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CROFTERS' COTTAGES NEAR UIG, SKYE.

OUR JOURNEY TO THE HEBRIDES.
By JOSEPH PENNELL and ELIZABETH ROBINS PENNELL.

LONDON
T. FISHER UNWIN
PATERNOSTER SQUARE

MDCCCXC

PREFACE.

The greater part of "Our Journey to the Hebrides" was published originally in Harper's Magazine. When it appeared it was severely criticised, and we were taken to task for not discovering in Scotland and the Scotch what has been made the fashion to find there—for not giving second-hand descriptions, which are the stock in trade of Scotch guide-books, whether romantic or real; in a word, for not staying at home and manufacturing our journey in the British Museum.

It is gradually dawning upon us that this is what is wanted by the majority of critics. To go to a country and tell what really happened to you—to dare to say, for the information of future cyclers or travellers, that one small piece of road is bad, that on one day out of ten or fifteen it rained, that at one small hotel you were uncomfortable or turned away, is enough to make the critic declare that you have found everything in that country to be awry. This was our fate when we attempted to describe the most enjoyable trip we ever made—our ride across France. We have no hesitation in saying that our trip to Scotland was the most miserable. We undertook to walk, owing to the misrepresentations of people who we do not believe ever in their lives walked half as far as we did a year ago. As we have shown, when tramping became unendurable we went by coach or train, by steamer or sail-boat; but we walked far enough to see the country as, we venture to think, it has seldom been seen by other travellers. For, with all its drawbacks, walking has this one advantage: not only do you stop at the correct show-places on your route, but you go slowly over the unknown country which lies between them. That the weather in the Western Highlands and Islands is vile is a fact which cannot be denied, though to mention it is held to be a crime. But, for the benefit of those who, because we speak of the rain and of the fatigue of walking, think we shut our eyes to everything else on our journey, let us say here, once and for all, that we found the whole country BEAUTIFUL and full of the most WONDERFUL EFFECTS; but we must also add that it is the most abominable to travel through, and its people are the most down-trodden on God's earth.

This is the best and most concise description of the Western Highlands and Islands that could be given.

Because we saw and described the actual condition of the population, and ignored the pleasures—in which we might have joined—of a handful of landlords and sportsmen whose fathers brought about this condition, and who themselves are fighting to maintain it, we have been asked what is the use of digging up ancient history? Thank Heaven, it is now two years since the Crofters' Act was passed by Parliament; but when we were in the Islands the first test case of a tenant pleading against the landlord who wished to evict him was tried, and gained by the tenant. While we were in Barra, the disenfranchisement of the entire island was accomplished by a trick which the most unscrupulous American politician would not have dared to play. The Crofters' Commission had then just begun to reduce rents—fifty-seven per cent. is the average reduction—and to cancel arrears. It has raised rents on certain estates, is an argument used by landlords, who forget to tell you that where rents have been raised they have been compelled to give back pasture-land to the crofters. It was but a few weeks after our return to London that a rebellion broke out in the Island of Lewis, and was quelled only by the decision of the Edinburgh Court, which declared deer not to be protected by law; so that for the rest of the winter crofters and cotters ate venison with their oatmeal. It was this decision, and not the war-ships, which prevented open insurrection in all the Islands.

Some of our critics have been good enough to inform us that crofters were never turned off their crofts to make room for deer. With those who refuse to accept the testimony officially published in the Blue-books there is no use to enter into a discussion. For those who know little of the subject, and for whom Blue-books would necessitate long study, here are the facts—facts which no one can question—in a nutshell. We quote from an article on "The Crofters of the Highlands," published in the Westminster Review for February, 1888:

"In addition to these many injustices" (injustices, that is, suffered by the crofters), "there is one which in certain districts almost overshadows them all; namely, the absorption of vast areas, embracing much fertile land in deer forests. It matters little whether crofters were actually evicted to make room for deer, or whether sheep farms have been converted to this purpose; both have happened very largely, with the result that, according to the Royal Commissioners, about two million acres are now devoted to deer forests. Large as this figure is, it is considerably below the mark, as has been shown by even better authorities on the subject. Nor must it be supposed that deer forests consist merely of barren and worthless land. Unless there is a large amount of good grass-land in a forest the deer would starve, and all this good land in times past supported a large population, whose descendants are now suffering destitution in the bare and unfruitful regions near the coast."

To their shame be it said, the American millionaires who are beginning to rent these deer forests are the men who are now doing the most to encourage the continuance in their present position of the sons of the land-grabbers, or, we should say, the heroes of the ancient history and romance of the country.

