One always hears of Highland scenery at its best; one usually sees it at its worst. We found the trip from Oban to Inverness up the Caledonian Canal as tedious as it is said to be charming. The day was gray and misty and rainy. In the first boat we sat in the cabin, in the second under an awning. Occasionally we went on deck to look for the sights of the journey.

As we steamed up Loch Linne a Scotchman pointed out Ben-Nevis.

"Well," said J——, critically, "if you were to put a top on it, it might make a fairly decent mountain."

After that we were left to find the sights for ourselves.

The day would have been unbearably dull but for the exertions of a Mr. Macdonell. He was, I am as ashamed to say as he seemed to be, our fellow-countryman. He did not look in the least like an American, nor like an Englishman, though his ulster, coat, trousers, collar, necktie, gloves, and hat were all so English. He was a middle-aged man, handsome, and gentlemanly enough until he began to talk. At the very start he told everybody on board in general and each individual in particular that he was a Macdonell. As all the people about here are Macdonells, no one was startled. The name in these parts is rather more common than, and about as distinguished as, Smith in the Directory.

"I'm a Macdonell," he said, "and I'm proud of it. It's a great clan. No matter what our nationality may be now, sir, we're all Macdonells still. I'll tell you the way we do in our clan. Not long ago one of the Macdonells of Lochaber was married. He was not very rich—he had about £12,000 a year perhaps—and the Macdonells thought it would be a nice thing to give him a present of money from Macdonells all over the world. There was not a Macdonell who did not respond. I was in Melbourne at the time, and I was proud to give my guinea. Now, how different it was with Grant, that man who was President of the United States. The clan Grant tried to do the same thing when one of their chief's family was married, and the factor sent to this Grant, and said they would be very proud and had no doubt he would be very glad to contribute to this happy occasion in the old clan. And what do you think he answered? He indorsed on the letter sent him—I saw it myself—that he was not one of the tenantry, and therefore would not contribute. That shows what a snob he was. But it's very different with the Macdonells. I'll tell you what happened to me the other day near Banavie. I lost one of my gloves; they were driving gloves—expensive gloves, you know. I gave the odd one to the driver, and said if he could find the other he would have a pair. The next day he came to me with both gloves. 'Sir,' he said, 'I cannot keep them; I too am a Macdonell!' I gave him the other glove and a guinea. That shows the fine clannish feeling."

We have heard that there is a proverb about fools and Americans.

Mr. Macdonell stood on the upper deck to look towards the country of the Macdonells, which he could not see through the mist. He took out his guide-book and read poetry and facts about his clan, to two American girls, until, quite audibly, they pronounced it all stuff and him a bore. He praised the Macdonell chiefs to Englishmen until they laughed almost in his face. "The Duke of New York," they called him before evening. He sang the praises of his Macdonell land to any one who would listen. "I like it better than Switzerland or our own country," he said; "I'm coming back next year to rent a shooting-place. But the trouble is the people here don't like us. It's the fault of men like Carnegie. He comes and gives them £20,000 for a library. And then what does he do? He makes a speech against their queen. It's shocking. It's atrocious."

I wonder why Americans, as soon as they borrow the Englishman's clothes, must add his worst traits to their own faults. "That kind of American," a Londoner on board said to us, "has all the arrogance and insolence of a lord combined with the ignorance and snobbishness of a cad." He was right. Of all the men who rent the great deer forests of Scotland, none are such tyrants as the American millionaires who come over, as Mr. Macdonell probably will next summer, for the shooting. More than one Scotchman we met told us so plainly. There is a famous case where the cruelty of an American sportsman, who plays the laird in the Highlands, so far outdid that of the real laird that the latter came forward to defend his people against it! Now that the war of emancipation is being fought from one end of Great Britain to the other, it is to our shame that there are Americans who uphold the oppressors. One might think we struggled for freedom at home only to strive against it abroad. Mrs. Stowe could write "Uncle Tom's Cabin" on behalf of slaves in the United States; in Great Britain she saw only the nobility and benevolence of the slave-driver. From the plantations of the South there never rose such a cry of sorrow and despair as that which rang through the glens and straths of Sutherland when men were driven to the sea to make room for sheep. And yet to Mrs. Stowe this inhuman chase was but a sublime instance of the benevolent employment of superior wealth and power in shortening the struggle of advancing civilization, and elevating in a few years a whole community to a point of education and material prosperity which, unassisted, they might never have attained. You might as well call the slavery of negroes a sublime instance of the power of traders to shorten the natural course of human development, since if left to themselves the blacks could not have advanced beyond the savage state in which they were found. I fear the American love for a lord is not exaggerated, if even Mrs. Stowe could be blinded by it.

There was little to break the monotony of the journey except the Macdonells. "If the sun only shone," Mrs. Macdonell explained, "there would be the lights and shadows." As it was, however, water and sky and shores were of uniform grayness. Now and then we passed the ruins of an old castle. At a place whose name I have forgotten the boat stopped that everybody might walk a mile or more to see a water-fall. It may have been our loss that we did not go with the rest; certainly a party of Frenchmen on their return declared it une cascade vraiment charmante. At Fort Augustus the boat was three-quarters of an hour getting through the locks, and in the mean time enterprising tourists climbed the tower of the new Benedictine monastery, which stands where was once the old fort. We went instead to the telegraph office, and secured a room in Inverness, and gave the landlord an order for the letters we hoped were waiting for us at the bank. Young Benedictines in black gowns, like students of the Propaganda on the Pincian, were walking out two by two.

