ds, and was now half unroofed. On seeing a
smoke, I exclaimed, 'Is it possible any people can live there?' when at
least half a dozen, men, women, and children, came to the door. They
were about to rebuild the hut, and I suppose that they, or some other
poor creatures, would dwell there through the winter, dealing out whisky
to the starved travellers. The sun was now setting, the air very cold,
the sky clear; I could have fancied that it was winter-time, with hard
frost. Our guide pointed out King's House to us, our resting-place for
the night. We could just distinguish the house at the bottom of the
moorish hollow or basin--I call it so, for it was nearly as broad as
long--lying before us, with three miles of naked road winding through it,
every foot of which we could see. The road was perfectly white, making a
dreary contrast with the ground, which was of a dull earthy brown. Long
as the line of road appeared before us, we could scarcely believe it to
be three miles--I suppose owing to its being unbroken by any one object,
and the moor naked as the road itself, but we found it the longest three
miles we had yet travelled, for the surface was so stony we had to walk
most of the way.

The house looked respectable at a distance--a large square building,
cased in blue slates to defend it from storms,--but when we came close to
it the outside forewarned us of the poverty and misery within. Scarce a
blade of grass could be seen growing upon the open ground; the
heath-plant itself found no nourishment there, appearing as if it had but
sprung up to be blighted. There was no enclosure for a cow, no
appropriated ground but a small plot like a church yard, in which were a
few starveling dwarfish potatoes, which had, no doubt, been raised by
means of the dung left by travellers' horses: they had not come to
blossoming, and whether they would either yield fruit or blossom I know
not. The first thing we saw on entering the door was two sheep hung up,
as if just killed from the barren moor, their bones hardly sheathed in
flesh. After we had waited a few minutes, looking about for a guide to
lead us into some corner of the house, a woman, seemingly about forty
years old, came to us in a great bustle, screaming in Erse, with the most
horrible guinea-hen or peacock voice I ever heard, first to one person,
then another. She could hardly spare time to show us up-stairs, for
crowds of men were in the house--drovers, carriers, h