country, and in the plenty and elegance of the domestick entertanment, to a castle in Gothick romances. The sea with a little island is before us. ¿Cascades play within view. Close to the house işithe formidable skeleton of an old castle, probably Danish; and the whole mass of building stands upon a protuberance of rock, inaccessible till of late but by a pair of stairs on the sea-side, and secure in ancient times against any enemy that was likely to invade the kingdom of Skie, out Cyperulq railto [ltiw borsqmoɔ "Macleod has offered me an island. If it were not too far off,ə] should hardly refuse it. My island would be pleasanter than Brighthelmstone, if you and my master could comes to it but I cannot think it pleasant to live quite alone, vpn masste Iluna o diwed ava d'ad enistaron diw shutilor

Oblitusque meorum, obliviscendus et illis. bodool I dised

tori baim 9:ft tud betools That I should be elated by the dominion of an island to forgetfulness of my friends at Streatham I cannot believe, and I hope neveroto deserve that, they should be willing to forget melt rot; [soidqozolidq "It has happened that, I have been often recognised in my journey where I did not, expect it. At Aberdeen I found one of my acquaintance professor of physick; turning aside to dine with a country gentleman, I was owned at table by one who had seen me at a philosophical lecture; at Macdonald's I was claimed by a naturalist, who wanders about the islands to pick up curiosities; and I had once in London attracted the notice of Lady Macleod, I will now go on with my account. - bis big!971 ai god ei busltonë ni 230M

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་་ "The Highland girl made tea, and looked and talked not inelers gantly. Her father was by no means an ignorant or a weak man There were books in the cottage, among which were some volumes of Prideaux's Connexion. This man's conversation we were glad of while we staid. He had been out, as they call it, in forty-five, and still retained his old opinions. He was going to America, because his rent was raised, beyond what he thought himself able to pay, 978

"At night our beds were made, but we had some difficulty in per suading ourselves to lie down in them, though we had put on our own sheets; at last we ventured, and I slept very soundly in the vale of Glen morrison, amidst the rocks and mountains. Next morning our land lord liked us so well, that he walked some miles with us for our company, through a country so wild and barren, that the proprietors does not, with all his pressure upon his tenants, raise more than four hundred pounds a year for near one hundred square miles, of sixty thousand acres. He let us know that he had forty head of black cattle, an hundred goats, and an hundred sheep, upon a farm that he remembered let at five pounds a year, but for which he now paid twenty. He told us some stories of their march into England.

At last he left us, and we went forward, winding among mountains, Sometimes green and sometimes naked, commonly so steep as not easily to be climbed by the greatest vigour and activity. Our way was often crossed by little rivulets, and we were entertained with small streams trickling from the rocks, which after heavy rains must be tremendous torrents.

to About noon we came to a small glen, so they call a valley, which compared with other places appeared rich and fertile; here our guides desired us to stop, that the horses might graze, for the journey was very laborious, and no more grass would be found. We made no difficulty of compliance, and I sat down to take notes on a green bank, with a small stream running at my feet, in the midst of savage solitude, with mountains before me, and on either hand covered with heath. I looked around me, and wondered that I was not more affected, but the mind is not at all times equally ready to be put in motion. If my mistress and master and Queeney had been there, we should have produced some reflections among us, either poetical or philosophical; for though solitude be the nurse of woe, conversation is often the parent of remarks and discoveries.qqad zod al « -95 In about an hour we remounted, and pursued our journey. The lake by which we had travelled for some time ended in a river, which we passed by a bridge, and came to another glen, with a collection of huts, called Auknashealds. The huts were generally built of clods of earth, held together by the intertexture of vegetable fibres, of which earth there are great levels in Scotland, which they call Moss in Scotland is bog in Ireland, and moss-trooper is bog trotter. There was, however, one hut built of loose stones, piled up with great thickness into a strong though not solid wall. From this house we obtained some great pails of milk; and having brought bread with us, were very liberally regaled. The inhabitants, a very coarse tribe, ignorant of any language but Earse, gathered so fast about us, that if we had not had Highlanders with us, they might have caused more alarm than pleasure; they are called the Clan of Macrae.

mosses.

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We had been told that nothing gratified the Highlanders so much as snuff and tobacco, and had accordingly stored ourselves with both at Fort Augustus. Boswell opened his treasure, and gave them each a piece of tobacco-roll. We had more bread than we could eat for the present, and were more liberal than provident. Boswell cut it in slices, and gave them an opportunity of tasting wheaten bread for the first time. I then got some halfpence for a shilling, and made up the deficiencies of Boswell's distribution, who had given some money among the children. We then directed that the mistress of the stone house should be asked what we must pay her: she, who perhaps had never before sold any thing but cattle, knew not, I believe, well what to

ask, and referred herself to us. We obliged her to make some demand, and one of the Highlanders settled the account with her at a shilling. One of the men advised her, with the cunning that clowns never can be without, to ask more; but she said that a shilling was enough. We gave her half-a-crown, and she offered part of it again. The Macraes were so well pleased with our behaviour, that they declared Laiva of it the best day they had seen since the time of the old bus Macleod, who, I suppose, like us, stopped in their valley as he was travelling to Skie.

"We were mentioning this view of the Highlander's life at Macdonald's, and mentioning the Macraes with some degree of pity, when a. Highland lady informed us that we might spare, our tenderness, ith milk was for she doubted not but the woman who supplied us with mistress of thirteen or fourteen milch cows. 709 quidton "I cannot forbear to interrupt my narrative. Boswell, with some

was

The return of my

And reminded of his troublesome kindness, has informed this family and 560701 Wom me that the 18th of September is my birthday. birthday, if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape. I can now look back upon threescore and four years, in which little has been done, and little has been enjoyed; a life diversified by misery, spent part în sluggishness of penury, and part under the violence of pain, in gloomy discontent or importunate distress. But perhaps I am better than I should have been if I had been less afflicted. With this I will try to be content.