These were the day's excitements.

As we neared Inverness, Mr. Macdonell was again on deck. "I always go to the Caledonian Hotel in Inverness," he told us. "What I like is to stay at the best hotels, where I meet the society of England and Scotland—the real society. There's the Royal Hotel in Edinburgh; it suits me because you are sure to find it full of good English and Scotch society. I must always have the best society. Besides, they're very good hotels, both of them. In our country we boast of the products of the Chesapeake; but we have nothing so delicious, nothing so delicate, as the fresh herring they will serve you for breakfast at the Caledonian."

As we drove from the boat to

INVERNESS,

we passed the stage of the Caledonian Hotel. In it sat the Macdonell with a family of Jews, and an Englishman and his daughter who, throughout the journey, had shown themselves so superior, we should not wonder some day to find them behind the counter of an Oxford Street store. They were all on their way to mingle with the real society of England and Scotland.

It probably was a pleasure to Mr. Macdonell to find that the tobacconist next to the hotel, and the dry goods merchant but a few doors off, were his fellow-clansmen. In fact, every other banner—I mean sign—flung out on the outward walls of Inverness bore his name.

Our social pretensions were more modest. We went to the Station Hotel for comfort, and trusted to luck for society. In the great hall of the hotel we first realized the full extent of our shabbiness. Our knapsacks shrank out of sight of porters and maids. The proprietor was too busy distributing rooms to decently dressed travellers—the most gorgeous of whom gloried in his allegiance to the Police Gazette of New York—to notice us. But as he paused for a moment, J—— asked if there were any letters for Mr. Pennell. "Where is Mr. Pennell?" asked the proprietor, with interest. When he heard where he was, then came the transformation scene. Two gentlemen in dress-coats, each carrying a diminutive knapsack preceded us up the stairs; two gentlemen in dress-coats, each carrying a huge bundle of letters, the accumulation of weeks, followed us. We felt like a lord mayor's procession, but we did not look it. We were led into the best bedroom, but before the door was closed we thought we saw disappointment in the eyes of the proprietor. We at once consulted the tariff on the wall to learn what it cost to send a telegram in Scotland. We can only say that it did not prove very expensive, that the hotel was very good, that everybody was very attentive, and that the society may have been the best for all we knew.

The next morning we started on foot, all our baggage on our backs, to the disgust of the gentlemen in dress-coats. We walked at a good pace out of the town, and on the broad, smooth road that leads to Culloden. The country was quiet and pastoral, and the way, in places, pleasant and shady. It was a striking contrast to the western wilderness from which we had just come.

But twenty miles lay between us and Nairn; like Dr. Johnson, we were going out of our way to see Culloden Moor and Cawdor Castle. The road was too good. It set us thinking again of a tricycle on which we could travel at stimulating speed over country monotonous in its prosperous prettiness. Walking meant steady trudging all day, and a hasty glance at castle and moor when we came to them.

It was unbearable. Weeks of experience had taught us all the drudgery of tramping, none of its supposed delights. We asked people we met if there was a cycle agent in Inverness. No one knew. Then the trees by the road-side gave place to open country with waving wheat-fields; and oh, how hot it grew! Peddlers whom we had passed—the only people, besides ourselves, we saw tramping in Scotland—overtook and passed us. Two men went by on bicycles. How cool and comfortable they looked! How hot and dirty and dusty and miserable we felt! This was too much.

"Confound this walking! If ever I walk again!" said J——; and, almost within sight of Culloden, he turned. After looking over to where I knew the moor must be, I meekly followed him, and in silence we went back to Inverness.

The roads about here being particularly good, there was not a cycle agent in the town. There was no getting a machine for love or money. It was now too late to attempt to walk to Nairn. There was nothing to do but to train it. In the interval of waiting we saw Inverness. It is a pretty city, with a wide river flowing through it, many bridges—one with a great stone archway—a new cathedral, and a battlemented, turreted castle high above the river. Clothes dry on the green bank that slopes down to the water's edge, women in white caps go and come through the streets, which, with their gabled houses, show that curious French feeling found all over the East of Scotland, and even the costumes of the women help to carry it out.

In Inverness, and in fact all the way to Fraserburgh, J—— made many notes and sketches, the best, he says, of our journey. All but a few have been lost, and so the world will never enjoy them. This is sad, but true. If any one should happen to find the sketch-book he need not return it in hopes of a reward. J—— has no use for it at this moment. In fact, the finder had better keep it; it may be valuable some day.

When the train reached

NAIRN,

"Well," said J——, in triumph, "we've got through a day's work in half an hour;" and we dropped our knapsacks at the hotel and set out for Cawdor, which is five miles from the town.

