As we wandered in the hilly lands about Portnalong, towards Carbost on the one hand and Fiskavig on the other, we came on the new houses everywhere, in sheltered hollows, on sunny slopes, and their bright faces seemed like the mind of a folk who throve for untold centuries, and would thrive for centuries more, if the greed and egoism of the landed or plutocratic designers of our worldly affairs gave them half a chance.

I have so often heard it said that West Highlanders are evasive, deceitful and unreliable. The marvel is that they are not cut-throats—instead of the kindly, honest, decent men and women whom we met in Portnalong. Every year in August they hold a fair of their Port-na-Skye tweeds in the long green shed by the pier, and buyers come, we are told, ‘from all over’. If they paid no more than we did for their socks—loose and tough and excellent for knee boots—they got bargains.

At the post office we bought some fine hill mutton, bacon (machine sliced), a wash basin, ginger beer, white enamel paint, bread, toffee, a water bucket, tea, Danish butter, tomatoes, but decided against a suit of dungarees, though I was now a variegated pattern of engine oil and chain rust, after we had sent off a telegram for our letters and arranged for a late telephone call. (Sailing Directions: There is a Tel.).

Altogether I could see that the Crew was not at all displeased that the wind, now blowing from the north-west, ruled out any further seafaring for the time being. ‘I could stay here for a month,’ she said. And it did seem at the moment as if the hiring of a suitable boat—I could think of cheap fishing boats for those who liked to rough it—and the coming to a more or less permanent anchorage in some desirable sea-loch might make for one of the most interesting holidays imaginable.

Round about, the Crew found the plant and bird life that made a walk with her such a lengthy affair. The larks were very friendly and kept leading us on from post to fence post. The yellowhammers, gorgeously fresh in colour, evidently throve on their little bit of bread and no cheese. Birds of the warbler size were everywhere and our knowledge of their individual notes being often uncertain, we did a lot of stalking and sadly missed not having a proper bird glass. But the plant life could be handled and examined. There is a pleasure in finding the unusual, but there is a fonder pleasure in finding the familiar in some slightly unusual guise—as, for example, the milkworts, which seemed larger in size and deeper in blue than on the northern mainland. One bank, covered with them, had from a little distance the sheen of a bank of wild hyacinth. The orchis, too, were brilliant, particularly the deep purple, while we came on one hollow of pure white ones of an unusually large size and rich flowering. And when we straightened our backs, there lay Skye around us, its low green hills generally ringed by basalt ridges, as if their flattened tops had been built up for some circus performance in the remote days of the Fians, while always there was the sea, glittering deep blue in sun and wind, and brooded over by massive headlands.