OSTIG IN SKY

At Ostig, of which Mr. Macpherson is minister, we were entertained for some days, then removed to Armidel, where we finished our observations on the island of Sky.

As this Island lies in the fifty-seventh degree, the air cannot be supposed to have much warmth.  The long continuance of the sun above the horizon, does indeed sometimes produce great heat in northern latitudes; but this can only happen in sheltered places, where the atmosphere is to a certain degree stagnant, and the same mass of air continues to receive for many hours the rays of the sun, and the vapours of the earth.  Sky lies open on the west and north to a vast extent of ocean, and is cooled in the summer by perpetual ventilation, but by the same blasts is kept warm in winter.  Their weather is not pleasing.  Half the year is deluged with rain.  From the autumnal to the vernal equinox, a dry day is hardly known, except when the showers are suspended by a tempest.  Under such skies can be expected no great exuberance of vegetation.  Their winter overtakes their summer, and their harvest lies upon the ground drenched with rain.  The autumn struggles hard to produce some of our early fruits.  I gathered gooseberries in September; but they were small, and the husk was thick.

Their winter is seldom such as puts a full stop to the growth of plants, or reduces the cattle to live wholly on the surplusage of the summer.  In the year Seventy-one they had a severe season, remembered by the name of the Black Spring, from which the island has not yet recovered.  The snow lay long upon the ground, a calamity hardly known before.  Part of their cattle died for want, part were unseasonably sold to buy sustenance for the owners; and, what I have not read or heard of before, the kine that survived were so emaciated and dispirited, that they did not require the male at the usual time.  Many of the roebucks perished.

The soil, as in other countries, has its diversities.  In some parts there is only a thin layer of earth spread upon a rock, which bears nothing but short brown heath, and perhaps is not generally capable of any better product.  There are many bogs or mosses of greater or less extent, where the soil cannot be supposed to want depth, though it is too wet for the plow.  But we did not observe in these any aquatick plants.  The vallies and the mountains are alike darkened with heath.  Some grass, however, grows here and there, and some happier spots of earth are capable of tillage.

Their agriculture is laborious, and perhaps rather feeble than unskilful.  Their chief manure is seaweed, which, when they lay it to rot upon the field, gives them a better crop than those of the Highlands.  They heap sea shells upon the dunghill, which in time moulder into a fertilising substance.  When they find a vein of earth where they cannot use it, they dig it up, and add it to the mould of a more commodious place.