The day so far had been fine. Once we were on the road again the sun went behind the clouds, mist fell over the country before us. A lady in a dog-cart warned us of rain, and offered us a lift. To make up for the morning's weakness, we refused heroically. There was nothing by the way but broad fields of grain, which seemed broader after the wretched little patches of Skye and Harris, and large farm-houses, larger by comparison with Hebridean hovels. When the roofs and gables of the castle came in sight, had we had our Macbeth at our fingers' ends, I have no doubt we might have made an appropriate quotation. A long fence separated two fields; on each post sat a solemn rook, and hundreds more made black the near grass. But we did not call them birds of ill-omen and speak of the past as we should have done; J—— only said it was right to find so many cawing things at the gate of Cawdor Castle.

I wish that we had found nothing worse. Just as we reached it the mist turned to heavy rain. This is the depressing side of sight-seeing in Scotland; you must take your holidays in water-proofs. J—— made several sketches, for the rain poured in such torrents our stay was long. We stood under the old gate-way and at the window of the porter's lodge. The sketches were very charming, very beautiful, but they are lost! We walked about in the rain and looked at the castle from every side. But as everybody who has travelled in Scotland has described Cawdor, there is no special reason why I should do it again. The sketches would have been original.

The most provoking part of it was that we had scarce left the castle a mile behind when the rain became mist again; at the third mile-stone we were once more in a dry world.

Boswell called Nairn "a miserable place." Dr. Johnson said next to nothing about it. Perhaps the people laughed at them as they did at us. We thought their manners miserable, though their town now is decent enough. It is long and narrow, stretching from the railway-station to the sea. After the hotels and shops, we came to the fishermen's quarter. The houses were mostly new; a few turned old gables and chimneys to the street. Women in white caps, with great baskets on their backs, strode homeward in the twilight. Everywhere brown nets were spread out to dry, boats lay along the sands, beyond was the sea, and the smell of the fish was over it all.

The next morning we learned from the maid that Macbeth's blasted heath was but a few miles from Nairn; all the theatricals went there, she said. We made a brave start; but bravery gave out with the first mile. Walking was even more unbearable than it had been the day before. There could be nothing more depressing than to walk on a public highway through a well-cultivated country under a hot sun. Already, when we came to the near village of Auldearn, we had outwalked interest in everything but our journey's end. We would not go an extra step for the monuments the guide-book directs the tourist to see, though the graveyard was within sight of the road.

Macbeth seems to have shared the fate of prophets in their own country. We asked a man passing with a goat the distance to Macbeth's Hill, as it is called on the map. He didna know, he answered. But presently he ran after us. Was the gentleman we spoke of a farmer? Another man, however, knew all about it. He had never been to the top of the hill; he had been told there were trees up there, and that it wasn't different from the other hills around. And yet he had heard people came great distances to see it. He supposed we had travelled far just to go up the hill. He knew from our talk, many words of which he couldna understand, that we were no from this part of the country. But then sometimes he couldna understand the broad Scotch of the people in Aberdeenshire. There were some people hereabouts who could talk only Gaelic. They had been turned off the Western Islands, and had settled here years ago, but they still talked only the Gaelic.

He went our way for half a mile or less, and he walked with us. His clothes were ragged, his feet bare, and over his shoulders was slung a small bundle done up in a red handkerchief. In the last three years, he said, he had had but two or three days' work. Work was hard to get. Here rents were high, farmers complained, and this year the crops were ruined because of the long drought. He did think at times of going to America. He had a sister who had gone to live in Pittsburg. It might be a good thing. There are Scotchmen who have done well in Pittsburg. He left us with minute directions. The hill, though not far from the road, which now went between pine woods and heather, could not be seen from it. We came to the point at which we should have turned to the blasted heath.

"It's a blasted nuisance," J—— said, and we kept straight on to the nearest railway-station.

This was Brodie. The porters told us there was a fine castle within a ten minutes' walk, and a train for Elgin in fifteen minutes. We waited for the train.

We were so tired, so disgusted, that everything put us out of patience. Even a small boy who had walked with us earlier in the morning to show us the way, simply by stopping when we stopped and starting when we started, had driven us almost frantic. I mention this to show how utterly wearisome a walking tour through beautiful country can be.

At the town of

ELGIN

we were in the humor to moralize on modern degeneracy among the ruins. A distillery is now the near neighbor of the cathedral. Below the broken walls, still rich with beautiful carving, new and old gravestones, as at Iona, stand side by side. In nave and transepts knights lie on old tombstones, under canopies carved with leaves and flowers; here and there in the graveyard without are moss-grown slabs with the death's-head and graceful lettering of the seventeenth century; near by are ugly blocks from the modern stone-mason. The guide-book quotes some of the old inscriptions; but it omits one of late date, which should, however, receive the greatest honor—that of the man who cared for the ruins with reverence and love until the Government took them in charge. These ruins are very beautiful. Indeed, nowhere does the religious vandalism of the past seem more monstrous than in Scotland. The Government official asked us to write our names in the Visitors' Book; he made it seem a compliment by saying that it was not everybody's name he wanted. We thought him a man of much greater intelligence than the Glasgow verger. He could see, he said, that J—— knew something about cathedrals and architecture.

We found nothing else of interest in Elgin. It had a prosperous look, and we saw not a trace of the old timbered houses with projecting upper stories of which Dr. Johnson writes. The remainder of our stay we spent in a restaurant near the station, where we talked politics with a farmer. He lectured us on free-trade. Scotch farmers cry for protection, he said, but they don't know what it means. Free-trade is good for the bulk of the people, and what would protection do for the farmer? Nothing! If he got higher prices, the landlord would say, Now you can afford to pay me higher rent, and he would pocket the few shillings' difference.

