which I have already mentioned. We were to cross part of Skie on horseback a mode of travelling very uncomfortable, for the road is so narrow, where any road can be found, that only one cam go, and so craggy that the attention can never be remitted goit allows, therefore, neither the gayety of conversation, nor the laxity of solitude; hor has it in itself the amusement of much variety, as it affords only all the possible transpositions of bog, rock, and rivulet, Twelve miles, by computation, make a reasonable journey for a daytom 1957 901

At night we came to a tenant's house, of the first rank of tenants, where we were entertained better than at the landlord's. There were books, both English and Latin. Company gathered about us, and we heard some talk of the second-sight, and some talk of the events of forty-five, a year which will not soon be forgotten among the islanders. The next day we were confined by a storm. The company, I think, increased, and our entertainment was not only hospitable but elegantpiAt night, a minister's sister, in very fine brocade, sung Earse songs: I wished to know the meaning, but the Highlanders are not much used to scholastick questions, and no translations could be Jobtained. 610 6x4 1 64. blow yend sit ba gai Next day, September 8th, the weather allowed us to depart; a good boat was provided for us, and we went to Raarsa under the conduct of Mr. Malcolm Macleod, a gentleman who conducted Prince Charles through the mountains in his distresses. The prince, he says, was more active than himself; they were, at least, one night without Lany-shelter.

dook The wind blew enough to give the boat a kind of dancing agiItation, and in about three or four hours we arrived at Raarsa, where we were met by the laird and his friends upon the shore. Raarsa, for such is his title, is master of two islands; upon the smaller of which, called Rona, he has only flocks and herds.Ronal gives title to his eldest son.. The money which he raises annually by rent from Tall his dominions, which contain at least fifty thousand acres, is not Ibelieved to exceed two hundred and fifty pounds; but as he keeps Ja large farm in his own hands, he sells every year great numbers of cattle, which add to his revenue, and his table is furnished from the >>farm and from the sea, with very little expense, except for those ethings this country does not produce, and of those he is very liberal. The wine circulates vigorously, and the tea, chocolate, and coffee, however they are got, are always at hand.no) We on bus ana 1-0 We are this morning trying to get out of Skie.”ostques domm dary anoth anowe, ddw. £, 5%,urtole B 1199d end us to dicoïd yrove sonoodlingsum eti mofiSkie, 24th September, 1773.

08 979d at 5 jut

Ilam (still in Skie

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Do you remember the song ?lo où 107 buol & 10 29gwe ¿stol not redtis island is die Every is guarded by the saw some

sea?

We have at one time no boat, and at another may have too much wind; but of our reception here we have no reason to complain. We are now with Colonel Macleod, in a more pleasant place than I thought Skie could afford. Now to the narrative.

We were received at Raarsa on the sea-side, and after clambering with some difficulty over the rocks-a labour which the traveller, wherever he reposes himself on land, must in these islands be con'tented to endure--we were introduced into the house, which one of the company called the Court of Raarsa, with politeness which not the Court of Versailles could have thought defective. The house is hot large, though we were told in our passage that it had eleven fine rooms; nor magnificently furnished, but our utensils were most commonly silver. We went up into a dining-room' about as large as your blue room, where we had soemthing given us to eat, and tea and coffee. Tip 299des 3d of bean

a 18

Raarsa himself is a man of no inelegant appearance, and of manners uncommonly refined. Lady Raarsa makes no very sublime appearance for a sovereign, but is a good housewife, and a very prudent and diligent conductress of her family. Miss Flora Macleod is a celebrated beauty, has been admired at Edinburgh, dresses her head very high, and has manners so lady-like that I wish her rhead-dress was lower. The rest of the nine girls are all pretty; the youngest is between Queeney and Lucy. The youngest boy of four years old runs barefoot, and wandered with us over the rocks to see a mill. I believe he would walk on that rough ground without shoes ten miles in a day.