There is another evil of these great deer forests which should not be forgotten. A crofter, after working all day, often has to sit up all night to keep these beasts, which were supposed to be private property, out of his little croft. For if the deer eat all his crops, he had no redress; if the crofter shot one of them, or hurt it in any way in driving it out, you may be sure the factor made him suffer for it—at one time he would most likely have been evicted. We want it to be understood that in these vast tracts of deer forest none but sportsmen and game-keepers are allowed to go. If your house were to lie on one side and the village on the other, you would have to go miles around to reach it. Nor can you go near streams which run in the open country, for fear you may disturb the fish, which are preserved for English or American sportsmen.

Just as we are writing this Preface we have begun to receive, for the first time in our lives, anonymous letters. Hitherto we did not believe there were people stupid and imbecile enough to write such things. One of these creatures, who is ashamed of his own identity, encloses, with an amusing letter written on Kansas City Club paper—which, however, does not reveal whether he is the president or the hall porter of the club—an article of a column and a half from the Scotsman, which calls our "Journey to the Hebrides" "sentimental nonsense," "culpable misrepresentation," "amazing impertinence." And then, without attempting to show in what the misrepresentation or nonsense or impertinence consists, the writer of this article goes on to give his own ideas on the subject of the crofters, quoting statements made from other sources, and attributing them to us, misrepresenting us, and yet not attempting to contradict any one fact brought forward in any one of the articles, but taking up space in the paper to contradict the reports of the Scotsman's own reporter, printed but a few months before. We are accused of exaggerating the misery of the people. We have lying by our side as we write, column after column, amounting to page after page, from the Scotsman, which is by no means the crofters' friend, giving detailed pictures of this misery, which we, in our generalizing, could not approach. Here is a specimen taken at hazard from the pile of clippings. "A Tale of Poverty" it is headed, and it was published January 17, 1888:

"Quite a typical case of poverty was that of Donald Mackenzie, a middle-aged man, who occupied a half croft at a rental of £2. He was married, with five young children, and they had been living exclusively on potatoes, occasionally with fish, for three months, until they got a half boll of meal from a destitution fund. That was now done, and he had that day borrowed a bowlful from a neighbour. He had fished at Stornoway in the summer, and had kept the family alive; but his wife assured the stranger that he had not brought home a single shilling. She added that she herself had not had shoes for four years, and the children were no better off. A very similar case was that of Norman Macmillan. He was a cottar and fisherman, having a half lot from another tenant. He had also not taken home a shilling from the fishing last year; and, except working on his lot, he could find nothing to do until the fishing season came on again. He had seven children, the eldest twelve years. They had eaten up their potatoes by the beginning of winter, and now they had but a little barley-meal left. He did not know what to do now, he said, unless Providence opened the way for them. They had often been without food, he said, although they had kept it. There was none to relieve them. He stated that formerly they used to get credit from the merchants while they were engaged at the fishing, but that they did not get now. One of the houses visited in this township was that of the wife of Donald Macmillan, one of the men now standing trial in Edinburgh on a charge of having taken part in the Park deer raid. Macmillan lived in a very small cot at the back of his father's house, which his father had used as a barn. It was very poorly furnished even for that locality. There was a family of five small children, and there was only one bed in the house, with one blanket. Three of the children slept out with a neighbour. Macmillan cultivated the half of his father's croft, and had one cow. He was also a fisherman, having a share in a boat of forty-one feet keel; but, though he had attended the Barra fishing last summer, he had made nothing. His wife had got a boll of meal from the destitution fund, but besides that, she had only two barrels of potatoes. Previous to getting that meal, they had lived exclusively on potatoes. She stated that when her husband went out to the deer raid, there was but one barrel of potatoes; but since then, she explained, she had fallen back upon the seed."

Here is another, from January 20th of the same year, when four columns were devoted to crofter affairs:

