rl of _Mar_, and Sir _William Murray_ of
_Abercairney_ were gone to the great hunting to the _Brae_ of _Mar_[20];
but if I made haste I might perhaps find them at a town called
_Brekin_, or _Brechin_, two and thirty miles from Saint _Johnstone_
whereupon I took a guide to _Brechin_ the next day, but before I came,
my lord was gone from thence four days.

Then I took another guide, which brought me such strange ways over
mountains and rocks, that I think my horse never went the like; and I am
sure I never saw any ways that might fellow them I did go through a
country called _Glen Esk_, where passing by the side of a hill, so steep
as the ridge of a house, where the way was rocky, and not above a yard
broad in some places, so fearful and horrid it was to look down into the
bottom, for if either horse or man had slipped, he had fallen without
recovery a good mile downright; but I thank God, at
night I came to a lodging in the Laird of _Edzell's_ land, where I lay
at an Irish house, the folks not being able to speak scarce any English,
but I supped and went to bed, where I had not laid long, but I was
enforced to rise, I was so stung with Irish musquitoes, a
creature that hath six legs, and lives like a monster altogether upon
man's flesh, they do inhabit and breed most in sluttish houses, and this
house was none of the cleanest, the beast is much like a louse in
_England_, both in shape and nature; in a word, they were to me the _A._
and the _Z._ the prologue and the epilogue, the first and the last that
I had in all my travels from _Edinburgh_; and had not this Highland
Irish house helped me at a pinch, I should have sworn that all
_Scotland_ had not been so kind as to have bestowed a louse upon me: but
with a shift that I had, I shifted off my cannibals, and was never more
troubled with them.

The next day I travelled over an exceeding high mountain, called mount
_Skene_, where I found the valley very warm before I went up it; but
when I came to the top of it, my teeth began to dance in my head with
cold, like Virginal's jacks;[21] and withal, a most familiar mist
embraced me round, that I could not see thrice my length any way:
withal, it yielded so friendly a dew, that did moisten through all my
clothes: where the old Proverb of a Scottish mist was verified, in
wetting me to the skin. Up and down, I think this hill is six miles, the
way so uneven, stony, and full of bogs, quagmires, and long heath, that
a dog with th