way to the harbour; and, from their
depth in the water, we became skilful enough to predicate the number of
crans aboard of each with wonderful judgment and correctness. In days of
good general fishings, too, when the curing-yards proved too small to
accommodate the quantities brought ashore, the fish used to be laid in
glittering heaps opposite the school-house door; and an exciting scene,
that combined the bustle of the workshop with the confusion of the
crowded fair, would straightway spring up within twenty yards of the
forms at which we sat, greatly to our enjoyment, and, of course, not a
little to our instruction. We could see, simply by peering over book or
slate, the curers going about rousing their fish with salt, to
counteract the effects of the dog-day sun; bevies of young women
employed as gutters, and horridly incarnadined with blood and viscera,
squatting around the heaps, knife in hand, and plying with busy fingers
their well-paid labours, at the rate of sixpence per hour; relays of
heavily-laden fish-wives bringing ever and anon fresh heaps of herrings
in their creels; and outside of all, the coopers hammering as if for
life and death,--now tightening hoops, and now slackening them, and anon
caulking with bulrush the leaky seams. It is not every grammar school in
which such lessons are taught as those in which all were initiated, and
in which all became in some degree accomplished, in the grammar school
of Cromarty!

The building in which we met was a low, long, straw-thatched cottage,
open from gable to gable, with a mud floor below, and an unlathed roof
above; and stretching along the naked rafters, which, when the master
chanced to be absent for a few minutes, gave noble exercise in climbing,
there used frequently to lie a helm, or oar, or boathook, or even a
foresail,--the spoil of some hapless peat-boat from the opposite side of
the Firth. The Highland boatmen of Ross had carried on a trade in peats
for ages with the Saxons of the town; and as every boat owed a
long-derived perquisite of twenty peats to the grammar school, and as
payment was at times foolishly refused, the party of boys commissioned
by the master to exact it almost always succeeded, either by force or
stratagem, in securing and bringing along with them, in behalf of the
institution, some spar, or sail, or piece of rigging, which, until
redeemed by special treaty, and the payment of the peats, was stowed up
over the rafters. These pe