There are many other points of interest to that I might touch upon,
but I have said enough perhaps to indicate to any intelligent observer
the kind of country he may be led to expect in the Long Island. Of
course the history of the glacial period is very well illustrated
in many parts of the mainland, which are much easier of access than
the Outer Hebrides. But these islands contain, at least, one bit of
evidence which does not occur anywhere else in Britain. In them we
obtain, for the first time, data for measuring the actual slope of the
ice-sheet. It does not follow, however, that the inclination of the
surface towards the Atlantic was the same all over the area covered
by the ice-sheet. The slope of the sheet that flowed east into the
basin of the German Ocean, for example, may have been, and probably
was, less than that of the Hebridean ice-flow. But apart altogether
from this particular point, I think there is no part of the British
Islands where the evidence for the former action of a great ice-sheet
is more abundant and more easily read, or where one may realise with
such vividness the conditions that obtained during that period of
extraordinary climatic vicissitudes, which geologists call the Glacial
Epoch.
Leaving these old arctic scenes, and coming down to the actual present,
no one, I think, can wander much about the Outer Hebrides without
pondering over the fate of the islanders themselves. Many writers
have asserted that the Celt of these rather out-of-the-way places
is a lazy, worthless creature, whom we Saxons should do our best to
weed out. One cannot help feeling that this assertion is unfair and
cruel. The fact is, we judge him by a wrong standard. He is by nature
and long-inherited habits a fisherman, and has been wont to cultivate
only so much land as should suffice for the sustenance of himself and
those immediately dependent upon him. In old times he was often enough
called upon to fight, wrongly or rightly, and thus acquired that proud
bearing which it has taken so many long years of misery to crush out.
He is, as a rule, totally unfit for the close confinement and hard work
which are the lot of the great mass of our mechanics--does not see the
beauty of that, and has rather a kind of contempt for the monotonous
drudgery of large manufacturing towns. One of the few situations in
town that he cares to fill is that of police-constable. Give him a
life in the open air, however trying it may be, and he will be quite
content if he can make enough to feed himself and family. If the
fishing chance to be very profitable he does not, as a rule, think of
saving the surplus he has made, but looks forward rather to a spell of
idleness, when he can smoke his pipe and talk interminable long talks
with his neighbours. No doubt this, judged by our own standard, is all
very shocking. Why doesn't he put his money in the savings-bank, and
by-and-by die and leave it to those who come after him? Simply because
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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