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 al