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.
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