ree legs will out-run a horse with four; for do what we
could, we were four hours before we could pass it.

Thus with extreme travel, ascending and descending, mounting and
alighting, I came at night to the place where I would be, in the Brae of
_Mar_, which is a large county, all composed of such mountains, that
Shooter's Hill, Gad's Hill, Highgate Hill, Hampstead Hill, Birdlip
Hill, or Malvern's Hills, are but mole-hills in comparison, or like a
liver, or a gizard under a capon's wing, in respect of the altitude of
their tops, or perpendicularity of their bottoms. There I saw Mount _Ben
Aven_, with a furred mist upon his snowy head instead of a night-cap:
(for you must understand, that the oldest man alive never saw but the
snow was on the top of divers of those hills, both in summer, as well as
in winter.) There did I find the truly Noble and Right Honourable Lords
_John Erskine_ Earl of Mar, _James Stuart_ Earl of Murray, _George
Gordon_ Earl of Enzie, son and heir to the Marquess of Huntly, _James
Erskine_ Earl of Buchan, and _John_ Lord _Erskine_, son and heir to the
Earl of Mar, and their Countesses, with my much honoured, and my best
assured and approved friend, Sir _William Murray_ Knight, of
_Abercairney_, and hundred of others Knights, Esquires, and their
followers; all and every man in general in one habit, as if _Lycurgus_
had been there, and made laws of equality: for once in the year, which
is the whole month of August, and sometimes part of September, many of
the nobility and gentry of the kingdom (for their pleasure) do come into
these Highland Countries to hunt, where they do conform themselves to
the habit of the Highland men, who for the most part speak nothing but
Irish; and in former time were those people which were called the
_Red-shanks_.[22] Their habit is shoes with but one sole apiece;
stockings (which they call short hose) made of a warm stuff of divers
colours, which they call tartan: as for breeches, many of them, nor
their forefathers never wore any, but a jerkin of the same stuff that
their hose is of, their garters being bands or wreaths of hay or straw,
with a plaid about their shoulders, which is a mantle of divers colours,
of much finer and lighter stuff than their hose, with blue flat caps on
their heads, a handkerchief knit with two knots about their neck; and
thus are they attired. Now their weapons are long bows and forked
arrows, swords and targets, harquebusses, muskets, dirks,