«The Laird of Raarsa has sometimes disputed the chieftainry of the clan with Macleod of Skie; but being much inferior in extent of possessions, has, I suppose, been forced to desist. Raarsa and its provinces have descended to its present possessor through a succession of four hundred years without any increase or diminution. It was indeed lately in danger of forfeiture, but the old laird joined some prudence with his zeal, and when Prince Charles landed in Scotland made over his estate to his son, the present laird, and led one hundred men of Raarsa into the field, with officers of his own family. Eightybusix only came back after the last battle. The prince was hidden, in his distress, two nights at Raarsa; and the king's troops burnt the ri whole country, and killed some of the cattle.

PHLYBOT TO,592

You may guess at the opinions that prevail in this country they are, however, content with fighting for their king; they do not drink > for him. We had no foolish healths. At night, unexpectedly to us who were strangers, the carpet was taken up, the fiddler of the family came up, and a very vigorous and general dance was begunumas I told you, we were two-and-thirty at supper: there were full as many bundancers; for though all who supped did not dance,some danced

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of the young people who did not sup. Raarsa himself danced with his children; and old Malcolm, in his filibeg, was as nimble as when the led the prince over the mountains. When they had danced themselves weary, two tables were spread, and I suppose at least twenty dishes were upon them. In this country some preparations of milk are always served up at supper, and sometimes in in the place of tarts at dinner. The table, was not coarsely heaped, but at once plentiful and elegant. They do not pretend to make a loaf, there are only cakes, commonly of oats or barley, but they made me very nice cakes of wheat flour. I always sat at the left hand of Lady Raarsa, and young Macleod of Skie, the chieftain of the clan, sat on the right. "After supper a young lady, who was visiting, sung Earse songs, en which Lady Raarsa joined prettily enough, but not gracefully: the young ladies sustained the chorus better. They are very little used to be asked questions, and not well prepared with answers. When one of the songs was over, I asked the princess that sat next What is that about?' I question if she conceived that I did e conceived that one not understand it. For the entertainment of the company, said she. Å‘But, But, madam, what is the meaning of it?' It is a love-song.' This was all the intelligence that I could obtain, nor have I been able to --Procure the translation of a single line of Jeff At twelve it was bedtime. I had a chamber to myself, which, in eleven rooms to forty people, was more than my y share. How How the company and and the family were distributed is not easy to tell. Macleod the chieftain, and Boswell, and I, had all single chambers on the first floor. There remained eight rooms only for at least seven-and-thirty to lodgers. I suppose they put up temporary beds in the dining-room, to where they stowed all the young ladies. There was a room above

arse.

aistairs with six beds, in which they put ten men. The rest in my nonextoye s fajonit voz29220g taseorg eti of bcbr9929h 972d 299nivorq moituma rh 30. szegroni vas trodtry amey bothand rot to 9000 bo trophy N's out and grutiOstich in Skie, 30th September, 1773. bare am still confined in Skie, We were unskilful travellers, and Deimagined that the sea was an open road which we could pass at -pleasure; but we have now learned, with some pain, that we may i still wait for a long time the caprices of the equinoctial winds, and ssit reading or writing as I now do, while the tempest is rolling the sea, or roaring in the mountains. I am now no longer pleased with ve the delay. You can hear from men but seldom, and I cannot at all hear from you. It comes into my mind that some evil may happen, an or that I might be of use while I am away, o But these thoughts are ylvain the wind is violent and adverse, and our boat cannot yet come. I I must content myself with writing to you; and hoping that you will ysometime receive my letter. Now to my narrative.w swoy blot b9 September 9th, having passed the night as is usual, I rose, and

found the dining-room full of company. We feasted and talked, wid! when the evening came it brought musick and dancings-Young! Macleod, the great proprietor of Skie, and head of his clan, was very distiguishable a young man of nineteen, bred awhile at St. Andrew's? and afterwards at Oxford, a pupil of G. Strahan. He is a young man of a mind as much advanced as I have ever known, very elegant of manners, and very graceful in his person. He has the full spirit of a feudal chief; and I was very ready to accept his invitation to Dunvegan. All Raarsa's children are beautiful. to The ladies all; except the eldest, are in the morning dressed in their hair. The true Highlander never wears more than a riband on her head till she is married.

