Art, can hardly afford
anything more beautiful and diverting; especially when the weather was
clear and serene, to see the Divers sinking three-score foot under
water and stay sometimes above an hour, and at last returning with the
spoils of the Ocean; whether it were Plate, or Money, it convinced us
of the Riches and Splendor of the once thought _Invincible Armada_.
This rais'd a variety of Ideas, in a Soul as fond of Novelty as mine.
Sometimes I reflected with horror on the danger of the British Nation,
sometimes with Pleasure on that generous Courage and Conduct that sav'd
a sinking State; and sometimes of so great an Enterprize baffled and
lost, by accidents unthought of and unforseen....

"The first week the weather was pleasant, but spent in fitting our
Engines, which proved very well, and every way suited to the design;
and our Divers outdid all examples of this nature. But with the
Dog-Days the autumnal rains usually begin in these parts, and for six
weeks we had scarce a good day. The whole frame of Nature seem'd
inhospitable, bleak, stormy, rainy, windy, so that our Divers could not
bear the cold, and despairing to see any amendment of weather I
resolved on a journey across the Isle of Mull, to the so much
celebrated II-Columb-Kill,[3] in English St. Columb's Church....

"The first four miles we saw but few houses, but cross'd a wild desert
country, with a pleasant mixture of Woods and Mountains. Every man and
thing I met seem'd a Novelty. I thought myself entering upon a new
Scene of Nature, but Nature rough and unpolished, in her undress. I
observed the men to be large bodied, stout, subtile, active, patient of
cold and hunger. There appeared in all their actions a certain
generous air of freedom, and contempt of those trifles, Luxury and
Ambition, which we so servilely creep after. They bound their
appetites by their necessities and their happiness consists not in
having much, but in coveting little.

"The Women seem to have the same sentiments as the men; tho' their
Habits were mean, and they had not our sort of breeding, yet in many of
them there was a natural Beauty, and a graceful Modesty which never
fails of attracting. The usual outward habit of both sexes is the
Plaid; the women's much finer, the colours more lively, and the squares
larger than the men's, and put me in mind of the ancient Picts. This
serves them for a Veil and covers both head and body. The men wear
theirs after another