The Western Isles, or Outer Hebrides, form a long chain of islands off Scotland's north-west Atlantic coast, historically divided between Inverness-shire and Ross-shire until local government reform in 1975 finally united the whole chain under a single authority. An eighteenth-century survey found Lewis, the largest of the group at some thirty miles long, thinly settled by a tall, fair-complexioned population and almost entirely without timber, its economy centred on Stornoway, the chief town, whose excellent and well-frequented harbour supported a growing herring fishery under the improving ownership of the Mackenzie family of Seaforth, successors to the older Macleod lordship of the isle.
In the parish of Barvas, the survey described a huge standing stone called the Thrushel, over twenty feet high, along with similar stones at Loch Carloway, but reserved its greatest admiration for the remarkable cluster of thirty-nine pyramidal stones near the village of Classernish, each some six or seven feet tall and believed by contemporary writers to be the work of the ancient Druids, a monument now known worldwide as the Callanish Stones and recognised as one of the most important Neolithic sites in Britain. The Harris isles, separated from Lewis by a narrow sound and bearing names of Norse origin, together with North and South Uist, Benbecula and Barra further south, completed a chain the surveyor found so similar in general character that little needed adding beyond their names, bleak in appearance yet supporting cattle-rearing and good coastal fishing throughout.
Gaelic remained, as it still does today, the dominant everyday language across virtually the whole island chain, a linguistic and cultural continuity that, together with the ancient stones of Callanish and the Norse-inflected place names of Harris, gives the Western Isles a depth of distinct identity unmatched by almost any other part of Britain.