Increase equal to that of better countries; but the culture is so
operose that they content themselves commonly with oats; and who
can relate without compassion, that after all their diligence they
are to expect only a triple increase? It is in vain to hope for
plenty, when a third part of the harvest must be reserved for seed.
When their grain is arrived at the state which they must consider
as ripeness, they do not cut, but pull the barley: to the oats
they apply the sickle. Wheel carriages they have none, but make a
frame of timber, which is drawn by one horse with the two points
behind pressing on the ground. On this they sometimes drag home
their sheaves, but often convey them home in a kind of open panier,
or frame of sticks upon the horse's back.
Of that which is obtained with so much difficulty, nothing surely
ought to be wasted; yet their method of clearing their oats from
the husk is by parching them in the straw. Thus with the genuine
improvidence of savages, they destroy that fodder for want of which
their cattle may perish. From this practice they have two petty
conveniences. They dry the grain so that it is easily reduced to
meal, and they escape the theft of the thresher. The taste
contracted from the fire by the oats, as by every other scorched
substance, use must long ago have made grateful. The oats that are
not parched must be dried in a kiln.
The barns of Sky I never saw. That which Macleod of Raasay had
erected near his house was so contrived, because the harvest is
seldom brought home dry, as by perpetual perflation to prevent the
mow from heating.
Of their gardens I can judge only from their tables. I did not
observe that the common greens were wanting, and suppose, that by
choosing an advantageous exposition, they can raise all the more
hardy esculent plants. Of vegetable fragrance or beauty they are
not yet studious. Few vows are made to Flora in the Hebrides.
They gather a little hay, but the grass is mown late; and is so
often almost dry and again very wet, before it is housed, that it
becomes a collection of withered stalks without taste or fragrance;
it must be eaten by cattle that have nothing else, but by most
English farmers would be thrown away.
In the Islands I have not heard that any subterraneous treasures
have been discovered, though where there are mountains, there are
commonly minerals. One of the rocks in Col has a black vein,
imagined to consist of the ore of lead; but it was never yet opened
or essayed. In Sky a black mass was accidentally picked up, and
brought into the house of the owner of the land, who found himself
strongly inclined to think it a coal, but unhappily it did not burn
in the chimney.
