Historical memoirs of Rob Roy and the Clan Macgregor

314 NOTICES OF LADY GRANGE.
Lady Grange expected every moment to be
swallowed up ; and after landing, the path to
the summit of the island was so frightful, that
she trembled with dread, the inhabitants flock-
ing around her, as if she had belonged to
another planet.
The houses on St Kilda were then what they
still continue to be, miserable huts ; and the
habitation to which Lady Grange was con-
ducted, was of the same description. The
inhabitants were primitive, simple people, the
greater number of whom had never been out
of the island, there being only a short period
of the year in which they could venture to cross
so boisterous a sea. Their principal means of
living arose, as it still does, from seizing the
myriads of sea-fowl that nestle on the crags,
for the sake of their feathers ; an employment
of the utmost hazard, each adventurer being
let down by a rope over the brink of the pre-
cipice. These feathers were sent to various
places at a distance, and the inhabitants, in
return, were supplied with the few articles of
life they required, and which their own limited
sphere of existence could not produce. The
errors of great and mixed communities were
unknown to them. No sources of vice existed,
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