Volume 3 - Electric Scotland

ST. KILDA. 171
Martin, though a very different person, is a most provok-
ing- fellow. He was a native of Sky, and had therefore
ready access to information ; he was not illiterate ; he was
a scientific man, because he was a physician or a surgeon
acquainted with natural history ; and he was employed
by Sir Robert Sibbald to investigate that of all the islands.
But his propensities seem to have been directed rather to
supernatural history : and having fulfilled his contract,
it must be supposed, in discussing gulls, kittiwakes, and
weeds, he seems to have thought the opinions of second-
sighted impostors and the metaphysics of ghosts and gob-
lins, of more value than the manners and opinions of
living men, or the state of a country then utterly unlike
in condition to any land under the sun. It was left for
Birt to tell us all that we do know of the Highlands at
the beginning of the last century ; and, such as his infor-
mation is, it is as valuable as it is solitary. Martin might
have done much more ;
as he had the advantage of lono-er
residence, freer access, and greater intimacy; while a
knowledge of the state of the Islands in his day, would
have led us back, for another century or perhaps much
more, to a condition of things and a history of manners,
customs, and opinions, which, in the neighbourhood of
Inverness where Birt wrote, had, though only twenty
years later, already undergone most material changes.
In the islands, in Martin's time, the Chiefs of Clans not
only retained all their influence, but much of their mu-
tual jealousies and hostilities. Foreign manners and
usages were unknown or despised ;
and all that, respect-
ing which we are most curious in this strange modifica-
tion of the feudal system, remained in its original condi-
tion. But it was his misfortune, or rather ours, that he
seems to have supposed what was familiar to himself un-
interesting to his readers ; and thus, in lamenting over