Nor did I hear any thing of their sheep,
to be particularly remarked.
In the penury of these malignant regions, nothing is left that can
be converted to food. The goats and the sheep are milked like the
cows. A single meal of a goat is a quart, and of a sheep a pint.
Such at least was the account, which I could extract from those of
whom I am not sure that they ever had inquired.
The milk of goats is much thinner than that of cows, and that of
sheep is much thicker. Sheeps milk is never eaten before it is
boiled: as it is thick, it must be very liberal of curd, and the
people of St. Kilda form it into small cheeses.
The stags of the mountains are less than those of our parks, or
forests, perhaps not bigger than our fallow deer. Their flesh has
no rankness, nor is inferiour in flavour to our common venison.
The roebuck I neither saw nor tasted. These are not countries for
a regular chase. The deer are not driven with horns and hounds. A
sportsman, with his gun in his hand, watches the animal, and when
he has wounded him, traces him by the blood.
They have a race of brinded greyhounds, larger and stronger than
those with which we course hares, and those are the only dogs used
by them for the chase.
Man is by the use of fire-arms made so much an overmatch for other
animals, that in all countries, where they are in use, the wild
part of the creation sensibly diminishes. There will probably not
be long, either stags or roebucks in the Islands. All the beasts
of chase would have been lost long ago in countries well inhabited,
had they not been preserved by laws for the pleasure of the rich.
There are in Sky neither rats nor mice, but the weasel is so
frequent, that he is heard in houses rattling behind chests or
beds, as rats in England. They probably owe to his predominance
that they have no other vermin; for since the great rat took
possession of this part of the world, scarce a ship can touch at
any port, but some of his race are left behind. They have within
these few years began to infest the isle of Col, where being left
by some trading vessel, they have increased for want of weasels to
oppose them.
The inhabitants of Sky, and of the other Islands, which I have
seen, are commonly of the middle stature, with fewer among them
very tall or very short, than are seen in England, or perhaps, as
their numbers are small, the chances of any deviation from the
common measure are necessarily few. The tallest men that I saw are
among those of higher rank.