We talked with many other farmers in the east of Scotland. Sometimes we journeyed with them in railway-carriages; sometimes we breakfasted and dined with them in hotels. They all had much to say about protection and free-trade, and we found that Henry George had been among them. Their ideas of his doctrine of the nationalization of the land were at times curious and original. I remember a farmer from Aberdeenshire who told us that he believed in it thoroughly, and then explained that it would give each man permission, if he had money enough, to buy out his landlord.

After our lunch at Elgin we again got through a day's work in less than an hour. We went by train to

BUCKIE,

a place of which we had never heard before that afternoon. How J—— happened to buy tickets for it I cannot explain, since he never made it quite clear to me. We found it a large and apparently thriving fishing town, with one long line of houses low on the shore, another above on the hill, and a very good hotel, the name of which I am not sure we knew at the time; certainly we do not remember it now.

FISHER-BOATS HAULED UP NEAR BUCKIE.

It was at Buckie that J—— made several of the best sketches in the lost sketch-book in the evening as we watched the boats sail silently out from the harbor. The sun had just set. The red light of the after-glow shone upon the water. Against it, here and there, the brown sails stood out in strong relief. Other boats lay at anchor in the cool gray of the harbor.

In the morning we made a new start on foot. Now and then, for a short distance, the road went inland across treeless, cultivated country; but the greater part of the time it lay near the sea, and kept wandering in and out of little fishing villages, in each of which the lost sketch-book came into play. They were all much alike; there was usually the harbor, where the fishing-boats were moored, some with brown sails hung out to dry and flapping slowly in the breeze; others with long lines of floats stretched from mast to mast; and as it was not only low tide but near the end of the fishing season, all were drawn up in picturesque masses in the foreground, the light of sea and sky bright and glittering behind them. Carts full of nets, men and women with huge bundles of them on their backs, were always on their way either up or down the hill at whose foot the village nestled; or on the level at its top the nets were spread like great snares, not for birds, but for any one who tried to walk across them. Boxes and barrels of salted fish were piled along the street. In the air was the strong smell of herrings. In every village new houses were being or had just been built, but the soft gray smoke hovering above the roofs toned down their aggressive newness. In their midst was the plain white kirk.

There were so many villages that we could not complain of monotony; and then sometimes, on the stretch of beach beyond, dismantled boats in various stages of decline were pulled up out of reach of the tide. Sometimes on the near links men were playing golf. Once we passed three, each putting his little white ball on a bit of turf. They were very serious about it. "Now to business," we heard one say as we went by. But it grew very hot towards noon, and in the heat our first enthusiasm melted. When Cullen came in sight we were again declaring that nothing would induce us to walk another step.

NEAR CULLEN.

However, a hearty lunch changed our minds. The truth is, we hated to give in. Though we were quite certain we would never tramp again, we were unwilling to confess our one walk a failure. At the hotel we were told that the road to Banff, our next stopping-place, kept inland, but the landlady thought that to the nearest village at least there was a path by the shore. A man on the outskirts of the town tried to dissuade us from going that way; there was such a brae to be climbed, he said. But there seemed no doubt about the path. When we persisted, he walked back with us to direct us the better, J—— talking to him about the brae as if he had never heard of a hill in his life, the man describing the difficulties before us as if ours was an Alpine expedition. The hill was steep enough. At the top there was no path, but instead a field of tall prickly furze, through which we waded. Oh, the misery of that five minutes' walk! At every step we were stung and pricked by hundreds of points sharper than needles. And after that we skirted wheat and turnip fields, because when we tried to cross them, as we were not sportsmen, there was some one near at hand to stop us. We went up and down ravines, and picked our way through tall grass at the very edge of sheer cliffs. The afternoon was hotter than the morning had been. A warm haze hung over the level stretch of country and the distant hills. The sky seemed to have fallen down upon the sea; there was not a line to mark where it met the water. The few brown-sailed boats looked as if they were forcing their way between, holding up the heavens on their masts.

BIT OF MACDUFF.

In one place, on a high rock jutting out into the sea, was a low broken wall of rough masonry, all that is left of Findlater Castle.

There was no use in trying to keep up any longer. Our backs ached, our shoulders were cut; we were hot, dusty, exhausted, and, in a word, at the end of our physical and moral forces. This scramble on the cliffs ended our walking tour.

At Sandend we took the train for Banff; but first we went down to the shore; for Sandend was a picturesque little village, with all its gables turned towards the sea, big black boats on the beach, rocks beyond, and a pretty blue bay of its own. Three artists had left their easels to eat buns out of a brown-paper bag and drink beer out of bottles, under the shade of one of the boats. J——, having already learned the exclusiveness of British artists, took out his sketch-book at a safe distance. He only spoke to them to ask the way to the station. He did not dare to talk about work.

A little farther on we again asked the way, this time of a girl hanging up clothes. J——'s questions and her answers were typical of many conversations, bad for one's temper, that we held on the east coast.

"Where is the railway-station?"

"What station?"

"Where the train comes in."

