Hard-ware and several small articles are brought annually
from Greenock, and sold in the only shop in the island, which is kept
near the house, or rather hut, used for publick worship, there being no
church in the island. The inhabitants of Col have increased considerably
within these thirty years, as appears from the parish registers. There
are but three considerable tacksmen on Col's part of the island[814]:
the rest is let to small tenants, some of whom pay so low a rent as
four, three, or even two guineas. The highest is seven pounds, paid by a
farmer, whose son goes yearly on foot to Aberdeen for education, and in
summer returns, and acts as a schoolmaster in Col. Dr. Johnson said,
'There is something noble in a young man's walking two hundred miles and
back again, every year, for the sake of learning[815].'
This day a number of people came to Col, with complaints of each others'
trespasses. Corneck, to prevent their being troublesome, told them, that
the lawyer from Edinburgh was here, and if they did not agree, he would
take them to task. They were alarmed at this; said, they had never been
used to go to law, and hoped Col would settle matters himself. In the
evening Corneck left us.
As, in our present confinement, any thing that had even the name of
curious was an object of attention, I proposed that Col should shew me
the great stone, mentioned in a former page[816], as having been thrown
by a giant to the top of a mountain.
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