we found very kind entertainment, and
very pleasing conversation. Miss Maclean, who was born, and had been
bred at Glasgow, having removed with her father to Mull, added to other
qualifications, a great knowledge of the Earse language, which she had
not learned in her childhood, but gained by study, and was the only
interpreter of Earse poetry that I could ever find.

The Isle of Mull is perhaps in extent the third of the Hebrides. It is
not broken by waters, nor shot into promontories, but is a solid and
compact mass, of breadth nearly equal to its length. Of the dimensions
of the larger Islands, there is no knowledge approaching to exactness. I
am willing to estimate it as containing about three hundred square miles.

Mull had suffered like Sky by the black winter of seventy-one, in which,
contrary to all experience, a continued frost detained the snow eight
weeks upon the ground. Against a calamity never known, no provision had
been made, and the people could only pine in helpless misery. One tenant
was mentioned, whose cattle perished to the value of three hundred
pounds; a loss which probably more than the life of man is necessary to
repair. In countries like these, the descriptions of famine become
intelligible. Where by vigorous and artful cultivation of a soil
naturally fertile, there is commonly a superfluous growth both of grain
and grass; where the fields are crowded with cattle; and where every hand
is able to attract wealth from a distance, by making something that
promotes ease, or gratifies vanity, a dear year produces only a
comparative want, which is rather seen than felt, and which terminates
commonly in no worse effect, than that of condemning the lower orders of
the community to sacrifice a little luxury to convenience, or at most a
little convenience to necessity.

But where the climate is unkind, and the ground penurious, so that the
most fruitful years will produce only enough to maintain themselves;
where life unimproved, and unadorned, fades into something little more
than naked existence, and every one is busy for himself, without any arts
by which the pleasure of others may be increased; if to the daily burden
of distress any additional weight be added, nothing remains but to
despair and die. In Mull the disappointment of a harvest, or a murrain
among the cattle, cuts off the regular provision; and they who have no
manufactures can purchase no part of the superfluities of other
coun