Volume 3 - Electric Scotland

SKY. 405
sand feet. It is divided by a narrow strait from Rasay, as
it also is from Sky ; and this latter forms a harbour which
is a common rendezvous of the herring fleet in the season.
These inner channels are enlivened by the frequent pas-
sage of coasting- vessels, and by numerous boats, employed
in fishing, or in keeping up the ordinary commu-
nication among the islands. Boats are the stage coaches
and the post-chaises of the country; convenient enough
when we can command the weather, but forming a most
detestable species of general communication, in such a
stormy, rainy, uncertain climate. But practice reconciles
to every thing; and even the ladies learn to sit quiet,
without squalling at every lurch, or laying hold of the
sheet or the tiller.
Like Loch Eishort, the Sound of Scalpa abounds in
oysters, to which the natives, rich and poor alike, pay no
attention. They have the peculiarity of being' black, as
is the shell : sometimes however they are paler, so as to
resemble the colour of diluted ink. They appear to be
only a variety of the common kind; deriving that ap-
pearance from the dark trap mud in which they are bred.
But while on the subject of eating, which, on Homer's
authority, is not an unimportant one, I may remark that,
though fish abound in the sea about Sky, there is very
little variety. This, indeed, is true of the Islands in
general; wherever I have seen fish, or eaten fish, or
caught fish ; and that is every where. There is ling near
Barra and near St. Kilda ;
but, as far as is yet known, no
where else. Cod is almost universal; and finer there
cannot be. At Gerloch and elsewhere, chiefly on the
mainland, it is the subject of a regular fishery for drying,
as I formerly remarked ; the fishermen supplying them
to the capitalist and salter at two-pence a head, as they
also do the London smacks. The red cod, of a small
size, which is one of the most delicate fish in the sea,