, and we shall then
+allot nearly twelve to a mile, which agrees much better with ocular
+observation.
+
+Here, as in Sky, and other Islands, are the Laird, the Tacksmen,
+and the under tenants.
+
+Mr. Maclean, the Laird, has very extensive possessions, being
+proprietor, not only of far the greater part of Col, but of the
+extensive Island of Rum, and a very considerable territory in Mull.
+
+Rum is one of the larger Islands, almost square, and therefore of
+great capacity in proportion to its sides.  By the usual method of
+estimating computed extent, it may contain more than a hundred and
+twenty square miles.
+
+It originally belonged to Clanronald, and was purchased by Col;
+who, in some dispute about the bargain, made Clanronald prisoner,
+and kept him nine months in confinement.  Its owner represents it
+as mountainous, rugged, and barren.  In the hills there are red
+deer.  The horses are very small, but of a breed eminent for
+beauty.  Col, not long ago, bought one of them from a tenant; who
+told him, that as he was of a shape uncommonly elegant, he could
+not sell him but at a high price; and that whoever had him should
+pay a guinea and a half.
+
+There are said to be in Barra a race of horses yet smaller, of
+which the highest is not above thirty-six inches.
+
+The rent of Rum is not great.  Mr. Maclean declared, that he should
+be very rich, if he could set his land at two-pence halfpenny an
+acre.  The inhabitants are fifty-eight families, who continued
+Papists for some time after the Laird became a Protestant.  Their
+adherence to their old religion was strengthened by the countenance
+of the Laird's sister, a zealous Romanist, till one Sunday, as they
+were going to mass under the conduct of their patroness, Maclean
+met them on the way, gave one of them a blow on the head with a
+yellow stick, I suppose a cane, for which the Earse had no name,
+and drove them to the kirk, from which they have never since
+departed.  Since the use of this method of conversion, the
+inhabitants of Egg and Canna, who continue Papists, call the
+Protestantism of Rum, the religion of the Yellow Stick.
+
+The only Popish Islands are Egg and Canna.  Egg is the principal
+Island of a parish, in which, though he has no congregation, the
+Protestant Minister resides.  I have heard of nothing curious in
+it, but the cave in which a former generation of the Islanders were
+smothered by Macleod.
+
+If we had travelled with more leisure, it had not been fit to have
+neglected the Popish Islands.  Popery is favourable to ceremony;
+and among ignorant nations, ceremony is the only preservative of
+tradition.  Since protestantism was extended to the savage parts of
+Scotland, it has perhaps been one of the chief labours of the
+Ministers to abolish stated observances, because they continued the
+remembrance of the former religion.  We therefore who came to hear
+old traditions, and see antiquated manners, should probably have
+found them amongst the Papists.
+
+Canna, the other Popish Island, belongs to Clanronald.  It is said
+not to comprise more than twelve miles of land, and yet maintains
+as many inhabitants as Rum.
+
+We were at Col under the protection of the young Laird, without any
+of the distresses, which Mr. Pennant, in a fit of simple credulity,
+seems to think almost worthy of an elegy by Ossian.  Wherever we
+roved, we were pleased to see the reverence with which his subjects
+regarded him.  He did not endeavour to dazzle them by any
+magnificence of dress:  his only distinction was a feather in his
+bonnet; but as soon as he appeared, they forsook their work and
+clustered about him:  he took them by the hand, and they seemed
+mutually delighted.  He has the proper disposition of a Chieftain,
+and seems desirous to continue the customs of his house.  The
+bagpiper played regularly, when dinner was served, whose person and
+dress made a good appearance; and he brought no disgrace upon the
+family of Rankin, which has long supplied the Lairds of Col with
+hereditary musick.
+
+The Tacksmen of Col seem to live with less dignity and convenience
+than those of Sky; where they had good houses, and tables not only
+plentiful, but delicate.  In Col only two houses pay the window
+tax; for only two have six windows, which, I suppose, are the
+Laird's and Mr. Macsweyn's.
+
+The rents have, till within seven years, been paid in kind, but the
+tenants finding that cattle and corn varied in their price, desired
+for the future to give their landlord money; which, not having yet
+arrived at the philosophy of commerce, they consider as being every
+year of the same value.
+
+We were told of a particular mode of under-tenure.  The Tacksman
+admits some of his inferior neighbours to the cultivation of his
+grounds, on condition that performing all the work, and giving a
+third part of the seed, they shall keep a certain number of cows,
+sheep, and goats, and reap a third part of the harvest.  Thus by
+less than the tillage of two acres they pay the rent of one.
+
+There are tenants below the rank of Tacksmen, that have got smaller
+tenants under them; for in every place, where money is not the
+general equivalent, there must be some whose labour is immediately
+paid by daily food.
+
+A country that has no money, is by no means convenient for beggars,
+both because such countries are commonly poor, and because charity
+requires some trouble and some thought.  A penny is easily given
+upon the first impulse of compassion, or impatience of importunity;
+but few will deliberately search their cupboards or their granaries
+to find out something to give.  A penny is likewise easily spent,
+but victuals, if they are unprepared, require houseroom, and fire,
+and utensils, which the beggar knows not where to find.
+
+Yet beggars there sometimes are, who wander from Island to Island.
+We had, in our passage to Mull, the company of a woman and her
+child, who had exhausted the charity of Col.  The arrival of a
+beggar on an Island is accounted a sinistrous event.  Every body
+considers that he shall have the less for what he gives away.
+Their alms, I believe, is generally oatmeal.
+
+Near to Col is another Island called Tireye, eminent for its
+fertility.  Though it has but half the extent of Rum, it is so well
+peopled, that there have appeared, not long ago, nine hundred and
+fourteen at a funeral.  The plenty of this Island enticed beggars
+to it, who seemed so burdensome to the inhabitants, that a formal
+compact was drawn up, by which they obliged themselves to grant no
+more relief to casual wanderers, because they had among them an
+indigent woman of high birth, whom they considered as entitled to
+all that they could spare.  I have read the stipulation, which was
+indited with juridical formality, but was never made valid by
+regular subscription.
+
+If the inhabitants of Col have nothing to give, it is not that they
+are oppressed by their landlord:  their leases seem to be very
+profitable.  One farmer, who pays only seven pounds a year, has
+maintained seven daughters and three sons, of whom the eldest is
+educated at Aberdeen for the ministry; and now, at every vacation,
+opens a school in Col.
+
+Life is here, in some respects, improved beyond the condition of
+some other Islands.  In Sky what is wanted can only be bought, as
+the arrival of some wandering pedlar may afford an opportunity; but
+in Col there is a standing shop, and in Mull there are two.  A shop
+in the Islands, as in other places of little frequentation, is a
+repository of every thing requisite for common use.  Mr. Boswell's
+journal was filled, and he bought some paper in Col.  To a man that
+ranges the streets of London, where he is tempted to contrive
+wants, for the pleasure of supplying them, a shop affords no image
+worthy of attention; but in an Island, it turns the balance of
+existence between good and evil.  To live in perpetual want of
+little things, is a state not indeed of torture, but of constant
+vexation.  I have in Sky had some difficulty to find ink for a
+letter; and if a woman breaks her needle, the work is at a stop.
+
+As it is, the Islanders are obliged to content themselves with
+succedaneous means for many common purposes.  I have seen the chief
+man of a very wide district riding with a halter for a bridle, and
+governing his hobby with a wooden curb.
+
+The people of Col, however, do not want dexterity to supply some of
+their necessities.  Several arts which make trades, and demand
+apprenticeships in great cities, are here the practices of daily
+economy.  In every house candles are made, both moulded and dipped.
+Their wicks are small shreds of linen cloth.  They all know how to
+extract from the Cuddy, oil for their lamps.  They all tan skins,
+and make brogues.
+
+As we travelled through Sky, we saw many cottages, but they very
+frequently stood single on the naked ground.  In Col, where the
+hills opened a place convenient for habitation, we found a petty
+village, of which every hut had a little garden adjoining; thus
+they made an appearance of social commerce and mutual offices, and
+of some attention to convenience and future supply.  There is not
+in the Western Islands any collection of buildings that can make
+pretensions to be called a town, except in the Isle of Lewis, which
+I have not seen.
+
+If Lewis is distinguished by a town, Col has also something
+peculiar.  The young Laird has attempted what no Islander perhaps
+ever thought on.  He has begun a road capable of a wheel-carriage.
