All through the islands, indeed, the artist will come upon interesting subjects. A most impressive scene may sometimes be witnessed on crossing the North Ford, between North Uist and Benbecula. At low-water, the channel or sound between these two islands, which is five miles in breadth, disappears and leaves exposed a wide expanse of wet sand and silt, dotted with black rocks and low tangle-covered reefs and skerries. On the morning I passed over, ragged sheets of mist hung low down on the near horizon, half-obscuring and half-revealing the stony islets, and crags, and hills that lay between the ford and the Minch. Seen through such a medium, the rocks assumed the most surprising forms, sometimes towering into great peaks and cliffs, at other times breaking up, as it were, into low reefs and shoals, and anon dissolving in grey mist and vapour. At other times the thin cloud-curtain would lift, and then one fancied one saw some vast city with ponderous walls and battlements, and lofty towers and steeples, rising into the mist-wreaths that hung above it, while from many points on the Benbecula coast, where kelp was being prepared, clouds of smoke curled slowly upwards, as if from the camp-fires of some besieging army. The track of the ford winds round and about innumerable rocks, upon which a number of "natives," each stooping solitary and silent to his or her work, were reaping the luxuriant seaweed for kelp-making. Their silence was quite in keeping with the general stillness, which would have been unbroken but for the harsh scream of the sea-birds, as they ever and anon rose scared from their favourite feeding-grounds while we plodded and plashed on our way. The artist who could successfully cope with such a scene would paint a singularly weird and suggestive picture.