192 



CHAPTER XVI. 



LEWS CLIMATE AND MIDGES. 



THERE are two points wliicli I must here 

 introduce, without which my account of 

 the Lews would be most imperfect ; these are 

 the cHmate and the midges. To both I have 

 frequently alluded ; I must now particularise a 

 little more. 



I do not scruple to say that the weather is 

 perfectly intolerable. I have lived many years 

 in Ireland, and of those some seven or eight in 

 Kerry, where it knows how to rain, and where 

 I remember once pretty constant rain every 

 day for six weeks ; but the savagery (to coin a 

 word) of the weather in the Lews is not describ- 

 able. A gentleman from the county of Clare — 

 not the mildest climate in the world — once 

 shot a season with me, and had very good 

 sport, which he enjoyed much. I asked him 

 to come again. " Not for five thousand pounds 

 a year," he replied, " would I encounter this 

 climate again. I am deUghted I came, for now 



