any points of interest and at present noted
principally for its fisheries.

On the road to Colchester we might easily have visited Bury St. Edmunds,
and coming out of Colchester, only seven miles away is the imposing ruin
of the unfinished mansion of the Marneys, which its builder hoped to
make the most magnificent private residence in the Kingdom. The death of
Lord Marney and his son brought the project to an end and for several
hundred years this vast ruin has stood as a monument to their
unfulfilled hopes.

It may seem that as Americans we were rather unpatriotic to pass within
a few miles of the ancestral country of the Washingtons without visiting
it, but such was the case. It is not given much space in the guide-books
and it came to us only as an afterthought. It was but five or six miles
from Northampton, through which we passed. In the old church at Brington
is the tomb of George Washington's great-great-great-grandfather and
also one of the houses which was occupied by his relatives. In the same
section is Sulgrave Manor, the home of the Washingtons for several
generations, which still has over its front doorway the Washington
coat-of-arms. In the same vicinity and near the farmhouse where George
Eliot was born is Nuneaton, a place where she spent much of her life and
to which numerous references are made in her novels.

In Scotland we also missed much, but very little that we could have
reached without consuming considerably more time. A day's trip north of
Edinburgh, across the Firth of Forth into Fife, would have enabled us to
visit Loch Leven and its castle, where Queen Mary was held prisoner and
was rescued by young Douglas, whom she afterward unfortunately married.
Had we started two or three hours earlier on our trip to Abbottsford and
Melrose, we could easily have reached Jedburgh and Kelso, at each of
which there are interesting abbey ruins. Of course it would have been
a fine thing to go to the extreme northern point of Scotland, known as
John O' Groats, but this, at the rate we traveled, would have consumed
two or three days. The country is not specially interesting and has few
historical associations. Tourists make this trip chiefly to be able to
say they have covered the Kingdom from Lands End to John O' Groats.

[Illustration: THE CALEDONIAN COAST.

From Painting by D. Sherrin.]

I have said little of the larger cities--we did not stop long in any of
these. The chief delight of motoring in B