“In proportion as there is less pleasure in retrospective considerations, the mind is more disposed to wander forward into futurity ; but at sixty-four what promises, however liberal, of imaginary good, can futurity venture to make? yet something will be always pro090 and mised, and some promises will always be credited. I am hoping I am praying that I may live better in the time to come, whether long or short, than I have yet lived, and in the solace of that hope endeavour to repose. Dear Queeney's day is next. I hope she at sixty-four will have less to regret.

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I will now complain no more, but tell my mistress of my travels. “After we left the Macraes, we travelled on through a country like that which we passed in the morning. The Highlands are very uniform, for there is little, variety in universal barrenness. The rocks, Dirler 900 however, are not all naked: some have grass on their sides, and

wintry

eid

broad birches and alders on their tops; and in the valleys are often blog and clear streams, which have little depth, and commonly run very floods: quick the channels are made by the violence of the the quickness of the stream is in proportion to the declivity of the descent, and the breadth of the channel makes' dry season.

water shallow in a

bugumb orego There are red deer and roebucks in the mountains; but we found prilie only goats s'in the road, and had very little entertainment as we travelled either for the eye or ear. There are, I fancy, no singing birds in the Highlands.

"Towards night we came to a very formidable hill called Rattiken, which we climbed with more difficulty than we had yet experienced, and at last came to Glanelg, a place on the sea-side opposite to Skie.

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We were by this time weary and disgusted; nor was our humour much mended by our inn, which, though it was built of lime and slate, the Highlander's description of a house which he thinks magnificent, had neither wine, bread, eggs, nor any thing that we could eat or drink. When we were taken up stairs, a dirty fellow bounced out of the bed where one of us was to lie. Boswell blustered, but nothing could be got. At last a gentleman in the neighbourhood, who heard of our arrival, sent us rum and white sugar. Boswell was now provided for in part; and the landlord prepared some muttonchops, which we could not eat, and killed two hens, of which Boswell made his servant broil a limb, with what effect I know not. We had a lemon and a piece of bread, which supplied me with my supper. When the repast was ended, we began to deliberate upon bed. Mrs. Boswell had warned us that we should catch something, and had given us sheets for our security; for

and

,

she said, came back from Skie so scratching themselves I thought sheets a slender defence against the confederacy with which we were threatened, and by this time our Highlanders had found a place where they could get some hay. I ordered hay to be laid thick upon the bed, and slept upon it in my great coat. Boswell laid sheets upon his bed, and reposed in linen like a gentleman. The horses were bill the i turned out to grass, with a man to watch them. The hill Rattiken and inn at Glanelg were the only things of which we, or travellers yet more delicate, could find any pretensions to complain,

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September 2d, I rose rustling from the hay, and went to tea, which I forget whether we found or brought. We saw the Isle of Skie before us, darkening the horizon with its rocky coast. A boat was procured, and we launched into one of the straits of the Atlantick ocean. We had a passage of about twelve miles to the point where 1 resided, having come from his seat in the middle of the island to a small house on the shore, as we believe, that he might bus with less reproach entertain us meanly. If he aspired to meanness, his retrograde ambition was completely gratified; but he did not succeed equally in escaping reproach. He had no cook, nor I suppose much provision, nor had the lady the common decencies of her tea-table; we picked up our sugar with our fingers. Boswell was

very angry, and reproached him with his improper parsimony I did not much reflect upon the conduct of a man with whom I was not likely to converse as long at any other time. - 90

WOTĪBA 02

You will now expect that I should give you some account of the Isle of Skie, of which, though I have been twelve days upon it, I have little to say. It is an island, perhaps, fifty miles long, so much indented by inlets of the sea that there is no part of it removed from the water more than six miles. No part that I have seen is plain: you are always climbing or descending, and every step is upon rock or mire. A walk upon ploughed ground in England is a dance upon carpets compared to the toilsome drudgery of wandering in Skie. There is neither town nor village in the island, nor have I seen any house but Macleod's, that is not much below your habitation at Brighthelmstone. In the mountains there are stags and roebucks, but no hares and few rabbits; nor have I seen any thing that interested me as a zoologist, except an otter, bigger than I thought an otter could have been. -I : 294108

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"You are perhaps imagining that I am withdrawn from the and the busy world into regions of peace and pastoral felicity, and am enjoying the reliques of the golden age; that I am surveying Nature's magnificence from a mountain, or remarking her minuter beauties on the flowery bank of a winding rivulet; that I am invigorating myself in the sunshine, or delighting my imagination with being hidden from the invasion of human evils and human passions in the darkness of a thicket; that I am busy in gathering shells and pebbles on the shore, or contemplative on a rock, from which I look upon the water, and consider how many waves are rolling between me and Streatham.

"The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are. Here are mountains which I should once have climbed; but to climb steeps is now very laborious, and to descend them dangerous ; and I am now content with knowing that by scrambling up a rock I shall only see other rocks, and a wider circuit of barren desolation. Of streams we have here a sufficient number; but they murmur not upon pebbles, but upon rocks. Of flowers, if Chloris herself were here, I could present her only with the bloom of heath. Of lawns and thickets, he must read that would know them, for here is little sun and no shade. On the sea I look from my window, but am not much tempted to the shore; for since I came to this island, almost every breath of air has been a storm, and, what is worse, a storm with all its severity, but without its magnificence; for the sea is here so broken into channels, that there is not a sufficient volume of water either for lofty surges or a loud roar.

"On September 6th we left Macdonald's to visit Raarsa, the island