without a better cover.

In our passage from Scotland to Sky, we were wet for the first time with
a shower. This was the beginning of the Highland winter, after which we
were told that a succession of three dry days was not to be expected for
many months. The winter of the Hebrides consists of little more than
rain and wind. As they are surrounded by an ocean never frozen, the
blasts that come to them over the water are too much softened to have the
power of congelation. The salt loughs, or inlets of the sea, which shoot
very far into the island, never have any ice upon them, and the pools of
fresh water will never bear the walker. The snow that sometimes falls,
is soon dissolved by the air, or the rain.

This is not the description of a cruel climate, yet the dark months are
here a time of great distress; because the summer can do little more than
feed itself, and winter comes with its cold and its scarcity upon
families very slenderly provided.

CORIATACHAN IN SKY

The third or fourth day after our arrival at Armidel, brought us an
invitation to the isle of Raasay, which lies east of Sky. It is
incredible how soon the account of any event is propagated in these
narrow countries by the love of talk, which much leisure produces, and
the relief given to the mind in the penury of insular conversation by a
new topick. The arrival of strangers at a place so rarely visited,
excites rumour, and quickens curiosity. I know not whether we touched at
any corner, where Fame had not already prepared us a reception.

To gain a commodious passage to Raasay, it was necessary to pass over a
large part of Sky. We were furnished therefore with horses and a guide.
In the Islands there are no roads, nor any marks by which a stranger may
find his way. The horseman has always at his side a native of the place,
who, by pursuing game, or tending cattle, or being often employed in
messages or conduct, has learned where the ridge of the hill has breadth
sufficient to allow a horse and his rider a passage, and where the moss
or bog is hard enough to bear them. The bogs are avoided as toilsome at
least, if not unsafe, and therefore the journey is made generally from
precipice to precipice; from which if the eye ventures to look down, it
sees below a gloomy cavity, whence the rush of water is sometimes heard.

But there seems to be in all this more alarm than danger. The Highlander
walks carefully before, and the horse, acc