+He has carried it about a mile, and will continue it by annual
+elongation from his house to the harbour.
+
+Of taxes here is no reason for complaining; they are paid by a very
+easy composition.  The malt-tax for Col is twenty shillings.
+Whisky is very plentiful:  there are several stills in the Island,
+and more is made than the inhabitants consume.
+
+The great business of insular policy is now to keep the people in
+their own country.  As the world has been let in upon them, they
+have heard of happier climates, and less arbitrary government; and
+if they are disgusted, have emissaries among them ready to offer
+them land and houses, as a reward for deserting their Chief and
+clan.  Many have departed both from the main of Scotland, and from
+the Islands; and all that go may be considered as subjects lost to
+the British crown; for a nation scattered in the boundless regions
+of America resembles rays diverging from a focus.  All the rays
+remain, but the heat is gone.  Their power consisted in their
+concentration:  when they are dispersed, they have no effect.
+
+It may be thought that they are happier by the change; but they are
+not happy as a nation, for they are a nation no longer.  As they
+contribute not to the prosperity of any community, they must want
+that security, that dignity, that happiness, whatever it be, which
+a prosperous community throws back upon individuals.
+
+The inhabitants of Col have not yet learned to be weary of their
+heath and rocks, but attend their agriculture and their dairies,
+without listening to American seducements.
+
+There are some however who think that this emigration has raised
+terrour disproportionate to its real evil; and that it is only a
+new mode of doing what was always done.  The Highlands, they say,
+never maintained their natural inhabitants; but the people, when
+they found themselves too numerous, instead of extending
+cultivation, provided for themselves by a more compendious method,
+and sought better fortune in other countries.  They did not indeed
+go away in collective bodies, but withdrew invisibly, a few at a
+time; but the whole number of fugitives was not less, and the
+difference between other times and this, is only the same as
+between evaporation and effusion.
+
+This is plausible, but I am afraid it is not true.  Those who went
+before, if they were not sensibly missed, as the argument supposes,
+must have gone either in less number, or in a manner less
+detrimental, than at present; because formerly there was no
+complaint.  Those who then left the country were generally the idle
+dependants on overburdened families, or men who had no property;
+and therefore carried away only themselves.  In the present
+eagerness of emigration, families, and almost communities, go away
+together.  Those who were considered as prosperous and wealthy sell
+their stock and carry away the money.  Once none went away but the
+useless and poor; in some parts there is now reason to fear, that
+none will stay but those who are too poor to remove themselves, and
+too useless to be removed at the cost of others.
+
+Of antiquity there is not more knowledge in Col than in other
+places; but every where something may be gleaned.
+
+How ladies were portioned, when there was no money, it would be
+difficult for an Englishman to guess.  In 1649, Maclean of Dronart
+in Mull married his sister Fingala to Maclean of Coll, with a
+hundred and eighty kine; and stipulated, that if she became a
+widow, her jointure should be three hundred and sixty.  I suppose
+some proportionate tract of land was appropriated to their
+pasturage.
+
+The disposition to pompous and expensive funerals, which has at one
+time or other prevailed in most parts of the civilized world, is
+not yet suppressed in the Islands, though some of the ancient
+solemnities are worn away, and singers are no longer hired to
+attend the procession.  Nineteen years ago, at the burial of the
+Laird of Col, were killed thirty cows, and about fifty sheep.  The
+number of the cows is positively told, and we must suppose other
+victuals in like proportion.
+
+Mr. Maclean informed us of an odd game, of which he did not tell
+the original, but which may perhaps be used in other places, where
+the reason of it is not yet forgot.  At New-year's eve, in the hall
+or castle of the Laird, where, at festal seasons, there may be
+supposed a very numerous company, one man dresses himself in a
+cow's hide, upon which other men beat with sticks.  He runs with
+all this noise round the house, which all the company quits in a
+counterfeited fright:  the door is then shut.  At New-year's eve
+there is no great pleasure to be had out of doors in the Hebrides.
+They are sure soon to recover from their terrour enough to solicit
+for re-admission; which, for the honour of poetry, is not to be
+obtained but by repeating a verse, with which those that are
+knowing and provident take care to be furnished.
+
+Very near the house of Maclean stands the castle of Col, which was
+the mansion of the Laird, till the house was built.  It is built
+upon a rock, as Mr. Boswell remarked, that it might not be mined.
+It is very strong, and having been not long uninhabited, is yet in
+repair.  On the wall was, not long ago, a stone with an
+inscription, importing, that 'if any man of the clan of Maclonich
+shall appear before this castle, though he come at midnight, with a
+man's head in his hand, he shall there find safety and protection
+against all but the King.'
+
+This is an old Highland treaty made upon a very memorable occasion.
+Maclean, the son of John Gerves, who recovered Col, and conquered
+Barra, had obtained, it is said, from James the Second, a grant of
+the lands of Lochiel, forfeited, I suppose, by some offence against
+the state.
+
+Forfeited estates were not in those days quietly resigned; Maclean,
+therefore, went with an armed force to seize his new possessions,
+and, I know not for what reason, took his wife with him.  The
+Camerons rose in defence of their Chief, and a battle was fought at
+the head of Loch Ness, near the place where Fort Augustus now
+stands, in which Lochiel obtained the victory, and Maclean, with
+his followers, was defeated and destroyed.
+
+The lady fell into the hands of the conquerours, and being found
+pregnant was placed in the custody of Maclonich, one of a tribe or
+family branched from Cameron, with orders, if she brought a boy, to
+destroy him, if a girl, to spare her.
+
+Maclonich's wife, who was with child likewise, had a girl about the
+same time at which lady Maclean brought a boy, and Maclonich with
+more generosity to his captive, than fidelity to his trust,
+contrived that the children should be changed.
+
+Maclean being thus preserved from death, in time recovered his
+original patrimony; and in gratitude to his friend, made his castle
+a place of refuge to any of the clan that should think himself in
+danger; and, as a proof of reciprocal confidence, Maclean took upon
+himself and his posterity the care of educating the heir of
+Maclonich.
+
+This story, like all other traditions of the Highlands, is
+variously related, but though some circumstances are uncertain, the
+principal fact is true.  Maclean undoubtedly owed his preservation
+to Maclonich; for the treaty between the two families has been
+strictly observed:  it did not sink into disuse and oblivion, but
+continued in its full force while the chieftains retained their
+power.  I have read a demand of protection, made not more than
+thirty-seven years ago, for one of the Maclonichs, named Ewen
+Cameron, who had been accessory to the death of Macmartin, and had
+been banished by Lochiel, his lord, for a certain term; at the
+expiration of which he returned married from France, but the
+Macmartins, not satisfied with the punishment, when he attempted to
+settle, still threatened him with vengeance.  He therefore asked,
+and obtained shelter in the Isle of Col.
+
+The power of protection subsists no longer, but what the law
+permits is yet continued, and Maclean of Col now educates the heir
+of Maclonich.
+
+There still remains in the Islands, though it is passing fast away,
+the custom of fosterage.  A Laird, a man of wealth and eminence,
+sends his child, either male or female, to a tacksman, or tenant,
+to be fostered.  It is not always his own tenant, but some distant
+friend that obtains this honour; for an honour such a trust is very
+reasonably thought.  The terms of fosterage seem to vary in
+different islands.  In Mull, the father sends with his child a
+certain number of cows, to which the same number is added by the
+fosterer.  The father appropriates a proportionable extent of
+ground, without rent, for their pasturage.  If every cow brings a
+calf, half belongs to the fosterer, and half to the child; but if
+there be only one calf between two cows, it is the child's, and
+when the child returns to the parent, it is accompanied by all the
+cows given, both by the father and by the fosterer, with half of
+the increase of the stock by propagation.  These beasts are
+considered as a portion, and called Macalive cattle, of which the
+father has the produce, but is supposed not to have the full
+property, but to owe the same number to the child, as a portion to
+the daughter, or a stock for the son.
+
+Children continue with the fosterer perhaps six years, and cannot,
+where this is the practice, be considered as burdensome.  The
+fosterer, if he gives four cows, receives likewise four, and has,
+while the child continues with him, grass for eight without rent,
+with half the calves, and all the milk, for which he pays only four
+cows when he dismisses his Dalt, for that is the name for a foster
+child.
