Volume 3 - Electric Scotland

BENBECULA. 85
an arm of the sea. As the prospect southward was thus
prolonged in a bold perspective of mountains, so, to the
northward, the high lands of North Uist were succeeded
by the lofty peaks of Harris, rising above each other in
all the soft clear tints of the brightest of atmospheres,
till they vanished in the blue of the sky. But the inter-
val here was even more intricate and dazzling, in the in-
termixture of land and water, of lakes, inlets, islands,
and promontories. As the sun shone in all its splendour
on the thousand lakes of North Uist, on the inextricable
sinuosities of Loch Eport and Loch Maddy, and on the
no less bewildered channel by which Benbecula is sepa-
rated from that island, the silvery lustre of the water
seemed to absorb as it dazzled the sight, and I felt as if
the mountain on which I was sitting, with all that lay
below my feet, was afloat on the ocean. The world, for
aught I know, may produce other scenes of this kind ;
but, in creating this one. Nature seems to have resolved
to frolic in her own way, and to shew that she could
make one part of Scotland, at least, unlike to every thing
else ; utterly out of all rule, utterly incomprehensible.
To have found its inhabitants with fins and wings, would
scarcely have been matter of more wonder ; and indeed
in omitting this obvious improvement of the present breed,
she seems to have been less careful than usual in adapt-
ing her animals to their habitations.
It was not very easy to find the way back to our boat
but at length I espied our men on an elevated bank. On
arriving within a few hundred yards of them, we found
we were separated by an arm of this endless sea. It was
necessary to make a circuit of a mile, to some houses;
and we had just come within speaking distance of the
people, when we found ourselves at the brink of another
of these provoking ditches, running round us backwards
;