Volume 3 - Electric Scotland

NORTH RONA. 317
was bound by an indenture for eight years ;
a superfluous
precaution for a man who was already secured by a bar-
rier as unsurinountable as the nine chains of Styx.
There is no peat in the island, but its place was well
enouo-h supplied by turf; and the piles of stacks among
which our palaver was held, proved that the most neces-
sary article of winter stores had not been neglected.
For water, they were obliged to have recourse to pools
in the rocks, which were filled occasionally by the rain ;
a precarious supply in any other land but this ; where,
probably, the " rain it raineth every day." We were
amused with one trait of improvidence, quite character-
istic of a Highlander. The oil of the coal fish served for
light, and a *' kindling turf" preserved the fire during
the night ; but had that fire been extinguished, " but
once put out that light," no provision was at band for
rekindling it, nor could it be restored till the Lewis boat
should return : probably not even then ; unless his an-
cient god, Bel, had descended in a meteor for that pur-
pose. A winter in this northern region, without fire or
light, was a prospect which might well make the Vestals
who tended them, watch the smoking embers and trim
the dying lamp. Mac Cagie only shrugged his shoulders
at the suggestion of a flint and steel ; he had lived seven
years without one. His family consisted of two boys,
the eldest of which assisted his father in the farm, an
infant, a wife, who also took her share in the labour,
and an aged and deaf mother who watched the child and
the interior economy. Thus the labour of three indivi-
duals, for which also there was abundant occupation, was
repaid by the food of tha whole, and by the scanty pro-
portion of clothes by which they were, literally, not co-
vered. The younger child and the woman, had, for
clothing, something in the shape of a blanket, the ancient
covering, apparently, of their race, but scarcely suffi-