"There;" and she pointed to a house beyond the village.

"How do you get there?"

"By the road."

"Can you go up by the hill?"

"Yes."

"Which is better?"

"I don't know."

"Which is shorter?"

"Up the hill."

We started up the hill, but there was no path. "There is no path," we said to her.

"No, there's no path."

We came to

BANFF

late in the afternoon, just as the fishing-boats were putting out to sea, one beyond another on the gray water, the farthest but faint specks on the horizon. The best thing about Banff is that in fifteen or twenty minutes you can be out of it and in Macduff. The shore here makes a great curve. On one point is Banff, on the other Macduff; half-way between, a many-arched bridge spans the river Deveron, and close by the big house of the Earl of Fife shows through the trees of his park. High on the hill of Macduff stands the white kirk; it overlooks the town, with its many rows of fishermen's houses, and the harbor, where the black masts rise far above the gray walls, and the fishermen spread out their nets to dry, and the dark-sailed boats are always coming and going, and boys paddle in the twilight. And if you go to the far end of the harbor, where the light-house is, you look to the spires and chimneys and roofs of Banff climbing up their hill-side, and beyond to a shadowy point of land like a pale gray cloud-bank on the water.

It was easy to see what they thought of us at the Fife Arms, where we stayed in Banff. We were given our breakfast with the nurse and children of an A. R. A., while the great man breakfasted in state in a near dining-room. They ate very like ordinary children, but their clothes showed them to be little boys and girls of Æsthetic distinction. I fear, however, we were not properly impressed.

NEAR BANFF.

There was no doubt that now our walking was all done. We asked about the stage for Fraserburgh, as if staging with us was a matter of course. It was a relief not to begin the day by strapping heavy knapsacks to our backs. The hours of waiting were spent partly in strolling through the streets of Banff, where here and there is an old gray house with pretty turret at its corner, or quaint old inscription with coat of arms or figures let into its walls; partly in sitting on the beach looking out on a hot blue sea.

But hot as it was in the morning, a sharp, cold wind was blowing when, at three o'clock, we took our seats in the little old-fashioned stage that runs between Banff and Fraserburgh. Stage and coachman and passengers seemed like a page out of Dickens transposed to Scotland. Inside was a very small boy, put there by a fat woman in black, and left, with many exhortations and a couple of buns, to make the journey alone; opposite to him sat a melancholy man who saw but ruin staring in the face of farmers and fishermen alike. At every corner in Banff and Macduff we stopped for more passengers, until the stage, elastic as it seemed, was full to overflowing, and we took refuge on the top. Here the seats were crowded with men, their heads tied up in scarfs. The coachman was carrier as well, and at different points in the open country women and children waited by the road to give him, or to take from him, bundles >and boxes and letters. He was the typical cheery carrier. He had a word for everybody, even for a young man who dropped his wheelbarrow to flap his arms and greet us with a vacant smile. He was a puir thing, the driver explained, who went wrong only four years ago. He was the third we had seen in two days.

BANFF, FROM MACDUFF.

Many of the carrier's jokes we lost. A commercial traveller, who sat next to us, supposed we could not understand some of the expressions hereabouts. He might better have said we could not understand the language. We could make out enough, however, to find that one joke went a long way. A man in the front seat, trying to light his pipe in the wind, set off the whole box of matches. "That's extravagance," said the carrier; and when another box was handed to the man, he told him that these were safety matches—it took only one to light a pipe; and this he kept saying over and over again, with many chuckles, for the next half-hour. We had a specimen, too, of Scotch humor. At one stopping-place the commercial traveller got down and went into the public-house. A family party scrambled up and filled every seat, his with the rest. J—— remonstrated; but the man of the party answered that he paid his money for a seat as well as anybody else. "An empty seat's naebody's seat," he argued, and carrier and passengers roared at his fun.

The country was dreary, for all its cultivation. The fields were without tree or hedge to break their monotony. The villages were full of new houses. There was nothing striking or picturesque until we came within sight of Fraserburgh. Far across a level stretch we first saw it, its spires rising high above gray and red roofs. The near meadows were dark with fishing-nets; in places fishermen were at work spreading them over the grass; and we began to pass carts heavily laden with their brown masses, and men and women bent under the same burdens.

FRASERBURGH.

We walked out after supper. Rain was falling, and the evening was growing dark. Down by the harbor carts were still going and coming; men were still busy with their nets. Along the quay was a succession of basins, and these opened into others beyond. All were crowded with boats, and their thickly clustered masts seemed, in the gathering shadows, like a forest of branchless, leafless trees. One by one lights were hung out. On the town side of the quay, in crypt-like rooms and under low sheds, torches flamed and flared against a background of darkness. Their strong light fell upon women clothed in strange stuffs that glistened and glittered, their heads bound with white cloths. They were bending over shiny, ever-shifting masses piled at their feet, and chanting a wild Gaelic song that rose and fell with the wailing of all savage music. As we first saw them, from a distance, they might have been so many sorceresses at their magic rites. When we drew near we found that they were but the fish-curers' gutters and packers at work. Thanks to Cable and Lafcadio Hearn, we know something of the songs of work at home; but who in England cares about the singing in these fishing towns—singing which is only wilder and weirder than that of the cotton pressers of Louisiana? To the English literary man, however—the Charles Reades are the exceptions—I fear the gutters would be but nasty, dirty fisher persons. Now and then groups of these women passed us, walking with long strides, their arms swinging, and their short skirts and white-bound heads shining through the sombre streets. Over the town was the glow of the many fires.

