Volume 3 - Electric Scotland

12 UARRA.
This Long' Islaiid is a strange country. Tiiere is
land, it is true, and water, for nature has but these two
g-eog-raphical elements, and therefore you might suppose
that you could walk or ride over the one and swim or sail
over the other. It would be impossible to make a greater
mistake ; for, hence at least to Harris, it is seldom either
sea or good dry land. You may tread the crude con-
sistence ; but it must be, like Satan, half on foot, half
flying. It is a country only fit for wild ducks ; who
" o'er bog, o'er steep, through strait, rough, dense or
rare, with head, hands, wings, and feet pursuing their
way," may perhaps contrive to see it all. You may
perhaps ride a few yards, but in ten minutes you will
have to flounder through a bog, or scramble over rocks,
or you will find a firth or a loch to cross: it is too wide
to swim, and there is no boat. If there should be one,
there is a second sea, and a third, and a fourth ;
you land
on an island instead of the main, or lose yourself in the
labyrinth of inextricable chaos. The Gaelic proverb
says well when it says, " It is not every day that Mac
Niel mounts his horse." It could not be of less use in
Venice.
On the southern part of Barra, there is a small town
on an islet in a fresh-water lake, an ancient seat of the
Mac Niels. After much toiling through sand and rocks,
I arrived on the shores of Chisamil Baj', at a village
ornamented with dried skate, having "a most ancient
and fish-like smell," as this animal is preserved without
salt, and is, in consequence, very delectable. Every one
knows, how a Highland house is built ; but every one
does not know the architecture of a Barra house. In
these, the roof springs from the inner edge of the wall,
instead of the outer; in order that all the rain may be
caught by it and make its way among the stones ; thus