Having surmounted the hill at last, we were told that at Glenelg, on the sea-side, we should come to a house of lime and slate and glass.  This image of magnificence raised our expectation.  At last we came to our inn weary and peevish, and began to inquire for meat and beds.

Of the provisions the negative catalogue was very copious.  Here was no meat, no milk, no bread, no eggs, no wine.  We did not express much satisfaction.  Here however we were to stay.  Whisky we might have, and I believe at last they caught a fowl and killed it.  We had some bread, and with that we prepared ourselves to be contented, when we had a very eminent proof of Highland hospitality.  Along some miles of the way, in the evening, a gentleman’s servant had kept us company on foot with very little notice on our part.  He left us near Glenelg, and we thought on him no more till he came to us again, in about two hours, with a present from his master of rum and sugar.  The man had mentioned his company, and the gentleman, whose name, I think, is Gordon, well knowing the penury of the place, had this attention to two men, whose names perhaps he had not heard, by whom his kindness was not likely to be ever repaid, and who could be recommended to him only by their necessities.

We were now to examine our lodging.  Out of one of the beds, on which we were to repose, started up, at our entrance, a man black as a Cyclops from the forge.  Other circumstances of no elegant recital concurred to disgust us.  We had been frighted by a lady at Edinburgh, with discouraging representations of Highland lodgings.  Sleep, however, was necessary.  Our Highlanders had at last found some hay, with which the inn could not supply them.  I directed them to bring a bundle into the room, and slept upon it in my riding coat.  Mr. Boswell being more delicate, laid himself sheets with hay over and under him, and lay in linen like a gentleman.

SKY.  ARMIDEL

In the morning, September the second, we found ourselves on the edge of the sea.  Having procured a boat, we dismissed our Highlanders, whom I would recommend to the service of any future travellers, and were ferried over to the Isle of Sky.  We landed at Armidel, where we were met on the sands by Sir Alexander Macdonald, who was at that time there with his lady, preparing to leave the island and reside at Edinburgh.

Armidel is a neat house, built where the Macdonalds had once a seat, which was burnt in the commotions that followed the Revolution.  The walled orchard, which belonged to the former house, still remains.  It is well shaded by tall ash trees, of a species, as Mr. Janes the fossilist informed me, uncommonly valuable.  This plantation is very properly mentioned by Dr. Campbell, in his new account of the state of Britain, and deserves attention; because it proves that the present nakedness of the Hebrides is not wholly the fault of Nature.