FRASERBURGH.

In the morning there was less mystery, but not less picturesqueness. We were up in time to go to the harbor with the fishermen's wives, and watch the boats come in. Everything was fresh after a night of rain. It was still early, and the sun sent a path of gold across the sea just where the boats turned on their last tack homeward. Each brown sail was set in bold relief against the shining east, and then slowly lowered, as the fishermen with their long poles pushed the boats into the already crowded harbor. At once nets were emptied of the fish, which lay gleaming like silver through the brown meshes. Women and boys came to fill baskets with the fresh herrings; carts were loaded with them. In other boats men were hanging up their floats and shaking out their nets. The water was rich with the many black and brown reflections, only brightened here and there by lines of blue or purple or white from the distinguishing rings of color on each mast. There was a never-ending stream of men and carts passing along the quay. Many fishermen with their bags were on their way to the station, for the fishing season was almost over. So they said. But when one thousand boats came in, and twenty thousand fisher-folk were that day in Fraserburgh, to us it looked little like the end. In all this busy place we heard no English. Only Gaelic was spoken, as if we were once more in the Western Islands.

It was the same in the streets. The day's work in the curing-houses was just about to begin. Girls and women in groups of threes and fours were walking towards them. In the morning light we could see that the greater number were young. All were neat and clean, with hair carefully parted and well brushed, little shawls over their shoulders, but nothing on their heads. They carried their working clothes under their arms, and kept knitting as they walked. Like the men, they all talked Gaelic.

IN THE HARBOR, FRASERBURGH.

When they got to work, we found that those strange stuffs which had glistened in the torch-light were aprons and bibs smeared with scales and slime, that the white head-dresses were worn only for cleanliness, that the shining masses at their feet were but piles of herring. I have never seen women work so hard or so fast. Their arms, as they seized the fish, gutted them, and threw them in the buckets, moved with the regularity and the speed of machines. Indeed, there could not be a busier place than Fraserburgh. All day long the boats kept coming in, nets were emptied, fish carted away. The harbor, the streets, the fields beyond where nets were taken to dry, the curing-houses, were alike scenes of industry. If the women put down their knives, it was only to take up their knitting. And yet these men and women, working incessantly by day and by night, were almost all Western Islanders—the people who, we are told, are so slovenly and so lazy! No one who comes with them to the east coast for the fishing season will ever again believe in the oft-repeated lies about their idleness.

There were no signs of rest until Saturday evening. Then no boats went out, and the harbor and curing-houses were deserted. The streets were full of men and women walking about for pleasure. The greatest crowd was in the market-place, where a few "cheap Jacks" drove their trade. Two, who dealt in china, as if to make up for their poor patter, threw cups and saucers recklessly into the air, breaking them with great clatter, while the women and girls they had attracted stood by and bought nothing.

The fishermen had gathered about a third, who sold cheap and tawdry ornaments, but who could patter. When we first came near he was holding up six imitation gold watch-chains, and offering the buyers prizes into the bargain. "O ye men of little faith!"—shaking his fist at them—"can't any of you favor me with a shillin'? You don't want 'em, gen'lemen? Then there'll be smashin' of teeth and tearin' of hair. Glory! glory hallylujah!" All this, I regret to say, was interspersed with stories that do not bear repetition. But he sold his watch-chains without trouble. "And now, gen'lemen, for any of you that wants to take home a present to your wife and chil'ren, here's an album. It'd adorn a nobleman's mansion, and wouldn't disgrace a fisherman's cottage. It's bound in moroccer and stamped with gold, and'll hold many pictures. I'll only sell half a dozen, and it's the very thing you wants. You'll have one? Well, sir, I can't reach you, but these gen'lemen'll pass it along."

And then he began again with the stories and the Scripture until he had sold out all his stock of albums and note-books and cheap jewellery.

GUTTERS AT WORK, FRASERBURGH.

It was the hint about presents to those left behind which bore greatest weight with the fishermen. It never failed. But we remembered their cottages and the sadness of their homes, and it angered us that they should be duped into wasting their hard-won earnings on tawdry ornaments. It seems to be their fate to be cheated by every one. Even the peddler, like the parson and the landlord, can pervert Scripture to their discomfort.

Still, there was a pleasant suggestion of holiday-making in the square. It was the first time we had seen the Western Islanders amusing themselves. True, they did it very solemnly. There was little laughter and much silence; but at least a touch of brightness was given to the gloom of their long life of work and want.

Even on Sunday we thought the people more cheerful. In the morning the women, the little shawls over their shoulders, their heads still bare, the men in blue cloth, many without coats, again filled the streets on their way to church. In the afternoon we walked to two near fishing villages. In one an old fisherman was talking about Christ to a few villagers. We sat a while close to the sea, looking out to the next village, gray against gray gold-lined clouds, to the water with the light falling softly across it, to the little quiet pools in among the low rocks of the shore, to the big black boats drawn up on the beach. And then, as we walked back to Fraserburgh, the mist fell suddenly. But the road near the town was crowded with the men in blue cloth and the women in short skirts. Some were singing hymns as they walked. To us they looked strong and healthy, and even happy. It seemed as if this life on the east coast must make up for many of the hardships they endure in the deserts of their western home.

