gy island of Cromarty, so associated with the
venerated memory of Hugh Miller. The beating rain drove me
frequently to the wayside cottages for shelter; and in every one of
them I was received with kind words and pleasant looks. One of
these was occupied by an old woman in the regular Scotch cap--a
venerable old saint, with her Bible and psalm-book library on her
window-sill, and her peat fire burning cheerily. When on leaving I
intimated that I was from America, she followed me out into the
road, asking me a hundred questions about the country and its
condition. She had three sons in Montreal, and felt a mother's
interest in the very name America. The cottage was one of a long
street of them by the sea-side, and I supposed it was a fishing
village; but I learned from her that the people were mostly the
evicted tenants of the Duke of Sutherland, who were turned out of
his county some thirty years ago to make room for sheep. I made
only eleven miles this day on account of the rain, and was glad to
find cheery and comfortable quarters in an excellent inn kept by a
widow and her three daughters in Tain. Nothing could exceed their
kindness and attention, which evidently flowed more from a
disposition than from a professional habit of making their guests at
home for a pecuniary or business consideration. I reached their
house about the middle of the afternoon, cold and wet, after several
hours' walk in the rain, and was received as one of the family; the
eldest daughter, who had all the grace and intelligence of a
cultivated lady, helping me off with my wet overcoat, and even
offering to pull off my water-soaked boots--an office no American
could accept, and which I gently declined, taking the will for the
deed. A large number of Scotch _navvies_ were at the inns of the
town, making an obstreperous auroval in celebration of the monthly
pay-day. They had received the day preceding a month's wages, and
they were now drinking up their money with the most reckless
hilarity; swallowing the pay of five long hours at the pick in a
couple of gills of whiskey. How strange that men can work in rain,
cold and heat at the shovel for a whole day, then drink up the whole
in two hours at the gin-shop! These pickmen pioneers of the Iron
Horse, with their worst habits, are yet a kind of John-the-Baptists
to the march and mission of civilization, preparing its way in the
wilderness, and bringing secluded and isolated populations t