ng, for it is never
cleaned. They are a nation just rising from barbarity: long contented
with necessaries, now somewhat studious of convenience, but not yet
arrived at delicate discriminations. Their linen is, however, both clean
and fine. Bread, such as we mean by that name, I have never seen in the
isle of Skie. They have ovens, for they bake their pies; but they never
ferment their meal, nor mould a loaf. Cakes of oats and barley are
brought to the table, but I believe wheat is reserved for strangers.
They are commonly too hard for me, and, therefore, I take potatoes to my
meat, and am sure to find them on almost every table.

They retain so much of the pastoral life, that some preparation of milk
is commonly one of the dishes, both at dinner and supper. Tea is always
drunk at the usual times; but, in the morning, the table is polluted
with a plate of slices of strong cheese. This is peculiar to the
highlands; at Edinburgh there are always honey and sweetmeats on the
morning tea-table.

Strong liquors they seem to love. Every man, perhaps, woman, begins the
day with a dram; and the punch is made both at dinner and supper.

They have neither wood nor coal for fuel, but burn peat or turf in their
chimneys. It is dug out of the moors or mosses, and makes a strong and
lasting fire, not always very sweet, and somewhat apt to smoke the pot.

The houses of inferiour gentlemen are very small, and every room serves
many purposes. In the bed-rooms, perhaps, are laid up stores of
different kinds; and the parlour of the day is a bed-room at night. In
the room which I inhabited last, about fourteen feet square, there were
three chests of drawers, a long chest for larger clothes, two
closet-cupboards, and the bed. Their rooms are commonly dirty, of which
they seem to have little sensibility, and if they had more, clean floors
would be difficultly kept, where the first step from the door is into
the dirt. They are very much inclined to carpets, and seldom fail to lay
down something under their feet, better or worse, as they happen to be
furnished.

The highland dress, being forbidden by law, is very little used;
sometimes it may be seen, but the English traveller is struck with
nothing so much as the _nudite des pieds_ of the common people.

Skie is the greatest island, or the greatest but one, among the
Hebrides. Of the soil, I have already given some account: it is
generally barren, but some spots are not wholly unfruitful