Climaie. 147 



and accompanied with dry weather, occasioning much sand-drift. 

 The first part of summer is sometimes fine, but not unfrequent- 

 ]y wet, with southerly and westerly >vinds. There is seldom 

 any thunder at this season ; nor does the summer temperature 

 scarcely ever rise so high as to be oppressive. Frequently the 

 wet weather continues with intervals till September, from which 

 period to the middle of October the weather is generally fine. 

 As the winter advances the westerly gales become more boiste- 

 rous and continued, and, in this season, there is frequently a 

 good deal of thunder. One of the finest thunder blasts I ever 

 met with occurred at Harris in December of 1820, at midnight, 

 during a very hard gale of westerly winds. The lakes seldom 

 freeze in winter ; and, although the hills are often tipped with 

 snow, it is seldom that a general covering takes place. After 

 continued westerly and northerly gales, enormous billows roll in 

 from the Atlantic, dashing upon the rocky shores with astonish- 

 ing violence ; I have seen the spray driven over rocks a hundred 

 feet in height, to a great distance inland. Even in summer the 

 spray is sometimes carried inland, so as to injure the vegetation ; 

 and I have known a farmer, who had injudiciously planted his 

 potatoes too near the shore, lose his whole crop, in one night, 

 from such a cause. A winter in the Outer Hebrides is dreary 

 in the extreme. Tempests and gloom alternate, with days of 

 sunshine, and sometimes of calm, when the hollow roar of the 

 breakers, occasionally interrupted by the shrill scream of the 

 wandering sea-bird, inspires a melancholy, unfelt during the rage 

 of the tempest. ^ There is not a grander spectacle than that 

 which the great ocean presents at this season, boiling and foam- 

 ing as far as the eye can reach, rolling its long and widely se- 

 parated billows into the sounds, and breaking upon the head- 

 lands with inconceivable fury, shaking the solid rocks to their 

 foundations ; while, along the surface, sweeps the western blast, 

 scattering the broken summits of the waves into spray, and athwart 

 the threatening sky are driven, in confusion, enormous masses of 

 black clouds, charged with electrical matter, and pouring forth 

 nun, sleet and hail. So violent are the winter tempests, that the 

 huts are frequently unthatched, sometimes unroofed ; boats have 

 been raised into the air, and shivered to pieces, and cattle car- 

 ried off their legs. In those sudden blasts, one has sometimes 



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