"From here a drive of about four miles brought the visitors to Arebruich—a township fixed in a spot which was surely never intended for human beings. As one passes onwards from Balallan, the soil gradually sinks lower and lower on the north side of the loch until, when Arebruich is reached, it is almost level to the water's edge. The result is that the land is literally a floating bog, and it is a miracle how the poor people, who labour away at the barren scraps of earth which show some signs of cultivation, manage to get any food raised out of them. A rude, clayish pathway extends for some little distance from the main road, but it soon stops, as if the builders had thrown up the work in disgust. There are sixteen crofts, such as they are, in the township, and these are occupied by twenty-six families. The first house visited was that of John Mackinnon, a stout, good-looking man in spite of his surroundings. He lives on his mother's lot, which is rented at £2.15s., exclusive of taxes. His mother, who is eighty years old, lives, along with an unmarried daughter, in an adjoining house. He paid 35s. two years ago to the factor, but since then he has been able to pay nothing. He fished as a hired man last year at Lybster; but his earnings were so small that when his season's board was paid he had only 9d. left. A friend had to lend him his passage-money. At present he has three barrels of potatoes left, but neither meal nor money. He has two of a family, besides himself and wife. They have to live on potatoes. His mother never got any parochial relief, and she and her daughter have to struggle along as best they can. He has one cow and eight sheep. When the destitution meal was being distributed he got three stones, and his mother an equal quantity. He does not know what to do, and has no prospects whatever. The next house presented a worse case. It was that of Widow Murdo Macleod, a sister of Mackinnon. She said her husband was drowned at Loch Seaforth seven years ago, when they were only ten months married. She had one daughter, who was born shortly after her husband was drowned. She has made her living all these years by knitting and sewing and odd jobs, but never got any help from the Parochial Board, though she applied several times. She has neither land nor stock, and never had any. She generally gets a few potatoes from her brother at harvest time. She has half a barrel on hand at present, and about a stone of meal, the remains of what was got from the destitution fund. She always tried to be industrious, and therefore was never actually in absolute want. She always enjoyed good health, and felt very thankful for it. The hut in which this woman and her daughter live is wretchedly poor, and the single bed is barely covered with a thin blanket."[A]

On January 20th, in a leader, the same paper declared that the facts which we have given are "distressing," and ought to excite "interest" and sympathy. There is no talk here of sentimental nonsense! Distressing we should think they were. One cannot help saying that it is nothing less than infamous that a mere handful of landlords should have controlled the destiny of, and extracted every penny from, the population of these Islands—the people whom they have kept for generations in poverty, not that they might improve the land, but that they might pass their own time in useless idleness and cruel sport. It is not a question of over-population. The real evil is that the Islanders have been ground down and tyrannized over simply to gratify the amusements of their masters. We have heard again and again that the position of a landlord does not pay; if it did not, the landlords would sell their estates to-morrow.

For weeks, early in this year (1888), every Scotch and English paper, even to the Times, had columns about the misery of the crofters—that is, columns of extracts similar to these we have quoted. Whatever reasons were given for it, no one questioned their destitution. And yet within a year all these reports are forgotten; and for generalizing and not going into details—heart-breaking details—we are called sickly sentimentalists. So glaring is this complete forgetfulness and contradiction that we cannot help taking some notice of it, and calling the attention of these papers to their own reports.

As to the rest of our critics, they did not even know enough to contradict themselves, except in one case, which we have pointed out elsewhere, and their other criticism is not directed against our facts.

In dwelling upon the misery of the people, we do not pretend, as has been suggested, to give an off-hand settlement of the economic problems of the Islands. We merely state what we saw, what it was impossible to avoid seeing, wherever we went. It must be remembered that it is not merely a minority, or even a majority, but the entire population who exist in this condition of absolute wretchedness and semi-starvation. With the exception of a few small towns on the coast for the convenience of tourists and landlords, you find throughout the Islands but the occasional beautiful castle or shooting-lodge, or great farm-house, and the many crowded stone piles politely called cottages. And it was because we were more struck with this misery than with the romance of the past that, our journey over, we interested ourselves in learning something of the immediate reasons for the present condition of the Western Highlanders and Islanders, rather than in reading about the murders and massacres of the MacGregor and the Macleod, the Mac this and the Mac that. We were not blind to the beauty, the sternness, the wildness of the country; but the sadness and sorrows of its people impressed us even more than the wonder and beauty of their land.

Joseph Pennell.
Elizabeth Robins Pennell.

Westminster, November 20, 1888.[B]

CONTENTS.

ILLUSTRATIONS.

IN THE HIGHLANDS.

It was a country about which we cared little, and knew less. We had heard of Highlands and Lowlands, of Melrose and Stirling, but for our lives we could not have pointed them out on the map. The rest of our knowledge was made up of confused impressions of Hearts of Mid-Lothian and Painters' Camps in the Highlands, Macbeths and Kidnappers, Skye terriers and Shetland shawls, blasted heaths and hills of mist, Rob Roys and Covenanters; and, added to these, positive convictions of an unbroken Scotch silence and of endless breakfasts of oatmeal, dinners of haggis, and suppers of whiskey. Hot whiskey punch is a good thing in its way, and at times, but not as a steady diet. Oatmeal we think an abomination. And as for haggis—well, we only knew it as it was once described to us by a poet: the stomach of some animal filled with all sorts of unpleasant things and then sewed up. We recalled the real dinners and friendly peasants of France and Italy, and hated the very name of Scotland.

