he water side, we espied a cottage. This was the first
Highland Hut that I had seen; and as our business was with life and
manners, we were willing to visit it. To enter a habitation without
leave, seems to be not considered here as rudeness or intrusion. The old
laws of hospitality still give this licence to a stranger.

A hut is constructed with loose stones, ranged for the most part with
some tendency to circularity. It must be placed where the wind cannot
act upon it with violence, because it has no cement; and where the water
will run easily away, because it has no floor but the naked ground. The
wall, which is commonly about six feet high, declines from the
perpendicular a little inward. Such rafters as can be procured are then
raised for a roof, and covered with heath, which makes a strong and warm
thatch, kept from flying off by ropes of twisted heath, of which the
ends, reaching from the center of the thatch to the top of the wall, are
held firm by the weight of a large stone. No light is admitted but at
the entrance, and through a hole in the thatch, which gives vent to the
smoke. This hole is not directly over the fire, lest the rain should
extinguish it; and the smoke therefore naturally fills the place before
it escapes. Such is the general structure of the houses in which one of
the nations of this opulent and powerful island has been hitherto content
to live. Huts however are not more uniform than palaces; and this which
we were inspecting was very far from one of the meanest, for it was
divided into several apartments; and its inhabitants possessed such
property as a pastoral poet might exalt into riches.

When we entered, we found an old woman boiling goats-flesh in a kettle.
She spoke little English, but we had interpreters at hand; and she was
willing enough to display her whole system of economy. She has five
children, of which none are yet gone from her. The eldest, a boy of
thirteen, and her husband, who is eighty years old, were at work in the
wood. Her two next sons were gone to Inverness to buy meal, by which
oatmeal is always meant. Meal she considered as expensive food, and told
us, that in Spring, when the goats gave milk, the children could live
without it. She is mistress of sixty goats, and I saw many kids in an
enclosure at the end of her house. She had also some poultry. By the
lake we saw a potatoe-garden, and a small spot of ground on which stood
four shucks, containin