Volume 3 - Electric Scotland

NORTH HIST. 115
horse made a dead stop. It is the edge of the clifi'—it is
a g-ate, said the horse, as he pushed it off its rude support
with his nose. " Who is there," said the most welcome
voice that ever saluted the ears of benighted mortal
" I have a letter"— " Never mind your letter, come in out
of the shower." And now having given you the moral
and the fable, I leave you and Mr. Humboldt to sweep
a general conclusion. Here the scale trembles on its
balance. I throw in the potatoe kettle of my Hysker
friend, and it comes down with a bounce. Thus the
balance is favourable : but to conclude universally either
way, is to commit the old fault of drawing national, with-
out a sufficient attention to personal, character.
North Uist is the «ole property of Lord Macdonald,
and having been allotted according to the modern system
of crofting, it presents an air of comfort which we
look for in vain where this system has not yet been esta-
blished. The culture lies chiefly toward the west side,
where the soil is dry and sandy and the ground undula-
ting. A large portion of it is a flat black bog, inter-
spersed with lakes and pools like Benbecula, and inter-
sected by the sea in such a manner that probably more
than one third of the area is water. The great inlets of
Loch Macphail, Loch Eport, and Loch Maddy, with their
extensive ramifications, occupy the chief part of the
watery surface. From Heval, as far as the eye can well
reach, the whole appears one uniform flat, in which the
black land and the bright Avater are so equally intermixed,
that it is difficult to say which predominates. As
there are not less than a hundred square miles of this inextricable
labyrinth, all at once detailed as in a map
under the eye, it is easy to imagine what a strange sight
it presents. The brilliancy of the water probably causes
that portion to appear greater than it really is. Unaci2
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