It will easily be understood that we could not plan a route out of our ignorance and prejudice. It remained to choose a guide, and our choice, I hardly know why, fell upon Dr. Johnson. Every one must remember—I say this though we did not even know it until we looked into the matter—that Dr. Johnson met Boswell in Edinburgh, and in his company journeyed up the east coast as far as Inverness, then across the Highlands to the west, and so to the Hebrides, coming back by way of Inverary, Loch Lomond, and Glasgow. It looked a long journey on the map, and seemed a weary one in the pages of Boswell and Johnson; but as if this were not bad enough, we made up our minds, for the sake of novelty, to walk.

Of our preparations for the journey I will say nothing. We carried less than Stanley and more than the average tramp. We took many things which we ought not to have taken, and we left behind many things which we ought to have taken. But this matters little, since our advice to all about to start on a walking tour is, Don't.

On the 28th of July we arrived in

EDINBURGH,

"a city too well known to admit description." If Dr. Johnson thought so a hundred years ago, it is not for us, who propose to be his followers, to differ from him. Indeed, during our stay in that city, so eager were we to be faithful to him in all things that we should have allowed ourselves to be dined, teaed and suppered, even as he was, but for an obstacle. The only person whom we knew in Edinburgh was away, and the fame of our coming had not, as with Dr. Johnson, gone before us.

We were careful to find St. James's Court, where Boswell lived, and where clothes, drying in what sun there is, now hang from his windows. And we went to the old White Horse Inn, where the Doctor, on his arrival, stayed until Boswell came to carry him off in triumph; and where probably the tourist of another year will not go, for already in the court-yard are signs of the coming of the destroyer.

We had resolved to reverse the order of their journey by going to the Western Islands first, and coming home along the east coast. In this way we should avoid the September storms which kept them in the Hebrides. Now we also decided to go straight to Glasgow, and not to stop at Hamilton, where they spent a night.

On Saturday, July 30th, we began our walk in a cab, and continued it for many miles in a railway-carriage. We represented to ourselves that the country between Edinburgh and Glasgow, of which we knew nothing, was stupid, and that we must get to Glasgow for Sunday. There was no earthly reason for this, but it was an excuse, and we made the most of it.

Dr. Johnson says that "to describe a city so much frequented as

GLASGOW

is unnecessary," and again we are willing to take his word for it. But its Cathedral was the first of the many surprises Scotland had in store for us. We had heard of it, but that was all. One young lady of Glasgow, fresh from a tour on the Continent, told us that she had never seen it. We were therefore prepared to find it no great thing. The exterior did not disappoint our expectations, but we have seldom been more impressed with an interior, and this though we had just come from the loveliest churches of England.

The crypt, or rather the under church, is its pride, as indeed it well may be. A verger stood smoking a pipe at the south door, and we told him what we thought. J——, after three years' work in the English cathedrals, felt himself no mean authority.

"It's the finest in the world," said the verger.

"In Great Britain perhaps, but not in Europe," said J——; for we had been but a moment before comparing it, as it now is, a cold, bare, show-place, to the under church of Assisi with the frescos on the walls, the old lamps burning before altars, the sweet smell of incense, and the monks kneeling in prayer.

"I only tell you what those qualified have said," and the verger settled the matter and J——'s pretensions.

It was in the Glasgow crypt Rob Roy gave the warning to Frank Osbaldistone. The guide-book recalled the incident, which we had forgotten. Indeed the farther we went, the more we were reminded that to travel in Scotland is to travel through the Waverley Novels, and that these to us were but a name. Since our return we have tried to read them again, to be quite honest, with but indifferent pleasure. We are so wanting in appreciation that we find Scott's description of the crypt stupid, and we are not thrilled by the daring deeds of the MacGregor.

The Art Gallery in Glasgow was no less a surprise to us than the Cathedral. Its catalogue contains more Titians, Rembrandts. Hobbemas, and other great masters than any other in Europe. But if we wondered at the catalogue, we were still more astonished when we came to see the pictures!

