recipice, which would prove, he was sure, one of the best fishing
platforms in the Firth. But then, in the existing state, it was wholly
inaccessible. He was, however, of opinion, that it was possible to lay
it open by carrying a path adown the shelving face of the precipice. He
had seen Wellington address himself to quite as desperate-looking
matters in the Peninsula; and were I but to assist him, he was sure, he
said, we could construct between us the necessary path. The undertaking
was one wholly according to my own heart; and next morning Johnstone and
I were hard at work on the giddy brow of the precipice. It was topped by
a thick bed of boulder clay, itself--such was the steepness of the
slope--almost a precipice; but a series of deeply-cut steps led us
easily adown the bed of clay; and then a sloping shelf, which, with much
labour, we deepened and flattened, conducted us not unsafely some
five-and-twenty or thirty feet along the face of the precipice proper. A
second series of steps, painfully scooped out of the living rock, and
which passed within a few yards of a range of herons' nests perched on a
hitherto inaccessible platform, brought us down some five-and-twenty or
thirty feet more; but then we arrived at a sheer descent of about twenty
feet, at which Johnstone looked rather blank, though, on my suggesting a
ladder, he took heart again, and, cutting two slim taper trees in the
wood above, we flung them over the precipice into the sea; and then
fishing them up with a world of toil and trouble, we squared and bored
them upwards, and, cutting tenons for them in the hard gneiss, we placed
them against the rock front, and nailed over them a line of steps. The
precipice beneath sloped easily on to the fishing rock, and so a few
steps more completed our path. I never saw a man more delighted than
Johnstone. As being lighter and more active than he--for though not
greatly advanced in life, he was considerably debilitated by severe
wounds--I had to take some of the more perilous parts of the work on
myself. I had cut the tenons for the ladder with a rope round my waist,
and had recovered the trees flung into the sea by some adroit swimming;
and the old soldier became thoroughly impressed with the conviction that
my proper sphere was the army. I was already five feet three, he said;
in little more than a twelvemonth I would be five feet seven; and were I
then but to enlist, and to keep from the "drop drink"--a thing whi