g under the shelter of an
overhanging crag, when we heard him coming soliloquizing through the
wood, in a manner worthy of his name, as if he were not one, but twenty
carters. "What a perfect shame of a country!" he exclaimed--"perfect
shame! Road for a horse, forsooth!--more like a turnpike stair. And not
a feed of corn for the poor beast; and not a public-house atween this
and Kinlochewe; and not a drop of whisky: perfect, perfect shame of a
country!" On his coming up in apparently very bad humour, we found him
disposed to transfer the shame of the country to our shoulders. What
sort of people were we, he asked, to travel in such a land without
whisky! Whisky, however, there was none to produce: there was no whisky
nearer, we told him, than the public-house at the sea-side, where we
proposed spending the night; and, of course, the sooner we got there the
better. And after assisting him to harness his horse, we set off in the
darkening twilight, amid the hills. Rough grey rocks, and little blue
lochans, edged with flags, and mottled in their season with
water-lilies, glimmered dim and uncertain in the imperfect light as we
passed; but ere we reached the inn of Flowerdale in Gairloch, every
object stood out clear, though cold, in the increscent light of morning;
and a few light streaks of cloud, poised in the east over the unrisen
sun, were gradually exchanging their gleam of pale bronze for a deep
flush of mingled blood and fire.

After the refreshment of a few hours' sleep and a tolerable breakfast,
we set out for the scene of our labours, which lay on the sea-shore,
about two miles further to the north and west; and were shown an
out-house--one of a square of dilapidated offices--which we might fit
up, we were told, for our barrack. The building had been originally what
is known on the north-western coast of Scotland, with its ever-weeping
climate, as a hay-barn; but it was now merely a roof-covered tank of
green stagnant water, about three-quarters of a foot in depth, which had
oozed through the walls from an over-gorged pond in the adjacent court,
that in a tract of recent rains had overflowed its banks, and not yet
subsided. Our new house did look exceedingly like a beaver-dam, with
this disadvantageous difference, that no expedient of diving could bring
us to better chambers on the other side of the wall. My comrade, setting
himself to sound the abyss with his stick, sung out in sailor style,
"three feet water in