That same evening in the hotel we heard about life in Fraserburgh, which looks so prosperous to the stranger. A Catholic priest came into the dining-room after supper. He seemed very tired. He had been visiting the sick all day, he told us. Measles had broken out among the women and girls from the Hebrides. Many had already died; more had been carried to the hospital. The rooms provided for them by the curers were small and overcrowded. So long as they were kept in their present quarters, so long would disease and death be their portion. Their condition was dreadful; but they worked hard, and never complained. He came from the west coast of Ireland, he said, where Irish poverty is at its worst, but not even there had he seen misery as great as that of the Western Islanders. He knew it well. He had lived with them in the Long Island, where many are Catholics. If the Highlands were represented by eighty-five members, all wanting Home Rule, more would have been heard about destitution in the Hebrides. In the prosperous days of the east coast fisheries the people's burden had been less heavy; but now they came to the fishing towns of the east, the women to sicken and to die, the men to beg their way back as best they could. There were too many fishermen here, just as at home landlords thought there were too many crofters.

COMING HOME FROM THE FISHERIES, FRASERBURGH.

The fishers also shall mourn, and all they that cast angle shall lament, and they that spread nets upon the waters shall languish.

The epidemic and its causes became the town talk. The Gaelic Free Kirk minister, differ as he might from the Catholic priest on every other point, on this could but agree with him. He told us the same story in words as strong. It was shameful, he said, the way these poor girls were being killed. He had not known it before; but now that he did, he could not and would not let the matter rest. An indignation meeting of the people of Fraserburgh was called for the day we left. The town was placarded with the notices. Since then the report must have gone abroad. Now that agitation in Lewis is forcing attention to the islands and their people, in London there has been formed a committee of ladies to look into the condition of the girls and women who work on the east coast.

That last morning, as we stood by the hotel door, the funeral of one of the dead women passed up the street towards the station. Fifty or sixty fishermen followed the coffin. When we took our seats in a third-class carriage we found the Free Kirk minister there before us. The coffin had just been put on the train. Two girls came up to speak to him. He stretched out his hand; one took and held it as she struggled to answer his questions; the other turned away with the tears streaming down her face. As the train started they stood apart, their heads bent low, their faces buried in their shawls, both crying as if their hearts would break. And so, at the last, we saw only the sadness of Fraserburgh.

We had intended going to Peterhead and the smaller fishing towns by the way; but our energy was less inexhaustible than the picturesqueness of the east coast. Our journey had been over-long. We were beginning to be anxious to bring it to an end. Now we went straight to

ABERDEEN,

where we at once fell back into ordinary city life. We even did a little shopping in its fine new streets. Its large harbor seemed empty after that of Fraserburgh. Many fishing-boats were at sea; many had gone altogether. The fishing season here was really well over. We walked to the old town after dinner. In it there is not much to be seen but the university tower with the famous crown atop, and the cathedral, which looked massive and impressive in the twilight. We saw much more of Aberdeen; but we are quite of the same mind as Dr. Johnson, that to write of such well-known cities "with the solemnity of geographical description, as if we had been cast upon a newly discovered coast, has the appearance of a very frivolous ostentation."

ENTRANCE TO THE HARBOR AT MONTROSE.

From Aberdeen to Edinburgh we trained it by easy stages. We stopped often; once at

MONTROSE,

where, like Dr. Johnson, and for that matter, every one else who comes here, we looked to the Grampian Hills in the distance. The town itself was not picturesque. The guide-book calls it neat and Flemish, probably because it has fewer houses with high gables turned towards the street than can be seen, as a rule, in any Scotch town. But the harbor, of which the guide-book says less, was fine. We spent hours near the mouth of the river, looking over to the fishermen's houses on the opposite shore. There were constant showers as we sat there; every few minutes the sun came out from the clouds, and the wet roofs glistened and glittered through the smoke hanging above them. In the morning, women, packed like herrings in the huge ferry-boats, crossed over to the curing-houses. Now and then a fishing-boat sailed slowly in.

One sees little from the cars. Of the country through which we passed I remember only occasional glimpses of the sea and of fishing villages and of red castles, which made us wish we were still on the road. Now and then, as we sat comfortably in the railway-carriage, we determined to walk back to see them, or to get a tricycle at Edinburgh and "do" the whole east coast over again; but we always left our determinations with the carriage. Of all the places at which we stopped, I remember best

ARBROATH,

the sight of which seemed worth his whole journey to Dr. Johnson. Little is left of the abbey save the broken walls and towers. A street runs through the old gate-house. The public park and children's play-ground lie to one side of the ruined church. A few old tombs and tablets and bits of ornament have been gathered together in the sacristy, which is in better preservation than the rest of the building. We found them less interesting than the guide who explained them. He gave a poetical touch to the usual verger recitation, and indeed to all his talk, of which there was plenty. 'Twas better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all, was his manner of expressing regret for the loss of an old engraving of the abbey. There were many hard things in this world, but grass was soft; why, then, should I choose the hard things? was his way of inviting me to walk on the grass instead of the gravel. But it was not until he showed us the original copy, full of blots and corrections, of one of Burns's poems that we found he too was a poet—a successful poet, it seemed, for he had sold 14,000 copies of his volume of poems—very few, he thought. If he were a member of the London Society of Authors he would know better. He had given the last copy to William Morris, when the latter was in the town. William Morris did not wear gaudy clothes, not he. He looked like a sailor in his blue flannel shirt, and there was a slit in his hat. And when he returned to London he sent his "Jason" to his fellow-poet in Arbroath.