+
+Fosterage is, I believe, sometimes performed upon more liberal
+terms.  Our friend, the young Laird of Col, was fostered by
+Macsweyn of Grissipol.  Macsweyn then lived a tenant to Sir James
+Macdonald in the Isle of Sky; and therefore Col, whether he sent
+him cattle or not, could grant him no land.  The Dalt, however, at
+his return, brought back a considerable number of Macalive cattle,
+and of the friendship so formed there have been good effects.  When
+Macdonald raised his rents, Macsweyn was, like other tenants,
+discontented, and, resigning his farm, removed from Sky to Col, and
+was established at Grissipol.
+
+These observations we made by favour of the contrary wind that
+drove us to Col, an Island not often visited; for there is not much
+to amuse curiosity, or to attract avarice.
+
+The ground has been hitherto, I believe, used chiefly for
+pasturage.  In a district, such as the eye can command, there is a
+general herdsman, who knows all the cattle of the neighbourhood,
+and whose station is upon a hill, from which he surveys the lower
+grounds; and if one man's cattle invade another's grass, drives
+them back to their own borders.  But other means of profit begin to
+be found; kelp is gathered and burnt, and sloops are loaded with
+the concreted ashes.  Cultivation is likely to be improved by the
+skill and encouragement of the present heir, and the inhabitants of
+those obscure vallies will partake of the general progress of life.
+
+The rents of the parts which belong to the Duke of Argyle, have
+been raised from fifty-five to one hundred and five pounds, whether
+from the land or the sea I cannot tell.  The bounties of the sea
+have lately been so great, that a farm in Southuist has risen in
+ten years from a rent of thirty pounds to one hundred and eighty.
+
+He who lives in Col, and finds himself condemned to solitary meals,
+and incommunicable reflection, will find the usefulness of that
+middle order of Tacksmen, which some who applaud their own wisdom
+are wishing to destroy.  Without intelligence man is not social, he
+is only gregarious; and little intelligence will there be, where
+all are constrained to daily labour, and every mind must wait upon
+the hand.
+
+After having listened for some days to the tempest, and wandered
+about the Island till our curiosity was satisfied, we began to
+think about our departure.  To leave Col in October was not very
+easy.  We however found a sloop which lay on the coast to carry
+kelp; and for a price which we thought levied upon our necessities,
+the master agreed to carry us to Mull, whence we might readily pass
+back to Scotland.
+
+
+
+MULL
+
+
+
+As we were to catch the first favourable breath, we spent the night
+not very elegantly nor pleasantly in the vessel, and were landed
+next day at Tobor Morar, a port in Mull, which appears to an
+unexperienced eye formed for the security of ships; for its mouth
+is closed by a small island, which admits them through narrow
+channels into a bason sufficiently capacious.  They are indeed safe
+from the sea, but there is a hollow between the mountains, through
+which the wind issues from the land with very mischievous violence.
+
+There was no danger while we were there, and we found several other
+vessels at anchor; so that the port had a very commercial
+appearance.
+
+The young Laird of Col, who had determined not to let us lose his
+company, while there was any difficulty remaining, came over with
+us.  His influence soon appeared; for he procured us horses, and
+conducted us to the house of Doctor Maclean, where we found very
+kind entertainment, and very pleasing conversation.  Miss Maclean,
+who was born, and had been bred at Glasgow, having removed with her
+father to Mull, added to other qualifications, a great knowledge of
+the Earse language, which she had not learned in her childhood, but
+gained by study, and was the only interpreter of Earse poetry that
+I could ever find.
+
+The Isle of Mull is perhaps in extent the third of the Hebrides.
+It is not broken by waters, nor shot into promontories, but is a
+solid and compact mass, of breadth nearly equal to its length.  Of
+the dimensions of the larger Islands, there is no knowledge
+approaching to exactness.  I am willing to estimate it as
+containing about three hundred square miles.
+
+Mull had suffered like Sky by the black winter of seventy-one, in
+which, contrary to all experience, a continued frost detained the
+snow eight weeks upon the ground.  Against a calamity never known,
+no provision had been made, and the people could only pine in
+helpless misery.  One tenant was mentioned, whose cattle perished
+to the value of three hundred pounds; a loss which probably more
+than the life of man is necessary to repair.  In countries like
+these, the descriptions of famine become intelligible.  Where by
+vigorous and artful cultivation of a soil naturally fertile, there
+is commonly a superfluous growth both of grain and grass; where the
+fields are crowded with cattle; and where every hand is able to
+attract wealth from a distance, by making something that promotes
+ease, or gratifies vanity, a dear year produces only a comparative
+want, which is rather seen than felt, and which terminates commonly
+in no worse effect, than that of condemning the lower orders of the
+community to sacrifice a little luxury to convenience, or at most a
+little convenience to necessity.
+
+But where the climate is unkind, and the ground penurious, so that
+the most fruitful years will produce only enough to maintain
+themselves; where life unimproved, and unadorned, fades into
+something little more than naked existence, and every one is busy
+for himself, without any arts by which the pleasure of others may
+be increased; if to the daily burden of distress any additional
+weight be added, nothing remains but to despair and die.  In Mull
+the disappointment of a harvest, or a murrain among the cattle,
+cuts off the regular provision; and they who have no manufactures
+can purchase no part of the superfluities of other countries.  The
+consequence of a bad season is here not scarcity, but emptiness;
+and they whose plenty, was barely a supply of natural and present
+need, when that slender stock fails, must perish with hunger.
+
+All travel has its advantages.  If the passenger visits better
+countries, he may learn to improve his own, and if fortune carries
+him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it.
+
+Mr. Boswell's curiosity strongly impelled him to survey Iona, or
+Icolmkil, which was to the early ages the great school of Theology,
+and is supposed to have been the place of sepulture for the ancient
+kings.  I, though less eager, did not oppose him.
+
+That we might perform this expedition, it was necessary to traverse
+a great part of Mull.  We passed a day at Dr. Maclean's, and could
+have been well contented to stay longer.  But Col provided us
+horses, and we pursued our journey.  This was a day of
+inconvenience, for the country is very rough, and my horse was but
+little.  We travelled many hours through a tract, black and barren,
+in which, however, there were the reliques of humanity; for we
+found a ruined chapel in our way.
+
+It is natural, in traversing this gloom of desolation, to inquire,
+whether something may not be done to give nature a more cheerful
+face, and whether those hills and moors that afford heath cannot
+with a little care and labour bear something better?  The first
+thought that occurs is to cover them with trees, for that in many
+of these naked regions trees will grow, is evident, because stumps
+and roots are yet remaining; and the speculatist hastily proceeds
+to censure that negligence and laziness that has omitted for so
+long a time so easy an improvement.
+
+To drop seeds into the ground, and attend their growth, requires
+little labour and no skill.  He who remembers that all the woods,
+by which the wants of man have been supplied from the Deluge till
+now, were self-sown, will not easily be persuaded to think all the
+art and preparation necessary, which the Georgick writers prescribe
+to planters.  Trees certainly have covered the earth with very
+little culture.  They wave their tops among the rocks of Norway,
+and might thrive as well in the Highlands and Hebrides.
+
+But there is a frightful interval between the seed and timber.  He
+that calculates the growth of trees, has the unwelcome remembrance
+of the shortness of life driven hard upon him.  He knows that he is
+doing what will never benefit himself; and when he rejoices to see
+the stem rise, is disposed to repine that another shall cut it
+down.
+
+Plantation is naturally the employment of a mind unburdened with
+care, and vacant to futurity, saturated with present good, and at
+leisure to derive gratification from the prospect of posterity.  He
+that pines with hunger, is in little care how others shall be fed.
+The poor man is seldom studious to make his grandson rich.  It may
+be soon discovered, why in a place, which hardly supplies the
+cravings of necessity, there has been little attention to the
+delights of fancy, and why distant convenience is unregarded, where
+the thoughts are turned with incessant solicitude upon every
+possibility of immediate advantage.
+
+Neither is it quite so easy to raise large woods, as may be
+conceived.  Trees intended to produce timber must be sown where
+they are to grow; and ground sown with trees must be kept useless
+for a long time, inclosed at an expence from which many will be
+discouraged by the remoteness of the profit, and watched with that
+attention, which, in places where it is most needed, will neither
+be given nor bought.  That it cannot be plowed is evident; and if
+cattle be suffered to graze upon it, they will devour the plants as
+fast as they rise.  Even in coarser countries, where herds and
+flocks are not fed, not only the deer and the wild goats will
+browse upon them, but the hare and rabbit will nibble them.  It is
+therefore reasonable to believe, what I do not remember any
+naturalist to have remarked, that there was a time when the world
+was very thinly inhabited by beasts, as well as men, and that the
+woods had leisure to rise high before animals had bred numbers
+sufficient to intercept them.
