In this year was published[340] the first intelligent topographical book regarding Scotland, being ‘_A Description of the Western Isles_, by M. Martin, Gentleman.’ It gives accurate information regarding the physical peculiarities of these islands, and their numberless relics of antiquity, besides many sensible hints as to means for improving the industry of the inhabitants. The author, who seems to have been a native of Skye, writes like a well-educated man for his age, and as one who had seen something of life in “busier scenes than those supplied by his own country. He has also thought proper to give an ample account of many superstitious practices of the Hebrideans, and to devote a chapter to the alleged power of _second-sight_, which was then commonly attributed to special individuals throughout the whole of Celtic Scotland. All this he does in the same sober painstaking manner in which he tells of matters connected with the rural economy of the people, [Sidenote: 1703.] fully shewing that he himself reposed entire faith in the alleged phenomena. In the whole article, indeed, he scarcely introduces a single expression of a dogmatic character, either in the way of defending the belief or ridiculing it, but he very calmly furnishes answers, based on what he considered as facts, to sundry objections which had been taken against it. But for his book, we should have been much in the dark regarding a system which certainly made a great mark on the Highland mind in the seventeenth century, and was altogether as remarkable, perhaps, as the witch superstitions of the Lowlands during the same period. He tells us—‘The second-sight is a singular faculty of seeing an otherwise invisible object, without any previous means used by the person that sees it, for that end. The vision makes such a lively impression upon the seers, that they neither see nor think of anything else, except the vision, as long as it continues, and then they appear pensive or jovial, according to the object which was represented to them. ‘At the sight of a vision, the eyelids of the person are erected, and the eyes continue staring until the object vanish. This is obvious to others who are by, when the persons happen to see a vision, and occurred more than once to my own observation, and to others who were with me.’ The seers were persons of both sexes and of all ages, ‘generally illiterate, well-meaning people;’ not people who desired to make gain by their supposed faculty, or to attract notice to themselves—not drunkards or fools—but simple country people, who were rather more apt to feel uneasy in the possession of a gift so strange, than to use it for any selfish or unworthy purpose. It really appears to have been generally regarded as an uncomfortable peculiarity; and there were many instances of the seers resorting to prayers and other religious observances in order to get quit of it.