The numbers which have already gone,
though like other numbers they may be magnified, are very great,
and such as if they had gone together and agreed upon any certain
settlement, might have founded an independent government in the
depths of the western continent. Nor are they only the lowest and
most indigent; many men of considerable wealth have taken with them
their train of labourers and dependants; and if they continue the
feudal scheme of polity, may establish new clans in the other
hemisphere.
That the immediate motives of their desertion must be imputed to
their landlords, may be reasonably concluded, because some Lairds
of more prudence and less rapacity have kept their vassals
undiminished. From Raasa only one man had been seduced, and at Col
there was no wish to go away.
The traveller who comes hither from more opulent countries, to
speculate upon the remains of pastoral life, will not much wonder
that a common Highlander has no strong adherence to his native
soil; for of animal enjoyments, or of physical good, he leaves
nothing that he may not find again wheresoever he may be thrown.
The habitations of men in the Hebrides may be distinguished into
huts and houses. By a house, I mean a building with one story over
another; by a hut, a dwelling with only one floor. The Laird, who
formerly lived in a castle, now lives in a house; sometimes
sufficiently neat, but seldom very spacious or splendid. The
Tacksmen and the Ministers have commonly houses. Wherever there is
a house, the stranger finds a welcome, and to the other evils of
exterminating Tacksmen may be added the unavoidable cessation of
hospitality, or the devolution of too heavy a burden on the
Ministers.
Of the houses little can be said. They are small, and by the
necessity of accumulating stores, where there are so few
opportunities of purchase, the rooms are very heterogeneously
filled. With want of cleanliness it were ingratitude to reproach
them. The servants having been bred upon the naked earth, think
every floor clean, and the quick succession of guests, perhaps not
always over-elegant, does not allow much time for adjusting their
apartments.
Huts are of many gradations; from murky dens, to commodious
dwellings.
The wall of a common hut is always built without mortar, by a
skilful adaptation of loose stones. Sometimes perhaps a double
wall of stones is raised, and the intermediate space filled with
earth. The air is thus completely excluded. Some walls are, I
think, formed of turfs, held together by a wattle, or texture of
twigs. Of the meanest huts, the first room is lighted by the
entrance, and the second by the smoke hole.