+
+Sir James Macdonald, in part of the wastes of his territory, set or
+sowed trees, to the number, as I have been told, of several
+millions, expecting, doubtless, that they would grow up into future
+navies and cities; but for want of inclosure, and of that care
+which is always necessary, and will hardly ever be taken, all his
+cost and labour have been lost, and the ground is likely to
+continue an useless heath.
+
+Having not any experience of a journey in Mull, we had no doubt of
+reaching the sea by day-light, and therefore had not left Dr.
+Maclean's very early.  We travelled diligently enough, but found
+the country, for road there was none, very difficult to pass.  We
+were always struggling with some obstruction or other, and our
+vexation was not balanced by any gratification of the eye or mind.
+We were now long enough acquainted with hills and heath to have
+lost the emotion that they once raised, whether pleasing or
+painful, and had our mind employed only on our own fatigue.  We
+were however sure, under Col's protection, of escaping all real
+evils.  There was no house in Mull to which he could not introduce
+us.  He had intended to lodge us, for that night, with a gentleman
+that lived upon the coast, but discovered on the way, that he then
+lay in bed without hope of life.
+
+We resolved not to embarrass a family, in a time of so much sorrow,
+if any other expedient could he found; and as the Island of Ulva
+was over-against us, it was determined that we should pass the
+strait and have recourse to the Laird, who, like the other
+gentlemen of the Islands, was known to Col.  We expected to find a
+ferry-boat, but when at last we came to the water, the boat was
+gone.
+
+We were now again at a stop.  It was the sixteenth of October, a
+time when it is not convenient to sleep in the Hebrides without a
+cover, and there was no house within our reach, but that which we
+had already declined.
+
+
+
+ULVA
+
+
+
+While we stood deliberating, we were happily espied from an Irish
+ship, that lay at anchor in the strait.  The master saw that we
+wanted a passage, and with great civility sent us his boat, which
+quickly conveyed us to Ulva, where we were very liberally
+entertained by Mr. Macquarry.
+
+To Ulva we came in the dark, and left it before noon the next day.
+A very exact description therefore will not be expected.  We were
+told, that it is an Island of no great extent, rough and barren,
+inhabited by the Macquarrys; a clan not powerful nor numerous, but
+of antiquity, which most other families are content to reverence.
+The name is supposed to be a depravation of some other; for the
+Earse language does not afford it any etymology.  Macquarry is
+proprietor both of Ulva and some adjacent Islands, among which is
+Staffa, so lately raised to renown by Mr. Banks.
+
+When the Islanders were reproached with their ignorance, or
+insensibility of the wonders of Staffa, they had not much to reply.
+They had indeed considered it little, because they had always seen
+it; and none but philosophers, nor they always, are struck with
+wonder, otherwise than by novelty.  How would it surprise an
+unenlightened ploughman, to hear a company of sober men, inquiring
+by what power the hand tosses a stone, or why the stone, when it is
+tossed, falls to the ground!
+
+Of the ancestors of Macquarry, who thus lies hid in his
+unfrequented Island, I have found memorials in all places where
+they could be expected.
+
+Inquiring after the reliques of former manners, I found that in
+Ulva, and, I think, no where else, is continued the payment of the
+Mercheta Mulierum; a fine in old times due to the Laird at the
+marriage of a virgin.  The original of this claim, as of our tenure
+of Borough English, is variously delivered.  It is pleasant to find
+ancient customs in old families.  This payment, like others, was,
+for want of money, made anciently in the produce of the land.
+Macquarry was used to demand a sheep, for which he now takes a
+crown, by that inattention to the uncertain proportion between the
+value and the denomination of money, which has brought much
+disorder into Europe.  A sheep has always the same power of
+supplying human wants, but a crown will bring at one time more, at
+another less.
+
+Ulva was not neglected by the piety of ardent times:  it has still
+to show what was once a church.
+
+
+
+INCH KENNETH
+
+
+
+In the morning we went again into the boat, and were landed on Inch
+Kenneth, an Island about a mile long, and perhaps half a mile
+broad, remarkable for pleasantness and fertility.  It is verdant
+and grassy, and fit both for pasture and tillage; but it has no
+trees.  Its only inhabitants were Sir Allan Maclean and two young
+ladies, his daughters, with their servants.
+
+Romance does not often exhibit a scene that strikes the imagination
+more than this little desert in these depths of Western obscurity,
+occupied not by a gross herdsman, or amphibious fisherman, but by a
+gentleman and two ladies, of high birth, polished manners and
+elegant conversation, who, in a habitation raised not very far
+above the ground, but furnished with unexpected neatness and
+convenience, practised all the kindness of hospitality, and
+refinement of courtesy.
+
+Sir Allan is the Chieftain of the great clan of Maclean, which is
+said to claim the second place among the Highland families,
+yielding only to Macdonald.  Though by the misconduct of his
+ancestors, most of the extensive territory, which would have
+descended to him, has been alienated, he still retains much of the
+dignity and authority of his birth.  When soldiers were lately
+wanting for the American war, application was made to Sir Allan,
+and he nominated a hundred men for the service, who obeyed the
+summons, and bore arms under his command.
+
+He had then, for some time, resided with the young ladies in Inch
+Kenneth, where he lives not only with plenty, but with elegance,
+having conveyed to his cottage a collection of books, and what else
+is necessary to make his hours pleasant.
+
+When we landed, we were met by Sir Allan and the Ladies,
+accompanied by Miss Macquarry, who had passed some time with them,
+and now returned to Ulva with her father.
+
+We all walked together to the mansion, where we found one cottage
+for Sir Allan, and I think two more for the domesticks and the
+offices.  We entered, and wanted little that palaces afford.  Our
+room was neatly floored, and well lighted; and our dinner, which
+was dressed in one of the other huts, was plentiful and delicate.
+
+In the afternoon Sir Allan reminded us, that the day was Sunday,
+which he never suffered to pass without some religious distinction,
+and invited us to partake in his acts of domestick worship; which I
+hope neither Mr. Boswell nor myself will be suspected of a
+disposition to refuse.  The elder of the Ladies read the English
+service.
+
+Inch Kenneth was once a seminary of ecclesiasticks, subordinate, I
+suppose, to Icolmkill.  Sir Allan had a mind to trace the
+foundations of the college, but neither I nor Mr. Boswell, who
+bends a keener eye on vacancy, were able to perceive them.
+
+Our attention, however, was sufficiently engaged by a venerable
+chapel, which stands yet entire, except that the roof is gone.  It
+is about sixty feet in length, and thirty in breadth.  On one side
+of the altar is a bas relief of the blessed Virgin, and by it lies
+a little bell; which, though cracked, and without a clapper, has
+remained there for ages, guarded only by the venerableness of the
+place.  The ground round the chapel is covered with grave-stones of
+Chiefs and ladies; and still continues to be a place of sepulture.
+
+Inch Kenneth is a proper prelude to Icolmkill.  It was not without
+some mournful emotion that we contemplated the ruins of religious
+structures and the monuments of the dead.
+
+On the next day we took a more distinct view of the place, and went
+with the boat to see oysters in the bed, out of which the boat-men
+forced up as many as were wanted.  Even Inch Kenneth has a
+subordinate Island, named Sandiland, I suppose in contempt, where
+we landed, and found a rock, with a surface of perhaps four acres,
+of which one is naked stone, another spread with sand and shells,
+some of which I picked up for their glossy beauty, and two covered
+with a little earth and grass, on which Sir Allan has a few sheep.
+I doubt not but when there was a college at Inch Kenneth, there was
+a hermitage upon Sandiland.
+
+Having wandered over those extensive plains, we committed ourselves
+again to the winds and waters; and after a voyage of about ten
+minutes, in which we met with nothing very observable, were again
+safe upon dry ground.
+
+We told Sir Allan our desire of visiting Icolmkill, and entreated
+him to give us his protection, and his company.  He thought proper
+to hesitate a little, but the Ladies hinted, that as they knew he
+would not finally refuse, he would do better if he preserved the
+grace of ready compliance.  He took their advice, and promised to
+carry us on the morrow in his boat.
