A SUMMER RAMBLE AMONG THE HEBRIDES. 133 



and his wife, the sole representatives in the valley of a nu- 

 merous population, long since expatriated to make way for a 

 few flocks of sheep, but whose ranges of little fields may still 

 be seen green amid the heath on both sides, for nearly a mile 

 upwards from the opening. After descending along the pre- 

 cipices of the Scuir, we struck across the valley, and, on scaling 

 the opposite slope, sat down on the summit to rest us, about 

 a hundred yards over the house of the shepherd. He had 

 seen us from below, when engaged among the bloodstones, 

 and had seen, withal, that we were not coming his way ; and, 

 " on hospitable thoughts intent," he climbed to where we sat, 

 accompanied by his wife, she bearing a vast bowl of milk, 

 and he a basket of bread and cheese. And we found the re- 

 freshment most seasonable, after our long hours of toil, and 

 with a rough journey still before us. It is an excellent cir- 

 cumstance, that hospitality grows best where it is most need- 

 ed. In the thick of men it dwindles and disappears, like 

 fruits in the thick of a wood ; but where man is planted 

 sparsely, it blossoms and matures, like apples on a standard 

 or espalier. It nourishes where the inn and the lodging-house 

 cannot exist, and dies out where they thrive and multiply. 



We reached the cross valley in the interior of the island 

 about half an hour before sunset. The evening was clear, 

 calm, golden-tinted ; even wild heaths and rude rocks had 

 assumed a flush of transient beauty ; and the emerald-green 

 patches on the hill-sides, barred by the plough lengthwise, 

 diagonally, and transverse, had borrowed an aspect of soft 

 and velvety richness, from the mellowed light and the broad- 

 ening shadows. All was solitary. We could see among the 

 deserted fields the grass-grown foundations of cottages razed 

 to the ground ; but the valley, more desolate than that which 

 we had left, had not even its single inhabited dwelling : it 

 seemed as if man had done with it for ever. The island, 

 eighteen years before, had been divested of its inhabitants, 



