hat is swilled in such quantities there. A
Tarbert doctor told me that the medical profession now talk quite
familiarly of the Harris stomach just as drapers talk of Harris tweed:
the former is, he averred, as weak and devoid of tone as the latter is
strong and of good texture. This doctor was called up at two one morning
to attend a patient in one of the moorland townships. At that hour, away
over there on the gusty rim of the Atlantic, the natives were all afoot.
People were talking to each other at the doorsteps; lamps were lighted
inside, and tea that had been boiling for hours among the red peats, was
being imbibed with infinite gusto. This, the doctor assured me, was the
normal style of living.[5]

Talking of North Uist, Miss Frere shows indignation at the invasion of
southern ideas, and thinks that everything is being vitiated by the
taint of Lochmaddy. Lochmaddy, characterised in so droll a way, is a
tiny township with a Sheriff Court, a church, a few well-built modern
houses, a school, and an excellent hotel. Cleanliness is a welcome
feature of the place, and I am sorry to say that the same can not be
said of certain crofting villages not far distant. I expect that the
visits of the Government Sanitary Officer, whom I met at Lochmaddy, and
who knows his business well, will ultimately work an enormous amount of
good. That gentleman gave me such unsavoury details regarding the
conditions of life in certain of the townships as made me hope that the
"taint of Lochmaddy," that is to say, the cleanliness and civilised
life of that village, may more and more become evident throughout both
the Uists. Improved sanitation would allow heaven's breath to circulate
through the low-lying cots and prevent them from being hot-beds of
malignant disease.

One feature of Miss Frere's book which does honour to her fine sympathy,
but which is not ethnologically justifiable, is the persistent attempt
to draw a sharp racial distinction between Highlander and Lowlander. The
truth is, that no part of the Highlands is purely Celtic: the population
is a welter of Picts, Gaels, Norsemen, Danes, and Saxons. The Lowland
blood is, in like manner, a bewildering blend, there being no
uncontaminated Anglo-Saxon district in any single county of Scotland.
Mr. J. M. Robertson's clever book, _The Saxon and the Celt_, seems to me
to dispose finally of certain fallacies that Hill Burton and others have
light-heartedly written on the subject of racia