+
+We passed the remaining part of the day in such amusements as were
+in our power.  Sir Allan related the American campaign, and at
+evening one of the Ladies played on her harpsichord, while Col and
+Mr. Boswell danced a Scottish reel with the other.
+
+We could have been easily persuaded to a longer stay upon Inch
+Kenneth, but life will not be all passed in delight.  The session
+at Edinburgh was approaching, from which Mr. Boswell could not be
+absent.
+
+In the morning our boat was ready:  it was high and strong.  Sir
+Allan victualled it for the day, and provided able rowers.  We now
+parted from the young Laird of Col, who had treated us with so much
+kindness, and concluded his favours by consigning us to Sir Allan.
+Here we had the last embrace of this amiable man, who, while these
+pages were preparing to attest his virtues, perished in the passage
+between Ulva and Inch Kenneth.
+
+Sir Allan, to whom the whole region was well known, told us of a
+very remarkable cave, to which he would show us the way.  We had
+been disappointed already by one cave, and were not much elevated
+by the expectation of another.
+
+It was yet better to see it, and we stopped at some rocks on the
+coast of Mull.  The mouth is fortified by vast fragments of stone,
+over which we made our way, neither very nimbly, nor very securely.
+The place, however, well repaid our trouble.  The bottom, as far as
+the flood rushes in, was encumbered with large pebbles, but as we
+advanced was spread over with smooth sand.  The breadth is about
+forty-five feet:  the roof rises in an arch, almost regular, to a
+height which we could not measure; but I think it about thirty
+feet.
+
+This part of our curiosity was nearly frustrated; for though we
+went to see a cave, and knew that caves are dark, we forgot to
+carry tapers, and did not discover our omission till we were
+wakened by our wants.  Sir Allan then sent one of the boatmen into
+the country, who soon returned with one little candle.  We were
+thus enabled to go forward, but could not venture far.  Having
+passed inward from the sea to a great depth, we found on the right
+hand a narrow passage, perhaps not more than six feet wide,
+obstructed by great stones, over which we climbed and came into a
+second cave, in breadth twenty-five feet.  The air in this
+apartment was very warm, but not oppressive, nor loaded with
+vapours.  Our light showed no tokens of a feculent or corrupted
+atmosphere.  Here was a square stone, called, as we are told,
+Fingal's Table.
+
+If we had been provided with torches, we should have proceeded in
+our search, though we had already gone as far as any former
+adventurer, except some who are reported never to have returned;
+and, measuring our way back, we found it more than a hundred and
+sixty yards, the eleventh part of a mile.
+
+Our measures were not critically exact, having been made with a
+walking pole, such as it is convenient to carry in these rocky
+countries, of which I guessed the length by standing against it.
+In this there could be no great errour, nor do I much doubt but the
+Highlander, whom we employed, reported the number right.  More
+nicety however is better, and no man should travel unprovided with
+instruments for taking heights and distances.
+
+There is yet another cause of errour not always easily surmounted,
+though more dangerous to the veracity of itinerary narratives, than
+imperfect mensuration.  An observer deeply impressed by any
+remarkable spectacle, does not suppose, that the traces will soon
+vanish from his mind, and having commonly no great convenience for
+writing, defers the description to a time of more leisure, and
+better accommodation.
+
+He who has not made the experiment, or who is not accustomed to
+require rigorous accuracy from himself, will scarcely believe how
+much a few hours take from certainty of knowledge, and distinctness
+of imagery; how the succession of objects will be broken, how
+separate parts will be confused, and how many particular features
+and discriminations will be compressed and conglobated into one
+gross and general idea.
+
+To this dilatory notation must be imputed the false relations of
+travellers, where there is no imaginable motive to deceive.  They
+trusted to memory, what cannot be trusted safely but to the eye,
+and told by guess what a few hours before they had known with
+certainty.  Thus it was that Wheeler and Spon described with
+irreconcilable contrariety things which they surveyed together, and
+which both undoubtedly designed to show as they saw them.
+
+When we had satisfied our curiosity in the cave, so far as our
+penury of light permitted us, we clambered again to our boat, and
+proceeded along the coast of Mull to a headland, called Atun,
+remarkable for the columnar form of the rocks, which rise in a
+series of pilasters, with a degree of regularity, which Sir Allan
+thinks not less worthy of curiosity than the shore of Staffa.
+
+Not long after we came to another range of black rocks, which had
+the appearance of broken pilasters, set one behind another to a
+great depth.  This place was chosen by Sir Allan for our dinner.
+We were easily accommodated with seats, for the stones were of all
+heights, and refreshed ourselves and our boatmen, who could have no
+other rest till we were at Icolmkill.
+
+The evening was now approaching, and we were yet at a considerable
+distance from the end of our expedition.  We could therefore stop
+no more to make remarks in the way, but set forward with some
+degree of eagerness.  The day soon failed us, and the moon
+presented a very solemn and pleasing scene.  The sky was clear, so
+that the eye commanded a wide circle:  the sea was neither still
+nor turbulent:  the wind neither silent nor loud.  We were never
+far from one coast or another, on which, if the weather had become
+violent, we could have found shelter, and therefore contemplated at
+ease the region through which we glided in the tranquillity of the
+night, and saw now a rock and now an island grow gradually
+conspicuous and gradually obscure.  I committed the fault which I
+have just been censuring, in neglecting, as we passed, to note the
+series of this placid navigation.
+
+We were very near an Island, called Nun's Island, perhaps from an
+ancient convent.  Here is said to have been dug the stone that was
+used in the buildings of Icolmkill.  Whether it is now inhabited we
+could not stay to inquire.
+
+At last we came to Icolmkill, but found no convenience for landing.
+Our boat could not be forced very near the dry ground, and our
+Highlanders carried us over the water.
+
+We were now treading that illustrious Island, which was once the
+luminary of the Caledonian regions, whence savage clans and roving
+barbarians derived the benefits of knowledge, and the blessings of
+religion.  To abstract the mind from all local emotion would be
+impossible, if it were endeavoured, and would be foolish, if it
+were possible.  Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses;
+whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future predominate
+over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings.
+Far from me and from my friends, be such frigid philosophy as may
+conduct us indifferent and unmoved over any ground which has been
+dignified by wisdom, bravery, or virtue.  That man is little to be
+envied, whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plain of
+Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of
+Iona!
+
+We came too late to visit monuments:  some care was necessary for
+ourselves.  Whatever was in the Island, Sir Allan could command,
+for the inhabitants were Macleans; but having little they could not
+give us much.  He went to the headman of the Island, whom Fame, but
+Fame delights in amplifying, represents as worth no less than fifty
+pounds.  He was perhaps proud enough of his guests, but ill
+prepared for our entertainment; however, he soon produced more
+provision than men not luxurious require.  Our lodging was next to
+be provided.  We found a barn well stocked with hay, and made our
+beds as soft as we could.
+
+In the morning we rose and surveyed the place.  The churches of the
+two convents are both standing, though unroofed.  They were built
+of unhewn stone, but solid, and not inelegant.  I brought away rude
+measures of the buildings, such as I cannot much trust myself,
+inaccurately taken, and obscurely noted.  Mr. Pennant's
+delineations, which are doubtless exact, have made my unskilful
+description less necessary.
+
+The episcopal church consists of two parts, separated by the
+belfry, and built at different times.  The original church had,
+like others, the altar at one end, and tower at the other:  but as
+it grew too small, another building of equal dimension was added,
+and the tower then was necessarily in the middle.
+
+That these edifices are of different ages seems evident.  The arch
+of the first church is Roman, being part of a circle; that of the
+additional building is pointed, and therefore Gothick, or
+Saracenical; the tower is firm, and wants only to be floored and
+covered.
+
+Of the chambers or cells belonging to the monks, there are some
+walls remaining, but nothing approaching to a complete apartment.
+
+The bottom of the church is so incumbered with mud and rubbish,
+that we could make no discoveries of curious inscriptions, and what
+there are have been already published.  The place is said to be
+known where the black stones lie concealed, on which the old
+Highland Chiefs, when they made contracts and alliances, used to
+take the oath, which was considered as more sacred than any other
+obligation, and which could not be violated without the blackest
+infamy.  In those days of violence and rapine, it was of great
+importance to impress upon savage minds the sanctity of an oath, by
+some particular and extraordinary circumstances.  They would not
+have recourse to the black stones, upon small or common occasions,
+and when they had established their faith by this tremendous
+sanction, inconstancy and treachery were no longer feared.
