South Sea Islands. One of its edges was very sharp, and it was used by its present owner, for breaking loaf sugar. It was, and probably is, in the possession of the minister of Sandsling. These weapons lie in a very remote district, which may partly account for their not being removed; but, in addition to this, from a superstitious notion, the common people look upon it as sacrilege to carry off any of them. They say, at some remote period, their country was invaded, and the enemy carried every thing before them, committing terrible devastation; that some superior being, commiserating their calamities, descended and put these arms into their hands; that with them they attacked the foe, conquered, and exterminated them; after which, their ancestors deposited these celestial weapons in the spot where they now lie, with an injunction to their posterity never to remove them.

Leaving the Orkneys, and my good friends at Kirkwall, I set sail for the

HEBRIDES, OR WESTERN ISLES.

After having been tost about for three days, and that too not far from my old acquaintance, Cape Wrath, I at length was safely landed, with my poney, at Stornaway, the most flourishing town in the Lewes, or Hebrides. The Orkney Islands, though many of them be uninhabited, are about thirty, and the Shetlands, great and small, nearly double that number. The Western Islands are more numerous than both, amounting in all, great and small, to three hundred, and of much more importance. The largest

of them is Lewis, or Harris, for they are both one island, which belongs to the shire of Ross, and a hundred miles long, and nearly fifteen broad, and is visited by myriads of herrings annually, which, are chased thither by the dog fish. Stornaway, the chief town, has an excellent harbour, some shipping, and a few branches of manufacture lately set on foot, as also some foreign trade. There are some excellent houses here; and such is the fashion, or rather craze of the people, that they choose to have a fine house even if they should have almost nothing to furnish it withal, and borrow money to build it. Indeed, masons, slaters, carpenters, &c. flock, particularly in summer, to the Western Isles, where they often earn five shillings a day; and, so neatly are the houses in general finished, particularly in the outside, that you would think all the inhabitants rich and opulent.

Macdonald of the Isles, the great proprietor here, has fortunately a taste for improvement, and is disposed to encourage this taste in others.

The fisheries, the burning of sea-weed into kelp, an ingredient much used in the manufacture of glass, &c. employs many people here; and, as far as I am a judge, the only chance of effectually checking that spirit of emigration, which unfortunately, both for themselves and the country, has got afloat in the west and north of Scotland, is for the proprietors to improve large portions of their waste lands by a tontine, or otherwise to build villages, establish manufactures, suited to the nature of the place, and give liberal encouragement to those that settle as fishers in the highlands and islands. The

Highlanders should be enticed, not compelled, to stay at home. The idea of restraint in general rather increases than diminishes our propensities to wander, and the late act of parliament respecting emigration, though it may serve as a momentary check, has but served to encrease the evil it was intended to destroy.

A handsome young man, having married here lately, two dashing beaux, who happened to be at the wedding, by way of fun, as they termed it, thought proper, towards the hour of going to bed, to carry away the bride about a quarter of a mile from the house, that the young man might be set a wondering what was become of her. Indeed, it happened as they expected; for the young man, and every one in the house, became extremely uneasy about her; and it was not till after near an hour that they discovered she had been detained by these dashing strangers, though they meant no harm, against her will.

But these young men

paid for their folly, and were obliged to lay down a hundred guineas, as a fine, for sporting with an innocent young man and woman's feelings. A trick of the same kind was lately played by a lawyer and an acquaintance of mine at Brechin, near Montrose; but the young married couple having a friend acquainted with the law, after a paper war, he made. his brother Quill, who had detained her, with two or three acquaintance, to pay for his conduct a handsome sum, to pacify the resentment of the young married man. The law, it seems, and I think justly, does not permit offenders of this kind to pass unpunished.

Leaving Lewis, and passing North and South Uist, I arrived at the island of

BARRA,

Which belongs to Macneil of that name. It is from nine to ten miles long, and about six broad. It is amply stored with cattle, and has a parish church in it, though only one or two families are protestants; the rest of the inhabitants, with the proprietor at their head, being of the Roman Catholic persuasion.

The established clergyman at Barra has an easy life, having a good house, glebe, and offices, with more than a hundred pounds a year, and generally not above half a dozen hearers on Sunday.

They have a curious, though I believe common, way of catching seals here. In a narrow place, where there is generally a current the one way or the other, caused by the ebbing and flowing of the sea, a person stands with a spear, and stabs the seals as they pass and repass. The house, or hut, in which he sits, projects over the stream, and sitting or standing, with a steady eye, looking downward when he sees it coming, having his spear in his hand ready, he pushes it down, and not once in a hundred fails to kill.

This mode of killing seals generally affords Mr. Macneil, the proprietor of the island, some hundreds a year. Great numbers of salmon are killed in this way in the river Spey and the other rivers in Scotland, which they call stream fishing. At

Barra, as at most, and I believe all the Western Islands, there is the utmost abundance of shell fish, such as limpets, muscles, oysters, clams, spout fish, lobsters, crabs, and, above all, cockles. Upon the great sand on the north end of Barra, cockles are found in such quantities, that, in times of great scarcity, all the families on the island, which are about two hundred, resort to this for their daily subsistence. In two summers of very great scarcity, not less than from one hundred to two hundred horse-loads of cockles were taken off the sands at low water every day of the spring tides during the months of May, June, July, and August. Shell fish is a great resource, I understand, to the people of the islands, at all times. They are in the habit of boiling limpets, clams, and other species, and making use of the broth, mixed, or boiled up, with a little oatmeal.

The collecting and burning of sea-weed into kelp is not only a considerable employment to the inhabitants, but also a source of wealth to the proprietor, as it is generally sold at from fifteen to twenty pounds per ton.

As the inhabitants of Barra seem to have less intercourse with the Mainland, or continent, as they term it, than either the inhabitants of the Orkney, Shetland, or the other Hebrides, so they are evidently less polished, and more shy and stupid.

Though the established clergyman in Barra has an easy life, having little to do, yet it is not the case with many of the clergymen in the Orkneys, Shetland, and the Western Islands. One parish has often several islands belonging to it, at which the