nt, we found ourselves in
the presence of the inmates of the mansion. The fire, as in the cottage
of my Sutherlandshire relative, was placed in the middle of the floor:
the master of the mansion, a red-haired, strongly-built Highlander, of
the middle size and age, with his son, a boy of twelve, sat on the one
side; his wife, who, though not much turned of thirty, had the haggard,
drooping cheeks, hollow eyes, and pale, sallow complexion of old age,
sat on the other. We broke our business to the Highlander through my
companion--for, save a few words caught up at school by the boy, there
was no English in the household--and found him disposed to entertain it
favourably. A large pot of potatoes hung suspended over the fire, under
a dense ceiling of smoke; and he hospitably invited us to wait supper,
which, as our dinner had consisted of but a piece of dry oaten cake, we
willingly did. As the conversation went on, I became conscious that it
turned upon myself, and that I was an object of profound commiseration
to the inmates of the cottage. "What," I inquired of my companion, "are
these kind people pitying me so very much for?" "For your want of
Gaelic, to be sure. How can a man get on in the world that wants
Gaelic?" "But do not they themselves," I asked, "want English?" "O yes,"
he said, "but what does that signify? What is the use of English in
Gairloch?" The potatoes, with a little ground salt, and much unbroken
hunger as sauce, ate remarkably well. Our host regretted that he had no
fish to offer us; but a tract of rough weather had kept him from sea,
and he had just exhausted his previous supply; and as for bread, he had
used up the last of his grain crop a little after Christmas, and had
been living, with his family, on potatoes, with fish when he could get
them, ever since.

Thirty years have now passed since I shared in the Highlander's evening
meal, and during the first twenty of these, the use of the
potatoe--unknown in the Highlands a century before--greatly increased. I
have been told by my maternal grandfather, that about the year 1740,
when he was a boy of about eight or nine years of age, the head-gardener
at Balnagown Castle used, in his occasional visits to Cromarty, to bring
him in his pocket, as great rarities, some three or four potatoes; and
that it was not until some fifteen or twenty years after this time that
he saw potatoes reared in fields in any part of the Northern Highlands.
But, once fairly emp