ens
and a good piece of bacon: God save Mrs. Manson and all the Royal
Family!" This concluding "sentiment" was doubtless sincere and
honest, although it involved a question of precedence in the rank of
two feelings which John the Dutchman could have hardly settled by
his eight-angled plan of adjustment.

The next morning, for the first time for nearly three months of
continuous travel, I faced southward, leaving behind me the Orkneys
unvisited, though I had a strong desire to see those celebrated
islands--the theatre of so much interesting history. Twenty years
ago I translated all the "Sagas" relating to the voyages and
exploits of the Northmen in these northern seas and islands, their
explorations of the coast of North America centuries before Columbus
was born, their doings in Iceland and on all the islands great and
small now forming the British realms. This gave an additional zest
to my enjoyment in standing on the shore of the Pentland Firth and
looking over upon the scene of old Haco's and Sigurd's doing, daring
and dying.

Footed it back to Wick, and there terminated my walk, having
measured, step by step, full seven hundred miles since I left
London, counting in the divergences from a straight line which I had
made. In the evening I addressed a large and intelligent audience
which had been convened at short notice, and I never stood up before
one with such peculiar satisfaction as in that North-star town of
Scotland. I had travelled nearly the whole distance incog., without
hearing my own name on a pair of human lips for weeks. To lay aside
this embargo and to speak to such a large congregation, face to
face, was like coming back again into the great communions of
humanity after a long and private fellowship with the secluded
quietudes of Nature.

At four p.m. the next day, I took the Thurso coach and passed over
in the night the whole distance that had occupied me a week in
travelling by staff. Stopped a night in Inverness, another at
Elgin, and spent the Sabbath with my friend, Anthony Cruickshank, at
Sittyton, about fifteen miles north of Aberdeen.

CHAPTER XIX.

ANTHONY CRUICKSHANK--THE GREATEST HERD OF SHORTHORNS IN THE WORLD--
RETURN TO LONDON AND TERMINATION OF MY TOUR.

Sittyton designates hardly a village in Aberdeenshire, but it has
become a point of great interest to the agricultural world--a second
Babraham. In this quiet, rural district, Anthony Cruickshank, a
quiet, mode