218 Mr. Atkinson's Notice of St. Kilda. 



coats are made, drawn in at the waist, but as they are not generally, I 

 think, so good-looking as the men, this negligence is not becoming. 



Their habitations lie in a cluster, within a hundred yards of the bay 

 on the south-east side of St. Kilda, and are about thirty in number ; as 

 the manners of the people are very uncleanly, and all the refuse of the 

 fowl and other filth, is carefully accumulated, within them, to be re- 

 moved annually, mixed with the straw thatchings thoroughly satu- 

 rated with smoke, to manure their barley, it may be imagined how 

 unsavoury they become. The inhabitants sleep in apartments like 

 rabbit-holes in construction, excavated from the earth surrounding 

 their houses, and fasten their doors — a rather unnecessary precaution — 

 with simple but ingenious wooden locks of their own manufacture. 



On our departure for St. Kilda, we were assured that we should im- 

 bibe a smell, from living among them, that would adhere to us for five 

 or six weeks : fortunately the newly built parsonage house, of which 

 our informants had been unaware, presented a comfortable and in-odo- 

 rous habitation while we staid. 



No specific trade or profession is followed by any of the Kildeans ; 

 each man farms, weaves, makes shoes, and does joiner work for 

 himself and children alone, nor though naturally kind and obliging 

 in an admirable degree, will they, without a recompence, lend assistance 

 to a neighbour. All their thoughts are bent on the one subject of 

 fowling, and all energies of mind and body centered in it. To say it 

 is of as exclusive importance to them, as the capture of whales is to a 

 Greenland crew, would convey but a slight idea of the value of fowl to 

 the Kildean ; for to the one his profession is matter of choice, and his 

 mode of life may be changed at will for any other which appears more 

 agreeable ; to the other, it constitutes his only means of livelihood and 

 sustenance, and that not for a season, to be alternated with other 

 fairer scenes and less hazardous occupation, but for the whole period of 

 existence, as they never leave the island, only one or two instances 

 occurring of their being found over the whole of Scotland. From 

 their childhood the rock is the only field of their industry or hardihood, 

 and the produce of it almost the only desirable object to them : consti- 