We stayed in Glasgow until Monday morning, when we again took the train, but this time for a few miles only. We bought tickets for Kilpatrick, and a sharp lookout we had to keep for it from the carriage windows. At the stations, no one called the names, which, in true British fashion, were less easy to find than that of the best brand of mustard or of the best hotel in Glasgow. At Kilpatrick, when I pulled my head in after the usual search, J—— was already at the opposite door. He did not care where he was, he said; he would get out. In the distance, we could see Dumbarton Rock rising from the plain against a blue sky. Here, as in our plans for the day's journey, it was the one prominent landmark.

Kilpatrick is said to have been the birthplace of St. Patrick. I do not know what authority Black[C] has for the legend; certainly not that of the villagers. St. Patrick was no British man, one of them told us; and, moreover, he never lived in Kilpatrick, but on the hill. But had we ever heard of Captain Shonstone, the hairbor-maister? He was a great man.

We made a great show of briskness by going the long way round by the canal. This was the only time throughout our journey that we turned from the main road—except to take a short-cut. Mr. Lee Meriwether, in his Tramp Abroad, thought it an advantage of walking that he could leave the road to see whatever was to be seen near, but not from it. For our part, after the first mile, we never took an extra step for any sight; that is, whenever our knapsacks were on our backs. At Dumbarton we did not even climb the rock, though Dr. Johnson walked to the very top. Instead, we lunched and talked politics with the British workman in a coffee tavern.

After Dumbarton, we left the Clyde to follow the Leven. It was just beyond the town we first saw Ben-Lomond, a blue shadow on the horizon when the clouds were heavy above; a high bare mountain, seamed and riven, when the sun shone upon it. We lost sight of it in a succession of long, stupid villages; on the shady road, where the trees met overhead, we could see it again through the net-work of branches. Clouds were low on its heights, and a veil of soft light rain fell before it when, having left our knapsacks in the inn at Balloch, we rowed up the Leven, a little quiet river between low woods and flat meadow-land, to

LOCH LOMOND.

It was the first Scotch lake we saw, and we thought it very like any other lake.

We were off by eight in the morning. It was clear and cool, like an October day at home. Our road lay for a while close to the loch, then turned and went round the parks and lawns that sloped gently to the shore, so that it was only over a stone wall or through a gap in the hedge we could see the blue water and the wooded islands. We were now on the fighting-ground of the Colquhoun and the MacGregor, we learned from Black, who—we know it to our cost—is a better guide to the romance and history of Scotland than to its roads. It is but poor comfort when you ask for a good route to be given a quotation.

Rob Roy is the hero of Loch Lomond, and if you cross—as we did not—to the other side, you may see his cave and his prison and a lot of his other belongings. But I think that which is best worth seeing on the loch is the Colquhoun's village of Luss, with its neat, substantial cottages and trim gardens. In the Highlands you can have your fill of tales of outlaws and massacres and horrors; but it is not every day you come to a village like this, where men are allowed to live a little better than their beasts.

TARBET, LOCH LOMOND.

At the Colquhoun Arms in Luss we ate our lunch, and that was our undoing. It left us in a mood for lounging, and we had still eight miles to go. We found it harder work the second day than the first. Our knapsacks weighed like lead, and did not grow lighter; each mile seemed interminable. This was the more provoking because with every step the way grew lovelier. Almost all the afternoon we were within sight of the loch, while on our left the mountains now rose from the very road-side, and hedges gave place to hill-sides of ferns and heather-patched bowlders. Used as we both were to cycling, the slowness and monotony of our pace was intolerable. We longed for a machine that would carry us and our knapsacks with ease over the hard, dustless road. For one mile we tried to keep each other in countenance. J—— was the first to rebel openly. The Highlands were a fraud, he declared; the knapsack was an infernal nuisance and he was a fool to carry it. About three miles from Tarbet he sat down and refused to go any farther.

Just then, by chance, there came a drag full of young girls, and when they saw us they laughed, and passed by on the other side. And likewise a dog-cart, and the man driving, when he first saw us, waved his hand, taking us to be friends; but when he was at the place and looked at us, he also passed by on the other side. But two tricyclers, as they journeyed, came where we were; and when they saw us they had compassion on us, and came to us, and gathered up our knapsacks and set them on their machines and brought them to the inn and took care of them. And yet there are many who think cyclers nothing but cads on casters!

To tell the truth, had these two men been modern Rob Roys, we would have yielded up our knapsacks as cheerfully; nor would we have sorrowed never to see them again.

