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.
