5

216 THE HISTORY
whale; as no harbors or bays are superior, whether
regard be had to number or commodiousness.
Add to this their variety of excellent roots and
plants, particularly those of marine growth, every
one of them serving for food or physic. Their
pastures are so kindly, that they might live ou
milk alone, with that inconceivable quantity of
eugs they yearly gather of the desart rocks and
ilets. But flesh and fish, milk-meats, eggs, and sallads
in the greatest abundance (some will be apt
to say) are slender and comfortless food without
the staff of bread. On this assertion, tho' I might
fairly dispute it from the practice of whole nations,
and the experience of particular persons no
strangers to me, I will not however insist; bread,
among their other productions, being plentiful
enough in the Hebrides, which sometimes cannot
be said of the neighbouring ilands. The ground
is generally allow'd to be much richer than on the
Scottish continent, some parts whereof are not
f-eldom supply'd hence with corn*: and I have
also fiudi ])iOofs of it from Dr. IMartin (who, when
he wrote his Description of those
Hands, wa^ far
from dreaming of the Hyperboreans) as will sufficiently
justify the expression of Diodorus about
their crops or harvests. Lewis is very fruitful:
and tho'
barley, oats, and rye, be the cyily grain
sown there at present: vrt the ground both in
that, and in most of the other ilaiuisf is
lit to bear
*SeeDr. Martin's Descrijiitionjpnje 140.
+PageS3,337 .tc.