As we went on our way lightly and even gayly, we came to the inn at

TARBET,

and were received by a waiter in a dress-coat. It was a big hotel low down by the loch, with Ben-Lomond for opposite neighbor. The company at dinner was made up of Englishmen and Englishwomen. But everybody talked to everybody else. An Englishman, it seems, becomes civilized in the Highlands. There, those he sits down with at dinner, as is the way with Frenchmen, are his friends; at home, he would look upon them as his enemies.

After dinner we went to walk with the cyclers. As a great theatrical moon came sailing up through the sky behind Ben-Lomond, one told us in broad Scotch how from the Jungfrau he had once watched the moon rise, and at the sight had bur-r-r-st into tee-eers. But just then, had I wept at all, it must have been from sheer weariness, so I turned my back upon the beauty of the evening and went to bed.

GLENCROE.

It was well on towards noon the next day before we were on our way.

"It looks like business," said a young lady feeding a pet donkey, as she saw us start.

"It feels like it too," said I, dolefully, for the knapsacks were no lighter, and our feet were tender after the sixteen miles of the day before.

It was two easy miles to Arrochar, a village of white cottages and a couple of inns, one with a tap, the other with a temperance sign. Here we were ferried across Loch Long by a fisherman sad as his native hills. It was a wretched season, he told us; there were few people about. On the west side of the loch, the road was wild, and soon turned up to Glencroe. At the lower end of the pass, sheep browsed on the hill-sides, and in tiny fields men and women were cutting grass. The few cottages were new. But these things we left behind when the road began to wind upward in short, sudden curves. It was shut in on both sides by mountains; the sun glittered on their sheer precipices and overhanging cliffs and on the hundreds of watercourses with which their slopes were seamed. The way was steep, and I thought I should have died before I reached the top. At the last we made a short-cut up to the stone known, out of compliment to Wordsworth, as "Rest and be Thankful." There may be men and women with so much poetry in their souls, that after that stiff climb they will still care to find the appropriate lines in their guide-books, and then have breath enough left to repeat them. But we were too hot and tired to do anything but lie on the grass and, as we rested, look down upon and enjoy the wonderful pictures away beyond and below us.

In this lonely place a little loch lies dark and peaceful among the hills. Restil, its name is; I do not know what it means, but it has a pretty sound. Nothing could be more monotonous to tramp over than the long stretch of road which follows Kinglas Water almost to the shores of Loch Fyne. Our feet were blistered, and now ached at every step. Our shoulders were sorely strained. The things we said are best not written. When the coach from Inverary passed and until it was out of sight, we made a feint of not being tired. But the rest of the way we now grew eloquent in abuse, now limped in gloomy silence.

It was a mistake (which we afterward regretted) going to

CAIRNDOW,

and I do not know why we made it, except that in mapping out our route we had little help from Black. We had to learn from experience, which is but a poor way, if you find out your errors when it is too late to mend them. We were bound to Inverary, Dr. Johnson's next stopping-place. At the top of Glencroe, we should have turned to our left and walked down Hell's Glen to St. Catharine's, where there is a steam ferry to Inverary on the opposite shores of Loch Fyne. As it was, we had turned to our right and walked to a point almost at the top of the loch where there was no ferry, and where five miles lay between us and St. Catharine's. This was the coach road from Tarbet, and the guide-book has but little interest in travellers who go afoot. Though one hears much of walking tours in the Highlands, but few are made. In seven weeks' walking we scarcely met even a tramp.

We felt our mistake the more keenly because of the unpleasantness of the inn. The landlady greeted us warmly; like the ferry-man of the morning, she found there were too few tourists abroad. But her greeting was better than her rooms or her dinner, and she herself was unco' canny.

There was in the inn a young artist whose name she told us. We had never heard it, and this showed our ignorance; for he came from London, where he had won the first prize in an exhibition, and his wife, who was with him, had won the second, and altogether they were very great, and it was small wonder they did not care to dine with unknown travellers who carried sketch-books. But, indeed, I think in no country in the world except Great Britain will one artist not be glad to meet another when chance throws them together. An English artist wrecked on a desert island would not recognize a brother artist in the same plight as "one of the fraternity," unless the latter could make good his claims by the excellence, not of his work, but of his letters of introduction or the initials after his name. Nor does he unbend in the Highlands, where Englishmen of other crafts become so very sociable.

When we walked out after a bad dinner, the eastern hills rose against the pale yellow light of the coming moon. One star sent a shining track across the dark water, over which every now and again the wind marked its passage in long lines of silver ripples. Of all the sweet still evenings of our journey, we shall always remember this as the sweetest and stillest.