Part 3 (1/2)

It was on this occasion that I saw, for the first tiled adone, and merely a printed name--that had actually published a book Poor Miss Bond was a kindly sort of person, fond of children, and h keenly alive to the ludicrous, without a grain of malice in her I remember how, about this time, when, assisted by soe house, full four feet long and three feet high, that contained us all, and a fire, and a great deal of smoke to boot, Miss Bond the authoress cah the little door, and then down through the chiave us kind words, and seemed to enjoy our enjoyreatest events that could possibly have taken place She had been intimate with the parents of Sir Walter Scott; and, on the appearance of Sir Walter's first publication, the ”Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border,” she had taken a fit of enthusiasm, and written to him; and, when in the cold paroxys foolish, had received from Sir Walter, then Mr Scott, a characteristically warm-hearted reply She experienced much kindness at his hands ever after; and when she herself became an author, she dedicated her book to him He now and then procured boarders for her; and when, after leaving Croh, she opened a school in the latter place, and got on with but indifferent success, Sir Walter--though straggling with his own difficulties at the time--sent her an enclosure of ten pounds, to scare, as he said in his note, ”the wolf froinal of his own Jeanie Deans, was a ”proud bodie;” and the ten pounds were returned, with the intimation that the wolf had not yet come to the door Poor lady! I suspect he came to the door at last Like h life skirted, for the greater part of the way, the bleak lee-shore of necessity; and it cost her not a little skilful steering at ti And in her solitary old age, she seeround There was an atteh to purchase for her a sress, I heard of her death She illustrated in her life the remark recorded by herself in her ”Letters,” as , Meh the world _without a head_,” _ie_, single and unprotected

Froe never reachedand composition; for she had said it, and her heart was a kind one; but then her ti an occasional hour to -lady classes, inway by my explorations in the ebb and the peat-moss, and frayed, at ti to the tops of great trees, and by feats as a cragsman--that would have been a piece of Jack-Cadeisoverness could have ventured And so I was left to get on in verse and picture- quite in the ithout care or culture

My schoolfellows liked h--better at least, on most occasions, than they did the lessons of the round of enjoyment which these extempore compositions furnished to both the ”sennachie” and his auditors, our tracts of amusement lay widely apart I disliked, as I have said, the yearly cock-fight--found no pleasure in cat-killing, or in teasing at nights, or on the street, the cross-tee--usually kept aloof froled in the old hereditary games On the other hand, with the exception of my little friend of the cave, who, even after that disastrous incident, evinced a tendency to trust and follow me as implicitly as before, my schoolmates cared as little forthe majority on their side, they of course voted mine to be the foolish ones And certainly a run of ill-luck followed ive some show of reason to their decision

In the course of , I had fallen in with two old-fashi+oned military treatises, part of the small library of a retired officer lately deceased, of which the one entitled the ”Military Medley,”

discussed the whole art oftroops, and contained numerous plans, neatly coloured, of battalions drawn up in all possible forencies; while the other, which also abounded in prints, treated of the noble science of fortification according to the system of Vauban I poured over both works withthem as admirable toy-books, set myself to construct, on a very small scale, some of the toys hich they specially dealt The sea-shore in the ihbourhood of the town appeared toon of a cah, when stilltide, to stand up in the for lines of rampart; and there was one of the commonest of the Littorinidae--_Littorina litoralis_, that in one of its varieties is of a rich yellow colour, and in another of a bluish-green tint--which supplied ured and described in the ”Medley” The warmly-hued yellow shells represented Britons in their scarlet--the y ones, the French in their uniforms of dirty blue; well-selected specimens of _Purpura lapillus_, just tipped on their backs with a speck of paint, blue or red, frooons; while a few dozens of the slender pyramidal shells of _Turritella communis_ formed complete parks of artillery With such unlimited stores of the _materiel_ of war at my command, I was enabled, ht battles and conduct retreats, assault and defend, build up fortifications, and then batter theain, at no expense at all; and the only drawback on such a vast ae that I could at first perceive consisted in the circuly open to observation, and that my new areatly rese children of the place, who used to repair to the sale-beds, to bake dirt-pies in the sand, or range lines of shells on little shelves of stone, imitative of the crockery cupboard at home Not only my school-fellows, but also some of their parents, evidently arrived at the conclusion that the two sets of amusements--mine and those of the little children--were identical; for the elder folk said, that ”in their time, poor Francie had been such another boy, and every one sahat he had coetic in their manifestations, and a their tops, to hoot at n went on; and I solacedfolk nor the little folk could bring a battalion of troops across a bridge of boats in the face of an eneular fortification could be constructed on only a regular polygon

