your, &c.

XIX.--To MRS. THRALE.

Inverness, August 28, 1773.

DEAR MADAM,--August 23rd, I had the honour of attending the lord provost
of Aberdeen, and was presented with the freedom of the city, not in a
gold box, but in good Latin. Let me pay Scotland one just praise! there
was no officer gaping for a fee; this could have been said of no city on
the English side of the Tweed. I wore my patent of freedom, _pro more_,
in my hat, from the new town to the old, about a mile. I then dined with
my friend, the professor of physick, at his house, and saw the king's
college. Boswell was very angry, that the Aberdeen professors would not
talk. When I was at the English church, in Aberdeen, I happened to be
espied by lady Di. Middleton, whom I had sometime seen in London; she
told what she had seen to Mr. Boyd, lord Errol's brother, who wrote us
an invitation to lord Errol's house, called Slane's castle We went
thither on the next day, (24th of August,) and found a house, not old,
except but one tower, built on the margin of the sea, upon a rock,
scarce accessible from the sea; at one corner, a tower makes a
perpendicular continuation of the lateral surface of the rock, so that
it is impracticable to walk round; the house inclosed a square court,
and on all sides within the court is a piazza, or gallery, two stories
high. We came in, as we were invited to dinner, and, after dinner,
offered to go; but lady Errol sent us word by Mr. Boyd, that if we went
before lord Errol came home, we must never be forgiven, and ordered out
the coach to show us two curiosities. We were first conducted, by Mr.
Boyd, to Dunbuys, or the yellow rock. Dunbuys is a rock, consisting of
two protuberances, each, perhaps, one hundred yards round, joined
together by a narrow neck, and separated from the land by a very narrow
channel or gully. These rocks are the haunts of seafowl, whose clang,
though this is not their season, we heard at a distance. The eggs and
the young are gathered here, in great numbers, at the time of breeding.
There is a bird here, called a coot, which, though not much bigger than
a duck, lays a larger egg than a goose. We went then to see the Buller,
or Bouilloir, of Buchan: Buchan is the name of the district, and the
Buller is a small creek, or gulf, into which the sea flows through an
arch of the rock. We walked round it, and saw it black, at a great
depth. It has its name from the violent ebullition of the water, when
high wi