As we were leaving, he told us how, one day, two ladies had driven up to the abbey, looked at nothing, but at once asked him to recite his "Abbey Gate." He did so, and then, without a word, they slipped a guinea into his hand, and there were tears on their cheeks. He never knew who they were. After this, we felt our tribute to be very small; but he clasped our hands warmly at parting. There was something out of the common in our faces, he said.

We talked to no one else in Arbroath, except to a pessimistic stationer. While we bought his paper he grumbled because farmers could not sell their cattle and corn. Some people said the country needed protection; "but, sir, what have we got to protect?"

Of the rest of the journey to Edinburgh my note-book says nothing, and little remains in my memory. But I know that when we walked up from the station to Waverley Bridge, and looked to the gray precipice of houses of the Old Town, we realized that our long wanderings had not shown us anything so fine.

And now our journey was at an end. Like Dr. Johnson's, it began and finished in Edinburgh, but it resembled his in little else. From the start, we continually took liberties with his route; we often forgot that he was our guide. We went to places he had never seen; we turned our backs upon many through which he and Boswell had travelled. But at least he had helped us to form definite plans without weeks of hard map-study which they otherwise must have cost us.

We had come back wiser in many ways. In the first place, we had learned that for us walking on a tour of this kind, or indeed of any kind, is a mistake. Had we never cycled, perhaps we might not have felt this so keenly. Our powers of endurance are not, I think, below the average; but the power to endure so many miles a day on foot is very different from the capacity to enjoy them; and if on such a trip one proposes, as we did, to work, without pleasure in the exercise, how can one hope for good results? But for the two days' coaching on the west coast, the necessary steaming among the islands, our utter collapse on the east coast, I am sure we never should have worked at all. Day after day we were dispirited, disheartened, and only happy when we were not walking. We went to bed in the evening and got up in the morning wearied and exhausted. The usual walking tours of which one hears mean a day's climbing in the mountains, or a day's tramp with bag or knapsack sent before by train or stage. Under these conditions we probably would not be the first to give in. But to be as independent as if on a tricycle, to have one's sketching traps when needed, one must carry a knapsack one's self. J——'s weighed between twenty-five and thirty pounds; mine, fifteen. Never before have I appreciated so well the true significance of Christian's burden. But even worse than this constant strain on our shoulders was the monotony of our pace. Whether the road was good or bad, level or hilly, there was no change, no relief. In cycling, for one hard day's work you know you will have two of pleasure. As for short-cuts, they are, as a rule, out of the question. One does not know the country through which one is passing; it is the exception to meet a native. After cycling more thousands of miles than we have walked hundreds, we know it to be not mere theorizing when we declare that no comparison between the two methods of travelling is possible. One is just enough work to make the pleasure greater; the other is all work.

RUINS AT ARBROATH.

Our experience has taught us to be sceptical about the tramps of other days who saw Europe afoot. We wonder if they told the whole story. Of modern tramps, none has given such a delightful record as has Mr. Stevenson of the walk he took with a donkey through the Cevennes. And yet, even with him, if you read between his lines, or, for that matter, the lines themselves, you realize that, charming as his story is for us, the reality for him was wearisome, depressing, and often painful, and that probably to it is to be referred much of his after physical weakness. We have also had a new light thrown upon the life of tramps at home, who are so often supposed to have chosen the better part. Theirs is as much a life of toil as if they broke stones on the same roads over which they journey. They are not to be envied, but pitied. The next time one begs from you as he passes, give him something out of your charity; he deserves it.

However, many drawbacks as there were to our walk, we do not regret it. In no other way could we have come to know the country and the people with the same friendly intimacy. For pure enjoyment, it would be best to go over the greater part of our route in a yacht. From it is to be seen much beauty and little misery. The coast-line can be followed, excursions made inland. But a yacht is a luxury for the rich. Besides, on it one lives one's own life, not that of the country one has come to visit. On foot, with knapsacks on our backs, we often passed for peddlers. Certainly we were never mistaken to be tourists of means or sportsmen. Therefore the people met us as equals and talked to us freely.

We were able to correct the vague and false impressions with which we had started. If we did not master the geography of all Scotland, I think—at least on the two coasts as far north as the Caledonian Canal—we could now pass an examination with credit. We learned that haggis and oatmeal figure more extensively in books than on hotel tables; the first we saw not at all, the second but twice, and then it was not offered to us.

Above all, we learned the burden of Scotland, whose Highlands have been laid waste, their people brought to silence. But now the people themselves have broken their long silence, and a cry has gone up from them against their oppressors. If by telling exactly what we saw we can in the least strengthen that cry, we shall feel that our journeying has not been in vain.

THE END.