"On the third day Boswell went out with old Malcolm to see a ruined castle, which he found less entire than was promised, but he saw the country. I did not go, for the castle was perhaps ten miles off, and there is no riding at Raarsa, the whole island being rock br mountain, from which the cattle often fall and are destroyed!TM¶¶¶¶ very barren, and maintains, as near as I could collect, about seven hundred inhabitants, perhaps ten to a square mile. In these countries you are not to suppose that you shall find villages or enclosures. The traveller wanders through a naked desert, gratified sometimes, but rarely, with the sight of cows, and now and then finds a heap of loose stones and turf in a cavity between rocks, where a being born with all those powers which education expands, and all those sensations which culture refines, is condemned to shelter itself from the wind and rain. Philosophers there are who try to make themselves believe that this life is happy'; but they believe it only while they are saying it, and never yet produced conviction in a single mind: he whom want of words or images sunk into silence, still thought, as he thought before, that privation of pleasure can never please, and that content is not to be much envied when it has no other principle than ignorance of good. ẩn b

"This gloomy tranquillity, which some may call fortitude, and others wisdom, was, I believe, for a long time to be very frequently found in these dens of poverty. Every man was content to live like his neighbours, and never wandering from home saw no mode of life preferable to his own, except at the house of the laird, or or the laird's nearest relations, whom he considered as a superiour order of beings, to whose luxuries or honours he had no pretensions. But the end of this reverence and submission seems now approaching: the Highlanders have learned that there are countries less bleak and leakbarren than their own, where, instead of working for the laird, every man may till his own ground, and eat the produce of his own labour. Great numbers have been induced by this discovery to go every year for some time past to America. Macdonald and Macleod of Skie

66

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have lost many tenants and many labourers, but Raarsa Has not yet been een forsaken by a single inhabitant, drones gainsv9 9dt andw Rona is yet more rocky and barren than Raarsa; and though it contains perhaps four thousand acres, is possessed only by a herd of cattle and the keepers. st) tabte #oil bog

"I find myself not very able to walk upon the mountains, but one day I went out to see the walls yet standing of an ancient chapel. In almost every island the superstitious votaries of the Romish church erected places of worship, in which the drones of convents or cal thedrals performed the holy offices, but by the active zeal of protestant devotion almost all of them have sunk into ruin. The chapel at Raarsa is now only considered as the burying-place of the family, and I suppose of the whole island.

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"We would now have gone away and left room for others to enjoy the pleasures of this little court, but the wind detained us till the 12th, when, though it was Sunday, we thought it proper to snatch the opportunity of a calm day. Raarsa accompanied us in his six-oared boat, which he said was his coach and six. It is indeed the vehicle in which the ladies take the air and pay their visits, but they have taken very little care for accommodations. There is no way in or out of the boat for a woman but by being carried; and in the boat thus dignified with a pompous name there is no seat but an occasional bundle of straw. Thus we left Raarsa, the seat of plenty, civility, and cheerfulness. ob I

"We dined at a publick-house at Port Re, so called because one of the Scottish kings landed there in a progress through the western isles. Raarsa paid the reckoning privately. We then got on horseback, and by a short but very tedious journey came to Kingsburgh, at which the same king lodged after he landed. Here I had the honour of saluting the far-famed Miss Flora Macdonald, who conducted the prince, dressed as her maid, through the English forces from the island of Lewes; and, when she came to Skie, dined with the English officers, and left her maid below. She must then have been a very young lady; she is now not old, of a pleasing person, and elegant behaviour. She told me that she thought herself honoured by my visit, and I am sure that whatever regard she bestowed on me was liberally repaid. If thou likest her opinions, thou wilt praise her virtue.' She was carried to London, but dismissed without a trial, and came down with Malcolm Macleod, against whom sufficient evidence could not be procured. She and her husband are poor, and are going to try their fortune in America, Sic rerum volvitur orbis ! "At Kingsburgh we were very liberally feasted, and I slept in the bed on which the prince reposed in his distress: the sheets which he (P9 7 7079 69 of 719/09/ths 11 zd boombui 1990 52nd asdacom ton) 42 to bold Is it necessary to point out the irony here ?LED.J 900 101

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