a | 
to determine the Figure of the Earth. 129: 
» But however great the pleasure of having completed my ope- 
rations, if I had immediately departed from the rocks of Balta 
to my own country, my sentiments would have been specifically 
different concerning these isles. The dreariness of their situa- 
tion, the poverty of their’soil, and the inclemeney of their sky, 
would have accompanied me, and I should have remained ig- 
norant that they contain sensible, kind, virtuous, and enlight- 
ened inhabitants. Nor should I have been able to discover tie 
charm which these pathless barren regions—the region of rain, of 
tempest, and of sterility—have to reconcile them to such hard- 
ships. 
' Peace and not plenty constitutes this charm. The sound of 
a drum has not been heard in Unst for twenty-five years, while 
Europe was wasting her best blood; and during all that period 
the door of the house where I resided had not been shut day or 
night. Neither conscription nor press-gang had afflicted the 
inhabitants of these peaceful isles. Their rough seas protect 
them from the incursions of privateers, and their poverty is still 
a stronger defence. These people receive the intelligence of the 
transactions of the continent, as they would read the historv of 
other times. Their calm-and contracted situation gives to their 
mode of life a charm unknown in other climes. They live in 
one great family. But the strength of affection produces the 
extreme of grief upon death or separation. When death enters 
the dwellings of those whose affections are so concentrated, it 
comes in all its bitterness. Nor are the grief and sorrow much less 
when a son, or a brother, or a friend takes his journey to another 
country, for seldom does their own little isle contain the children 
with the fathers. A small portion around their huts is all the 
soil that is cultivated; and horses and sheep almost in a wild 
state pasture the remainder. A principal part of their wealth and 
support is procured from the tremendous waves and billows of 
the ocean, which with unexampled boldness they combat in 
quest of fish. When the weather is good the toil becomes a 
pleasure; but when the sea becomes tempestuous, the struggle in 
their uncovered boats is violent. Under their guidance I have 
found myself calm when contemplating those lofty cliffs of primi- 
tive rocks—that ancient structure of the globe, whose strata lie 
inclined towards the sea, and, undermined at their base by the 
fury of the waves, seem threatening to bury under their ruins 
the frail bark which bounds at their feet. 
Carrying with me the most agreeable recollections, I took 
leave of these isles after a residence of two months, An equi- 
noctial gale conveyed us in fifty hours to Edinburgh, Returned 
to Colonel Elphinston, | experienced that hospitality had not 
retired to the Shetland isles. Having finished my particular 
Vol. 52, No, 244, Aug. 1818, I labours, 
