s form of bread, which I understood (but am far
from engaging my honour on the point) to be called "shearer's bannock."
And that may be said to have concluded our whole active intercourse for
the first day.

I had the more occasion to remark the extraordinarily desolate nature of
that country, through which the drove-road continued, hour after hour,
and even day after day, to wind. A continual succession of insignificant
shaggy hills, divided by the course of ten thousand brooks, through
which we had to wade, or by the side of which we encamped at night;
infinite perspectives of heather; infinite quantities of moorfowl; here
and there, by a stream-side, small and pretty clumps of willows or the
silver birch; here and there, the ruins of ancient and inconsiderable
fortresses--made the unchanging characters of the scene. Occasionally,
but only in the distance, we could perceive the smoke of a small town or
of an isolated farmhouse or cottage on the moors; more often, a flock of
sheep and its attendant shepherd, or a rude field of agriculture perhaps
not yet harvested. With these alleviations, we might almost be said to
pass through an unbroken desert--sure, one of the most impoverished in
Europe; and when I recalled to mind that we were yet but a few leagues
from the chief city (where the law-courts sat every day with a press of
business, soldiers garrisoned the Castle, and men of admitted parts were
carrying on the practice of letters and the investigations of science),
it gave me a singular view of that poor, barren, and yet illustrious
country through which I travelled. Still more, perhaps, did it commend
the wisdom of Miss Gilchrist in sending me with these uncouth companions
and by this unfrequented path.

My itinerary is by no means clear to me; the names and distances I never
clearly knew, and have now wholly forgotten; and this is the more to be
regretted as there is no doubt that, in the course of those days, I must
have passed and camped among sites which have been rendered illustrious
by the pen of Walter Scott. Nay, more, I am of opinion that I was still
more favoured by fortune, and have actually met and spoken with that
inimitable author. Our encounter was of a tall, stoutish, elderly
gentleman, a little grizzled, and of a rugged but cheerful and engaging
countenance. He sat on a hill pony, wrapped in a plaid over his green
coat, and was accompanied by a horsewoman, his daughter, a young lady of
the most ch