ere
exists a _Ligue contre le mal de mer_, commenting upon which a French
journalist says: _Avec une ligue on est toujours assure d'une chose: a
defaut de progres, qu'elle nous fera peut-etre attendre, elle fera des
congres: et c'est du moins une consolation que de pouvoir discourir de
son mal._

He that will to Cupar maun through Fife, and he that has business in the
Lews must brave the billows of the Minch.

NOTES ON LEWIS.

The great island of Lewis, formerly so distant from Edinburgh and
Glasgow, can now be reached in fourteen hours by one who leaves the
latter city at 5.40 A.M. The old route was very tiresome and circuitous:
the traveller had to proceed to Inverness, take the Dingwall and Skye
line to Strome Ferry, and then sail over the Minch to Stornoway. The
opening up of the West Highlands by the railway to Mallaig has changed
all that. At Mallaig pier, when you leave the train, you find the
connecting steamer ready to set off, at noon, for its journey to
Stornoway, where it arrives about eight in the evening.

I don't think anyone would want to stay more than a week at a time in
Stornoway. The town itself is just like the fishy part of
Boulogne-sur-Mer, only more so. There is a pervading odour of mussels,
bait, and herring, and the gulls go flapping overhead in crowds
everywhere. If the tourist remained a week in the place, he would go
every day to the Castle grounds. Here, if anywhere, is the paradise of
the Lews. There is a profusion of dells, burns, glades, ivy-grown
bridges, and far-extending vistas over sea, moorland, and town. As with
a knife (so precise is the division) the well-wooded policies are
separated from the barren and disheartening moor. When one gets to the
highest point of the grounds and gazes over the long, tiresome slopes of
the island, one's belief in _design in nature_ gets a sudden stab. A man
will think long and sore before he arrives at any _raison d'etre_ for
including such a wilderness of bogs in the scheme of creation.

The men of the island are, in the main, shrewd, resourceful, and
intelligent--qualities fostered by their constant fighting with the sea.
"The young fellows here," said one of the hotel-keepers to me, "will
either make a spoon or spoil a horn. They come to a decision speedily
and put it into practice at once. It is hit or miss with them, usually
hit. At sea, in a gale, there is no time for parliamenting; and Lewismen
act on land with the swift decision that