ing near the road. In every case I found them kind and
hospitable, giving me a pleasant welcome and the best seat by their
peat-fire. I sat by one an hour while the rain fell cold and fast
outside. The good woman and her daughter were busy baking barley-
cakes. They were the first I had seen, and I ate them with a
peculiar zest of appetite. Told them many stories about America in
return for a great deal of information about the customs and
condition of the working-people. They generally built their own
cottages, costing from 40 to 50 pounds, not counting their own
labor. I met on the road scores of fishermen returning to their
homes at the conclusion of the herring season; and was struck with
their appearance in every way. They are truly a stalwart race of
men, broad-chested, of intelligent physiognomy, with Scandinavian
features fully developed. A half dozen of them followed a horse-
cart containing their nets, all done up in a round ball, like a
bladder of snuff, with the number of their boat marked upon it.

At about four p.m., I came in sight of the steeples of Wick, a brave
little city by the Norse Sea, which may not only be called the Wick
but the Candle of Northern Scotland; lighting, like a polar star,
this hyperborean shoreland of the British isle. I never entered a
town with livelier pleasure. It is virtually the last and farthest
on the mainland in this direction. Its history is full of interest.
Its great business is full of vigor, daring and danger. Here is the
great land-home of the Vikings of the nineteenth century; the
indomitable men who walk the roaring and crested billows of this
Northern Ocean in their black, tough sea-boats and bring ashore the
hard-earned spoils of the deep. This is the great metropolis of
Fishdom. Eric the Red, nor any other pre-Columbus navigator of the
North American Seas, ever mustered braver crews than these sea-boats
carry to their morning beats. Ten thousand of as hardy men as ever
wrestled with the waves, and threw them too, are out upon that wide
water-wold before the sun looks on it--half of them wearing the
features of their Norse lineage, as light-haired and crisp-whiskered
as the sailors of Harold the Fair-haired a thousand years ago. They
come from all the coasts of Scotland, from Orkney, Shetland, the
Hebrides and Lewis islands, and down out of the heart of the
Highlands. It is a hard and daring industry they follow, and
hundreds of graves on the s