86 A HUNDRED YEARS 



" Both the men and the women are rather undersized 

 and not at all strong-looking. Their complexions are 

 a sort of dingy yellow. I did not see anyone with red 

 hair, but many with light hair, sandy and brown, 

 and several of the women had black hair and very 

 dark eyes. Their persons and houses and everything 

 belonging to them smell of fulmar petrel oil, which, by 

 the way, is not at all fragrant. They told me they were 

 usually healthy, and they were not subject to any 

 particular disease, but the poor men often meet with 

 accidents among the rocks, and thus their days are 

 shortened. As to their dress, I remarked that they wore 

 homespun and home-woven woollen shirts sewn together 

 with worsted yarn. Their trousers were of a sort of 

 blue tartan check, probably dyed in the island, the 

 indigo being purchased by them from elsewhere . Nearly 

 all of them were without shoes or stockings. Some of 

 them had a little piece of blue cloth under their heels. 

 The few shoes I did see were very round and ill-shaped. 

 They are all able to do shoemaking and tailoring, and 

 many of them wove, but not all. They have no mill, 

 but grind with the quern. One woman works the quern 

 alone. They did not appear to grind above a quart or 

 two of corn at a time. I observed several men and 

 women with lamb-skin caps. The girls had a great deal 

 of hair, very untidily arranged, and the wives had 

 equally untidy caps, and, for what purpose I know not, 

 they had two strings tied round their bodies, one just 

 under their arms and the other a quarter of a yard below, 

 making their second waist very low. Their gowns were 

 some of them of dark cotton and some of homespun. 



