In the vault below are depofited the remains of JANE BELL, wife of JOHN BELL, Esq; who, in the fifty-third year of her age, furrounded with many worldly bleffings, heard, with fortitude and compofure truly great, the horrible malady, which had for fome time begun to afflict her,

pronounced incurable;

and for more than three years,

endured with patience and concealed with decency, the daily tortures of gradual death;

continued to divide the hours not allotted to devotion, between the cares of her family, and the converse of her friends;

rewarded the attendance of duty,

and acknowledged the offices of affection; and while fhe endeavoured to alleviate by chearfulness, her husband's fufferings and forrows, increased them by her gratitude for his care, and her folicitude for his quiet.

To the memory of thefe virtues, more highly honoured as more familiarly known, this monument is erected by JOHN BELL*.

He had long been folicited by Mr. James Bofwell, a native of Scotland, and one that highly valued him, to accompany him in a journey to the Hebrides, or Western islands of that kingdom, as to a part of the world in which nature was to be viewed in her rudeft and most terrific form; and where, whatever was

*She died in the month of October, 1771.

wanting

wanting to delight the eye, or foothe the imagination, was made up by objects that could not fail to expand it, and turn delight into astonishment; and being now, in the year 1773, his own mafter, having no literary engagement to fulfil, he accepted the invitation. He began the tour propofed, in the autumn of the year above-mentioned, and, computing from the eighteenth day of Auguft, when he left Edinburgh, to the ninth of November, when he returned thither, completed it in seven weeks and fix days; and, at his return to England, drew up and published an account of it.

The Western iflands of Scotland are called by the ancient geographers, the bud and Hebrides. The Scotch hiftorians, namely, Hector Boethius, bishop Lefly, Buchanan, and Johnson, have given us little more concerning them than their names. Camden has given a general, but brief defcription of them, and fpeaks of their number as about forty-four; but bishop Gibson adds, that they have been reckoned at three hundred, in which computation every spot or iflet must be supposed to be included: but a particular description of the Western islands was wanting to the world till the year 1703, when a perfon of the name of Martin, published a book with that title, containing a full account of those islands, and of the government, religion, and customs of the inhabitants thereof; and alfo, of the second fight or faculty of ✦ fore-feeing things by vifion, fo common among

them.'.

Of this writer little more is known, than that of which himself feems to be the relator, viz. that he was born in one of the most spacious and fertile isles

in the weft of Scotland; and, befides his liberal edu. cation at the university, had the advantage of seeing foreign places, and converfing with some of the royal fociety; but who, nevertheless, seems to have been a very weak, credulous, and fuperftitious man, and, notwithstanding his liberal education, with respect both to matter and form, an injudicious writer. The fame person had a few years before made a voyage to St. Kilda, the most remote of the Western islands, and, in 1698, published a description thereof.

The defects of Martin, in the accounts given by him of the Hebrides, and the inhabitants of the feveral ifles fo called, are amply fupplied by a late traveller thither, Mr. Pennant, who, in the years 1769 and 1772 made the tour of Scotland, and, with a curious and penetrating eye remarked all that feems to have been worthy of notice, refpecting either the fituation of the fpots by him defcribed, or the people whom neceffity has doomed, or particular circumstances have led, to become dwellers there.

The extent of these islands, from north to fouth, is computed at two hundred miles, and their medium width fuch as, were they one continent, would make a country as large as Scotland. Of the inhabitants, thofe of St. Kilda for inftance, fome are Christians, resembling, both in their religious tenets and the purity of their lives, thofe of the primitive times; others are of the Romish communion, and the rest are of that denomination of proteftants, who adhere to the reformation of that furious bigot John Knox. The civil conftitution of these several tracts of land, for countries they are not to be called, is uniform:

it is feudatory, and of this the many castles and places of defence, every where visible among them, in which their lords and chieftains refide, are evident proofs. In extent of land they differ greatly: Sky, the largest of them, is above fixty measured miles long; but, the greater number of them are lefs than four miles in length, and two in breadth. Iona, or Icolmkill, is but two miles long and one broad, yet, it was once an epifcopal feat, and had on it a cathedral and a place of fepulture, in which no fewer than forty-eight Scottish, eight Norwegian, and four Irish kings, are interred; and also, two monastic establishments, the one for men, the other for women: the ruins of these edifices are yet remaining, and may be feen, accurately delineated, in Mr. Pennant's Tour

in Scotland, and Voyage to the Hebrides,' made in 1772, and published in 1774. Others of these ifles are yet smaller: Cannay is three miles by one, and Staffa is a mile long, and half a mile broad, and has but one house.

The fituation of these islands, in the bofom of the deep, expofed to howling winds, and beating waves that excavate their very foundations, and rains whofe intermiffion is little more than cafual, together with the inconveniences of an excifion from the continent, is a circumstance fo much against them, as to deprive the inhabitants of many of the greatest focial comforts, and the poffibility of subsisting under the want of them is hardly conceivable. It is true, that in fome of the islands, nearest the continent, the necessaries, and some of the luxuries, of life are attainable, by a communication with the nearest shore; but extreme indigence is the lot of all the islanders, excepting their

chieftains

chieftains, and the proprietors of land held in feudal fubjection immediately under them. In the fubordinate ranks, the condition of the people is fo forlorn and deftitute, that, were it not that they are as virtuous and innocent as they are poor, they must be deemed the most wretched inhabitants of the earth *.

The

Martin, a writer, that in mere matters of fact may be trufted, in his voyage to St. Kilda relates a variety of particulars refpecting that island and the inhabitants thereof. Of the ifland he fays, that it is two miles long, one broad, and five in circumference, and is one hard rock, with earth from fix inches to three foot deep; but with not a tree, nor even a fhrub thereon. Of the inhabitants, and their manner of living, he gives a defcription, which, being abridged, has furnished the following account. They are computed at about one hundred and eighty: they obferve the christian Sabbath, and believe in God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghoft, and have three chapels covered with thatch, and in one of them a brazen crucifix, on which they swear, and contract matrimony: they speak the Erfe language, are charitable to each other, and fhew great humanity to shipwrecked ftrangers. The head of the Mac-Leod family is the proprietor of the island, who governs it by his fteward. Though they have sheep and a few oxen, their chief food is Solan geefe and their eggs, both which they come at by climbing the rocks at the peril of their lives to take them they are fufpended from the precipices by ropes of an immenfe length, covered with falted cow-hides, of which there are only three on the island, which are the joint property of all the dwellers thereon. When they climb the rocks, it is with their elbows, their backs being to the rock. The dreís of the women is partly linen, and partly plaid: they wear fhoes only in winter, and those the skins of the neck of the Solan goofe; that part which covers the head of the fowl ferving for the heel. Their bread is made of barley or oats, and their drink water or whey. They have only one fteel and tinder-box on the whole ifland, and that is private property. The women are beautiful and innocent, and the inhabitants in general courteous: their ordinary form of falutation, God fave you.' In common with the people of the

northern