+
+The chapel of the nunnery is now used by the inhabitants as a kind
+of general cow-house, and the bottom is consequently too miry for
+examination.  Some of the stones which covered the later abbesses
+have inscriptions, which might yet be read, if the chapel were
+cleansed.  The roof of this, as of all the other buildings, is
+totally destroyed, not only because timber quickly decays when it
+is neglected, but because in an island utterly destitute of wood,
+it was wanted for use, and was consequently the first plunder of
+needy rapacity.
+
+The chancel of the nuns' chapel is covered with an arch of stone,
+to which time has done no injury; and a small apartment
+communicating with the choir, on the north side, like the chapter-
+house in cathedrals, roofed with stone in the same manner, is
+likewise entire.
+
+In one of the churches was a marble altar, which the superstition
+of the inhabitants has destroyed.  Their opinion was, that a
+fragment of this stone was a defence against shipwrecks, fire, and
+miscarriages.  In one corner of the church the bason for holy water
+is yet unbroken.
+
+The cemetery of the nunnery was, till very lately, regarded with
+such reverence, that only women were buried in it.  These reliques
+of veneration always produce some mournful pleasure.  I could have
+forgiven a great injury more easily than the violation of this
+imaginary sanctity.
+
+South of the chapel stand the walls of a large room, which was
+probably the hall, or refectory of the nunnery.  This apartment is
+capable of repair.  Of the rest of the convent there are only
+fragments.
+
+Besides the two principal churches, there are, I think, five
+chapels yet standing, and three more remembered.  There are also
+crosses, of which two bear the names of St. John and St. Matthew.
+
+A large space of ground about these consecrated edifices is covered
+with gravestones, few of which have any inscription.  He that
+surveys it, attended by an insular antiquary, may be told where the
+Kings of many nations are buried, and if he loves to sooth his
+imagination with the thoughts that naturally rise in places where
+the great and the powerful lie mingled with the dust, let him
+listen in submissive silence; for if he asks any questions, his
+delight is at an end.
+
+Iona has long enjoyed, without any very credible attestation, the
+honour of being reputed the cemetery of the Scottish Kings.  It is
+not unlikely, that, when the opinion of local sanctity was
+prevalent, the Chieftains of the Isles, and perhaps some of the
+Norwegian or Irish princes were reposited in this venerable
+enclosure.  But by whom the subterraneous vaults are peopled is now
+utterly unknown.  The graves are very numerous, and some of them
+undoubtedly contain the remains of men, who did not expect to be so
+soon forgotten.
+
+Not far from this awful ground, may be traced the garden of the
+monastery:  the fishponds are yet discernible, and the aqueduct,
+which supplied them, is still in use.
+
+There remains a broken building, which is called the Bishop's
+house, I know not by what authority.  It was once the residence of
+some man above the common rank, for it has two stories and a
+chimney.  We were shewn a chimney at the other end, which was only
+a nich, without perforation, but so much does antiquarian
+credulity, or patriotick vanity prevail, that it was not much more
+safe to trust the eye of our instructor than the memory.
+
+There is in the Island one house more, and only one, that has a
+chimney:  we entered it, and found it neither wanting repair nor
+inhabitants; but to the farmers, who now possess it, the chimney is
+of no great value; for their fire was made on the floor, in the
+middle of the room, and notwithstanding the dignity of their
+mansion, they rejoiced, like their neighbours, in the comforts of
+smoke.
+
+It is observed, that ecclesiastical colleges are always in the most
+pleasant and fruitful places.  While the world allowed the monks
+their choice, it is surely no dishonour that they chose well.  This
+Island is remarkably fruitful.  The village near the churches is
+said to contain seventy families, which, at five in a family, is
+more than a hundred inhabitants to a mile.  There are perhaps other
+villages:  yet both corn and cattle are annually exported.
+
+But the fruitfulness of Iona is now its whole prosperity.  The
+inhabitants are remarkably gross, and remarkably neglected:  I know
+not if they are visited by any Minister.  The Island, which was
+once the metropolis of learning and piety, has now no school for
+education, nor temple for worship, only two inhabitants that can
+speak English, and not one that can write or read.
+
+The people are of the clan of Maclean; and though Sir Allan had not
+been in the place for many years, he was received with all the
+reverence due to their Chieftain.  One of them being sharply
+reprehended by him, for not sending him some rum, declared after
+his departure, in Mr. Boswell's presence, that he had no design of
+disappointing him, 'for,' said he, 'I would cut my bones for him;
+and if he had sent his dog for it, he should have had it.'
+
+When we were to depart, our boat was left by the ebb at a great
+distance from the water, but no sooner did we wish it afloat, than
+the islanders gathered round it, and, by the union of many hands,
+pushed it down the beach; every man who could contribute his help
+seemed to think himself happy in the opportunity of being, for a
+moment, useful to his Chief.
+
+We now left those illustrious ruins, by which Mr. Boswell was much
+affected, nor would I willingly be thought to have looked upon them
+without some emotion.  Perhaps, in the revolutions of the world,
+Iona may be sometime again the instructress of the Western Regions.
+
+It was no long voyage to Mull, where, under Sir Allan's protection,
+we landed in the evening, and were entertained for the night by Mr.
+Maclean, a Minister that lives upon the coast, whose elegance of
+conversation, and strength of judgment, would make him conspicuous
+in places of greater celebrity.  Next day we dined with Dr.
+Maclean, another physician, and then travelled on to the house of a
+very powerful Laird, Maclean of Lochbuy; for in this country every
+man's name is Maclean.
+
+Where races are thus numerous, and thus combined, none but the
+Chief of a clan is addressed by his name.  The Laird of Dunvegan is
+called Macleod, but other gentlemen of the same family are
+denominated by the places where they reside, as Raasa, or Talisker.
+The distinction of the meaner people is made by their Christian
+names.  In consequence of this practice, the late Laird of
+Macfarlane, an eminent genealogist, considered himself as
+disrespectfully treated, if the common addition was applied to him.
+Mr. Macfarlane, said he, may with equal propriety be said to many;
+but I, and I only, am Macfarlane.
+
+Our afternoon journey was through a country of such gloomy
+desolation, that Mr. Boswell thought no part of the Highlands
+equally terrifick, yet we came without any difficulty, at evening,
+to Lochbuy, where we found a true Highland Laird, rough and
+haughty, and tenacious of his dignity; who, hearing my name,
+inquired whether I was of the Johnstons of Glencroe, or of
+Ardnamurchan.
+
+Lochbuy has, like the other insular Chieftains, quitted the castle
+that sheltered his ancestors, and lives near it, in a mansion not
+very spacious or splendid.  I have seen no houses in the Islands
+much to be envied for convenience or magnificence, yet they bare
+testimony to the progress of arts and civility, as they shew that
+rapine and surprise are no longer dreaded, and are much more
+commodious than the ancient fortresses.
+
+The castles of the Hebrides, many of which are standing, and many
+ruined, were always built upon points of land, on the margin of the
+sea.  For the choice of this situation there must have been some
+general reason, which the change of manners has left in obscurity.
+They were of no use in the days of piracy, as defences of the
+coast; for it was equally accessible in other places.  Had they
+been sea-marks or light-houses, they would have been of more use to
+the invader than the natives, who could want no such directions of
+their own waters:  for a watch-tower, a cottage on a hill would
+have been better, as it would have commanded a wider view.
+
+If they be considered merely as places of retreat, the situation
+seems not well chosen; for the Laird of an Island is safest from
+foreign enemies in the center; on the coast he might be more
+suddenly surprised than in the inland parts; and the invaders, if
+their enterprise miscarried, might more easily retreat.  Some
+convenience, however, whatever it was, their position on the shore
+afforded; for uniformity of practice seldom continues long without
+good reason.
+
+A castle in the Islands is only a single tower of three or four
+stories, of which the walls are sometimes eight or nine feet thick,
+with narrow windows, and close winding stairs of stone.  The top
+rises in a cone, or pyramid of stone, encompassed by battlements.
+The intermediate floors are sometimes frames of timber, as in
+common houses, and sometimes arches of stone, or alternately stone
+and timber; so that there was very little danger from fire.  In the
+center of every floor, from top to bottom, is the chief room, of no
+great extent, round which there are narrow cavities, or recesses,
+formed by small vacuities, or by a double wall.  I know not whether
+there be ever more than one fire-place.  They had not capacity to
+contain many people, or much provision; but their enemies could
+seldom stay to blockade them; for if they failed in the first
+attack, their next care was to escape.
