Their meat, being often newly killed, is very tough, and, as nothing is sufficiently subdued by the fire, is not easily to be eaten.  Carving is here a very laborious employment, for the knives are never whetted.  Table knives are not of long subsistence in the highlands:  every man, while arms were a regular part of dress, had his knife and fork appendant to his dirk.  Knives they now lay upon the table, but the handles are apt to show that they have been in other hands, and the blades have neither brightness nor edge.

Of silver, there is no want, and it will last long, for it is never cleaned.  They are a nation just rising from barbarity:  long contented with necessaries, now somewhat studious of convenience, but not yet arrived at delicate discriminations.  Their linen is, however, both clean and fine.  Bread, such as we mean by that name, I have never seen in the isle of Skie.  They have ovens, for they bake their pies; but they never ferment their meal, nor mould a loaf.  Cakes of oats and barley are brought to the table, but I believe wheat is reserved for strangers.  They are commonly too hard for me, and, therefore, I take potatoes to my meat, and am sure to find them on almost every table.

They retain so much of the pastoral life, that some preparation of milk is commonly one of the dishes, both at dinner and supper.  Tea is always drunk at the usual times; but, in the morning, the table is polluted with a plate of slices of strong cheese.  This is peculiar to the highlands; at Edinburgh there are always honey and sweetmeats on the morning tea-table.

Strong liquors they seem to love.  Every man, perhaps, woman, begins the day with a dram; and the punch is made both at dinner and supper.

They have neither wood nor coal for fuel, but burn peat or turf in their chimneys.  It is dug out of the moors or mosses, and makes a strong and lasting fire, not always very sweet, and somewhat apt to smoke the pot.

The houses of inferiour gentlemen are very small, and every room serves many purposes.  In the bed-rooms, perhaps, are laid up stores of different kinds; and the parlour of the day is a bed-room at night.  In the room which I inhabited last, about fourteen feet square, there were three chests of drawers, a long chest for larger clothes, two closet-cupboards, and the bed.  Their rooms are commonly dirty, of which they seem to have little sensibility, and if they had more, clean floors would be difficultly kept, where the first step from the door is into the dirt.  They are very much inclined to carpets, and seldom fail to lay down something under their feet, better or worse, as they happen to be furnished.

The highland dress, being forbidden by law, is very little used; sometimes it may be seen, but the English traveller is struck with nothing so much as the nudite des pieds of the common people.