ed
families. The Scotch branch had collected specimens from relatives
in Great Britain and forwarded them to the family in America, one of
whose daughters had worked them into two bouquets of flowers,
sending one of them by post to this little, white cottage on the
Northern Sea, as a memento of affection. What enhanced the beauty
of this interchange was the fact, that forty-eight years had elapsed
since the landlord's brother left his native land for New England,
and had never seen it since. Still, the cousins, who had never seen
each other's faces, had kept up an affectionate correspondence. A
son and son-in-law of the brother in America were in the Federal
army, and here was a sea-divided family filled with all the sad,
silent solicitude of affection for beloved ones exposed to the
fearful hazards of a war sundering more ties of blood-relationship
than any other ever waged on earth.

Saturday, September 27th. Resumed my walk with increased animation,
feeling myself within two days' distance of its end. The scenery
softens down to an agricultural aspect, the country declining
northerly toward the sea. Passed through a well-cultivated
district, never unpeopled or wasted by eviction, but held by a kind
of even yeomanry of proprietors. The cottages are comfortable,
resembling the white houses of New England considerably. They are
nearly all of one story, with a chimney at each end, broadside to
the road, and a door in the middle, dividing the house into two
apartments. They are built of stone, the newest ones having a slate
roof. Some of them are whitewashed, others so liberally jointed
with mortar as to give them a bright and cheery appearance. These,
of course, are the last edition of cottages, enlarged and amended in
every way. The old issues are ragged volumes, mostly bound in turf
or bog grass, well corded down with ropes of heather, giving the
roof a singular ribby look, rounded on the ridge. In many cases a
stone is attached to each end of the rope, so as to make it hug the
thatch closely. I noticed that in a considerable number of the old
cottages, the stone wall only reached up a foot or two from the
ground, the rest being made up of blocks of peat. Some of the
oldest had no premonitory symptoms of a chimney, except a hole in
the roof for the smoke. These in no way differed from the stone-
and-turf cottages in Ireland.

Again occasional showers brought me into acquaintance with the
people liv