+
+The walls were always too strong to be shaken by such desultory
+hostilities; the windows were too narrow to be entered, and the
+battlements too high to be scaled.  The only danger was at the
+gates, over which the wall was built with a square cavity, not
+unlike a chimney, continued to the top.  Through this hollow the
+defendants let fall stones upon those who attempted to break the
+gate, and poured down water, perhaps scalding water, if the attack
+was made with fire.  The castle of Lochbuy was secured by double
+doors, of which the outer was an iron grate.
+
+In every castle is a well and a dungeon.  The use of the well is
+evident.  The dungeon is a deep subterraneous cavity, walled on the
+sides, and arched on the top, into which the descent is through a
+narrow door, by a ladder or a rope, so that it seems impossible to
+escape, when the rope or ladder is drawn up.  The dungeon was, I
+suppose, in war, a prison for such captives as were treated with
+severity, and, in peace, for such delinquents as had committed
+crimes within the Laird's jurisdiction; for the mansions of many
+Lairds were, till the late privation of their privileges, the halls
+of justice to their own tenants.
+
+As these fortifications were the productions of mere necessity,
+they are built only for safety, with little regard to convenience,
+and with none to elegance or pleasure.  It was sufficient for a
+Laird of the Hebrides, if he had a strong house, in which he could
+hide his wife and children from the next clan.  That they are not
+large nor splendid is no wonder.  It is not easy to find how they
+were raised, such as they are, by men who had no money, in
+countries where the labourers and artificers could scarcely be fed.
+The buildings in different parts of the Island shew their degrees
+of wealth and power.  I believe that for all the castles which I
+have seen beyond the Tweed, the ruins yet remaining of some one of
+those which the English built in Wales, would supply materials.
+
+These castles afford another evidence that the fictions of
+romantick chivalry had for their basis the real manners of the
+feudal times, when every Lord of a seignory lived in his hold
+lawless and unaccountable, with all the licentiousness and
+insolence of uncontested superiority and unprincipled power.  The
+traveller, whoever he might be, coming to the fortified habitation
+of a Chieftain, would, probably, have been interrogated from the
+battlements, admitted with caution at the gate, introduced to a
+petty Monarch, fierce with habitual hostility, and vigilant with
+ignorant suspicion; who, according to his general temper, or
+accidental humour, would have seated a stranger as his guest at the
+table, or as a spy confined him in the dungeon.
+
+Lochbuy means the Yellow Lake, which is the name given to an inlet
+of the sea, upon which the castle of Mr. Maclean stands.  The
+reason of the appellation we did not learn.
+
+We were now to leave the Hebrides, where we had spent some weeks
+with sufficient amusement, and where we had amplified our thoughts
+with new scenes of nature, and new modes of life.  More time would
+have given us a more distinct view, but it was necessary that Mr.
+Boswell should return before the courts of justice were opened; and
+it was not proper to live too long upon hospitality, however
+liberally imparted.
+
+Of these Islands it must be confessed, that they have not many
+allurements, but to the mere lover of naked nature.  The
+inhabitants are thin, provisions are scarce, and desolation and
+penury give little pleasure.
+
+The people collectively considered are not few, though their
+numbers are small in proportion to the space which they occupy.
+Mull is said to contain six thousand, and Sky fifteen thousand.  Of
+the computation respecting Mull, I can give no account; but when I
+doubted the truth of the numbers attributed to Sky, one of the
+Ministers exhibited such facts as conquered my incredulity.
+
+Of the proportion, which the product of any region bears to the
+people, an estimate is commonly made according to the pecuniary
+price of the necessaries of life; a principle of judgment which is
+never certain, because it supposes what is far from truth, that the
+value of money is always the same, and so measures an unknown
+quantity by an uncertain standard.  It is competent enough when the
+markets of the same country, at different times, and those times
+not too distant, are to be compared; but of very little use for the
+purpose of making one nation acquainted with the state of another.
+Provisions, though plentiful, are sold in places of great pecuniary
+opulence for nominal prices, to which, however scarce, where gold
+and silver are yet scarcer, they can never be raised.
+
+In the Western Islands there is so little internal commerce, that
+hardly any thing has a known or settled rate.  The price of things
+brought in, or carried out, is to be considered as that of a
+foreign market; and even this there is some difficulty in
+discovering, because their denominations of quantity are different
+from ours; and when there is ignorance on both sides, no appeal can
+be made to a common measure.
+
+This, however, is not the only impediment.  The Scots, with a
+vigilance of jealousy which never goes to sleep, always suspect
+that an Englishman despises them for their poverty, and to convince
+him that they are not less rich than their neighbours, are sure to
+tell him a price higher than the true.  When Lesley, two hundred
+years ago, related so punctiliously, that a hundred hen eggs, new
+laid, were sold in the Islands for a peny, he supposed that no
+inference could possibly follow, but that eggs were in great
+abundance.  Posterity has since grown wiser; and having learned,
+that nominal and real value may differ, they now tell no such
+stories, lest the foreigner should happen to collect, not that eggs
+are many, but that pence are few.
+
+Money and wealth have by the use of commercial language been so
+long confounded, that they are commonly supposed to be the same;
+and this prejudice has spread so widely in Scotland, that I know
+not whether I found man or woman, whom I interrogated concerning
+payments of money, that could surmount the illiberal desire of
+deceiving me, by representing every thing as dearer than it is.
+
+From Lochbuy we rode a very few miles to the side of Mull, which
+faces Scotland, where, having taken leave of our kind protector,
+Sir Allan, we embarked in a boat, in which the seat provided for
+our accommodation was a heap of rough brushwood; and on the twenty-
+second of October reposed at a tolerable inn on the main land.
+
+On the next day we began our journey southwards.  The weather was
+tempestuous.  For half the day the ground was rough, and our horses
+were still small.  Had they required much restraint, we might have
+been reduced to difficulties; for I think we had amongst us but one
+bridle.  We fed the poor animals liberally, and they performed
+their journey well.  In the latter part of the day, we came to a
+firm and smooth road, made by the soldiers, on which we travelled
+with great security, busied with contemplating the scene about us.
+The night came on while we had yet a great part of the way to go,
+though not so dark, but that we could discern the cataracts which
+poured down the hills, on one side, and fell into one general
+channel that ran with great violence on the other.  The wind was
+loud, the rain was heavy, and the whistling of the blast, the fall
+of the shower, the rush of the cataracts, and the roar of the
+torrent, made a nobler chorus of the rough musick of nature than it
+had ever been my chance to hear before.  The streams, which ran
+cross the way from the hills to the main current, were so frequent,
+that after a while I began to count them; and, in ten miles,
+reckoned fifty-five, probably missing some, and having let some
+pass before they forced themselves upon my notice.  At last we came
+to Inverary, where we found an inn, not only commodious, but
+magnificent.
+
+The difficulties of peregrination were now at an end.  Mr. Boswell
+had the honour of being known to the Duke of Argyle, by whom we
+were very kindly entertained at his splendid seat, and supplied
+with conveniences for surveying his spacious park and rising
+forests.
+
+After two days stay at Inverary we proceeded Southward over
+Glencroe, a black and dreary region, now made easily passable by a
+military road, which rises from either end of the glen by an
+acclivity not dangerously steep, but sufficiently laborious.  In
+the middle, at the top of the hill, is a seat with this
+inscription, 'Rest, and be thankful.'  Stones were placed to mark
+the distances, which the inhabitants have taken away, resolved,
+they said, 'to have no new miles.'
+
+In this rainy season the hills streamed with waterfalls, which,
+crossing the way, formed currents on the other side, that ran in
+contrary directions as they fell to the north or south of the
+summit.  Being, by the favour of the Duke, well mounted, I went up
+and down the hill with great convenience.
+
+From Glencroe we passed through a pleasant country to the banks of
+Loch Lomond, and were received at the house of Sir James Colquhoun,
+who is owner of almost all the thirty islands of the Loch, which we
+went in a boat next morning to survey.  The heaviness of the rain
+shortened our voyage, but we landed on one island planted with yew,
+and stocked with deer, and on another containing perhaps not more
+than half an acre, remarkable for the ruins of an old castle, on
+which the osprey builds her annual nest.  Had Loch Lomond been in a
+happier climate, it would have been the boast of wealth and vanity
+to own one of the little spots which it incloses, and to have
+employed upon it all the arts of embellishment.  But as it is, the
+islets, which court the gazer at a distance, disgust him at his
+approach, when he finds, instead of soft lawns; and shady thickets,
+nothing more than uncultivated ruggedness.
