96 A HUNDRED YEARS 



not only the family, but also the whole stock of cattle, 

 not to mention sundry pet sheep and innumerable hens, 

 with no division of any kind between the animals and 

 the human beings ! I should say the house was a good 

 forty-five feet long, with the usual low, broad walls, 

 six feet thick, built partly of stones, but mostly of turf, 

 and only some five feet in height, on which grass grows 

 and sheep and sometimes even a calf may be seen grazing 

 happily. What surprises a stranger at first sight is 

 that instead of the thatched roof extending, as in all 

 other parts of the world, a little beyond the outside of 

 the walls, so that the drip from the roof may fall clear 

 of the dwelling, the couples which sustain the roof 

 invariably rest on the inside edge of these wide walls. 

 This arises chiefly from the fact that there is no wood 

 on the Long Island, with the exception of the few 

 comparatively young trees in the plantations round the 

 policies of Stornoway Castle and Rodal; so the natives 

 have always had to do their best with very short 

 lengths of timber, such as stray bits from wrecks washed 

 up along the coast or wood brought with great trouble 

 in their fishing-boats from the mainland. That houses 

 built on apparently such a wrong principle as this must 

 be frightfully damp goes without saying, but notwith- 

 standing, they often turn out as fine specimens of men 

 and women as can be found in any part of Britain. 



We entered the house, which was very narrow (only 

 about twelve feet wide inside), by a door near one end, 

 and had to make our way along through manure and 

 litter, there being only just room between the tails of 

 the eight or ten cattle beasts and the wall for us to 