+
+Where the Loch discharges itself into a river, called the Leven, we
+passed a night with Mr. Smollet, a relation of Doctor Smollet, to
+whose memory he has raised an obelisk on the bank near the house in
+which he was born.  The civility and respect which we found at
+every place, it is ungrateful to omit, and tedious to repeat.  Here
+we were met by a post-chaise, that conveyed us to Glasgow.
+
+To describe a city so much frequented as Glasgow, is unnecessary.
+The prosperity of its commerce appears by the greatness of many
+private houses, and a general appearance of wealth.  It is the only
+episcopal city whose cathedral was left standing in the rage of
+Reformation.  It is now divided into many separate places of
+worship, which, taken all together, compose a great pile, that had
+been some centuries in building, but was never finished; for the
+change of religion intercepted its progress, before the cross isle
+was added, which seems essential to a Gothick cathedral.
+
+The college has not had a sufficient share of the increasing
+magnificence of the place.  The session was begun; for it commences
+on the tenth of October and continues to the tenth of June, but the
+students appeared not numerous, being, I suppose, not yet returned
+from their several homes.  The division of the academical year into
+one session, and one recess, seems to me better accommodated to the
+present state of life, than that variegation of time by terms and
+vacations derived from distant centuries, in which it was probably
+convenient, and still continued in the English universities.  So
+many solid months as the Scotch scheme of education joins together,
+allow and encourage a plan for each part of the year; but with us,
+he that has settled himself to study in the college is soon tempted
+into the country, and he that has adjusted his life in the country,
+is summoned back to his college.
+
+Yet when I have allowed to the universities of Scotland a more
+rational distribution of time, I have given them, so far as my
+inquiries have informed me, all that they can claim.  The students,
+for the most part, go thither boys, and depart before they are men;
+they carry with them little fundamental knowledge, and therefore
+the superstructure cannot be lofty.  The grammar schools are not
+generally well supplied; for the character of a school-master being
+there less honourable than in England, is seldom accepted by men
+who are capable to adorn it, and where the school has been
+deficient, the college can effect little.
+
+Men bred in the universities of Scotland cannot be expected to be
+often decorated with the splendours of ornamental erudition, but
+they obtain a mediocrity of knowledge, between learning and
+ignorance, not inadequate to the purposes of common life, which is,
+I believe, very widely diffused among them, and which countenanced
+in general by a national combination so invidious, that their
+friends cannot defend it, and actuated in particulars by a spirit
+of enterprise, so vigorous, that their enemies are constrained to
+praise it, enables them to find, or to make their way to
+employment, riches, and distinction.
+
+From Glasgow we directed our course to Auchinleck, an estate
+devolved, through a long series of ancestors, to Mr. Boswell's
+father, the present possessor.  In our way we found several places
+remarkable enough in themselves, but already described by those who
+viewed them at more leisure, or with much more skill; and stopped
+two days at Mr. Campbell's, a gentleman married to Mr. Boswell's
+sister.
+
+Auchinleck, which signifies a stony field, seems not now to have
+any particular claim to its denomination.  It is a district
+generally level, and sufficiently fertile, but like all the Western
+side of Scotland, incommoded by very frequent rain.  It was, with
+the rest of the country, generally naked, till the present
+possessor finding, by the growth of some stately trees near his old
+castle, that the ground was favourable enough to timber, adorned it
+very diligently with annual plantations.
+
+Lord Auchinleck, who is one of the Judges of Scotland, and
+therefore not wholly at leisure for domestick business or pleasure,
+has yet found time to make improvements in his patrimony.  He has
+built a house of hewn stone, very stately, and durable, and has
+advanced the value of his lands with great tenderness to his
+tenants.
+
+I was, however, less delighted with the elegance of the modern
+mansion, than with the sullen dignity of the old castle.  I
+clambered with Mr. Boswell among the ruins, which afford striking
+images of ancient life.  It is, like other castles, built upon a
+point of rock, and was, I believe, anciently surrounded with a
+moat.  There is another rock near it, to which the drawbridge, when
+it was let down, is said to have reached.  Here, in the ages of
+tumult and rapine, the Laird was surprised and killed by the
+neighbouring Chief, who perhaps might have extinguished the family,
+had he not in a few days been seized and hanged, together with his
+sons, by Douglas, who came with his forces to the relief of
+Auchinleck.
+
+At no great distance from the house runs a pleasing brook, by a red
+rock, out of which has been hewn a very agreeable and commodious
+summer-house, at less expence, as Lord Auchinleck told me, than
+would have been required to build a room of the same dimensions.
+The rock seems to have no more dampness than any other wall.  Such
+opportunities of variety it is judicious not to neglect.
+
+We now returned to Edinburgh, where I passed some days with men of
+learning, whose names want no advancement from my commemoration, or
+with women of elegance, which perhaps disclaims a pedant's praise.
+
+The conversation of the Scots grows every day less unpleasing to
+the English; their peculiarities wear fast away; their dialect is
+likely to become in half a century provincial and rustick, even to
+themselves.  The great, the learned, the ambitious, and the vain,
+all cultivate the English phrase, and the English pronunciation,
+and in splendid companies Scotch is not much heard, except now and
+then from an old Lady.
+
+There is one subject of philosophical curiosity to be found in
+Edinburgh, which no other city has to shew; a college of the deaf
+and dumb, who are taught to speak, to read, to write, and to
+practice arithmetick, by a gentleman, whose name is Braidwood.  The
+number which attends him is, I think, about twelve, which he brings
+together into a little school, and instructs according to their
+several degrees of proficiency.
+
+I do not mean to mention the instruction of the deaf as new.
+Having been first practised upon the son of a constable of Spain,
+it was afterwards cultivated with much emulation in England, by
+Wallis and Holder, and was lately professed by Mr. Baker, who once
+flattered me with hopes of seeing his method published.  How far
+any former teachers have succeeded, it is not easy to know; the
+improvement of Mr. Braidwood's pupils is wonderful.  They not only
+speak, write, and understand what is written, but if he that speaks
+looks towards them, and modifies his organs by distinct and full
+utterance, they know so well what is spoken, that it is an
+expression scarcely figurative to say, they hear with the eye.
+That any have attained to the power mentioned by Burnet, of feeling
+sounds, by laying a hand on the speaker's mouth, I know not; but I
+have seen so much, that I can believe more; a single word, or a
+short sentence, I think, may possibly be so distinguished.
+
+It will readily be supposed by those that consider this subject,
+that Mr. Braidwood's scholars spell accurately.  Orthography is
+vitiated among such as learn first to speak, and then to write, by
+imperfect notions of the relation between letters and vocal
+utterance; but to those students every character is of equal
+importance; for letters are to them not symbols of names, but of
+things; when they write they do not represent a sound, but
+delineate a form.
+
+This school I visited, and found some of the scholars waiting for
+their master, whom they are said to receive at his entrance with
+smiling countenances and sparkling eyes, delighted with the hope of
+new ideas.  One of the young Ladies had her slate before her, on
+which I wrote a question consisting of three figures, to be
+multiplied by two figures.  She looked upon it, and quivering her
+fingers in a manner which I thought very pretty, but of which I
+know not whether it was art or play, multiplied the sum regularly
+in two lines, observing the decimal place; but did not add the two
+lines together, probably disdaining so easy an operation.  I
+pointed at the place where the sum total should stand, and she
+noted it with such expedition as seemed to shew that she had it
+only to write.
+
+It was pleasing to see one of the most desperate of human
+calamities capable of so much help; whatever enlarges hope, will
+exalt courage; after having seen the deaf taught arithmetick, who
+would be afraid to cultivate the Hebrides?
+
+Such are the things which this journey has given me an opportunity
+of seeing, and such are the reflections which that sight has
+raised.  Having passed my time almost wholly in cities, I may have
+been surprised by modes of life and appearances of nature, that are
+familiar to men of wider survey and more varied conversation.
+Novelty and ignorance must always be reciprocal, and I cannot but
+be conscious that my thoughts on national manners, are the thoughts
+of one who has seen but little.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etext Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland
+
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