I at length discovered however, that as a sea-shore is always a sloping plane, and the Cromarty beach, in particular, a plane of a rather steep slope, it afforded no proper site for a fortress fitted to stand a protracted siege, seeing that, fortify the place as I ht, it could be easily co upon a grassy knoll ahbourhood of a scaur of boulder clay, capped by a thick stratum of sand, as a much better scene of operations, I took possession of the knoll soe quantities of sand fronificent stronghold First I erected an ancient castle, consisting of four towers built on a rectangular base, and connected by straight curtains embrasured a-top I then surrounded the castle by outworks in the reatly lower curtains than the ancient ones, flanked by nue calibre, made of the jointed stalks of the hemlock; while, in advance of these, I laid down ravelins, horn-works, and tenailles I was vastly delighted with my work: it would, I was sure, be no easyan eht, be occupied by a rather annoying battery, I was deliberating how I ht best take possession of it by a redoubt, when out started, from behind a tree, the factor of the property on which I was trespassing, and rated rass in a manner so wantonly mischievous Horn-work and half-moon, tower and bastion, proved of noan attack of a kind so little anticipated I did think that the factor, as not only an intelligent man, but had also seen much service in his day on the town links, as the holder of a coht have perceived that I was labouring on scientific principles, and so deem me worthy of soh, to be sure, his scold died out good-naturedly enough in the end, and I saw hih as he turned away But so it was, that in the extreeneralshi+p and bastion-building for the tih, alas! my next amusement must have worn in the eyes of my youthful compeers as suspicious an aspect as either

My friend of the cave had lent me what I had never seen before--a fine quarto edition of Anson's Voyages, containing the original prints ( the others, Mr Brett's elaborate delineation of that strangest of vessels, a proa of the Ladrone Islands I was ularity of the construction of a barque that, while its head and stern were exactly alike, had sides that totally differed from each other, and that, with the wind upon the beam, outsailed, it was said, all other vessels in the world; and having the command of the little shop in which my Uncle Sandy made occasional carts and wheelbarrohen unemployed abroad, I set iven in the print, and succeeded in fabricating a very extraordinary proa indeed While its lee side was perpendicular as a wall, its ard one, to which there was an outrigger attached, resembled that of a flat-bottomed boat; head and stern were exactly alike, so as to fit each for perfor in turn the part of either; a moveable yard, which supported the sail, had to be shi+fted towards the end converted into the stern for the time, at each tack; while the sail itself--a le Such was the vessel--so or so--hich I startled froators of a horse-pond in the neighbourhood--all very es known on the Scottish coast According to Ca beyond Description wretched: such a wherry, Perhaps, ne'er ventured on a pond, Or crossed a ferry”

And well did my fellows appreciate its extreme ludicrousness It was certainly rash to ”venture” it on this especial ”pond;” for, greatly to the da, it was fairly pelted off, and I was sent to test elsewhere its sailing qualities, which were, as I ascertained, not very remarkable after all And thus, after a y and barque-building received by a censorious age, that judged ere it knew Were I sentiht well exclaim, in the very vein of Rousseau, Alas! it has been ever the misfortune of my life that, save by a few friends, I have never been understood!

I was evidently out-Francieing Francie; and the parents offriend, who saw that I had acquired considerable influence over him, and were afraid lest I should h desirous to break off our intimacy, when there occurred an unlucky accident, which served n My friend's father was thesmack, which, in war times, carried a feelve-pounders, and was furnished with a s secured for hih the connivance of the shi+p-boy, an entire cannon cartridge, containing sounpowder, I was, of course, let into the secret, and invited to share in the sport and the spoil We had a glorious day together in his nificent volcanoes break forth out of mole-hills, or were plots of daisies and violets so ruthlessly scorched and torn by the explosion of deep laid h a few ers, and to eye-brows that were in the way, our amuse saw nearly the half of our precious store unexhausted It was garnered up by arret in which he slept, and would have been safe, had he not been seized, when going to bed, with a yearning desire to survey his treasure by candle-light; when an unlucky spark from the flame exploded the whole He was so sadly burnt about the face and eyes as to be blind for several days after; but, aarret-door, and, while the inmates of the household, startled by the shock and the noise, ca up stairs, sturdily refused to let any of theunpowder reek issued from every crack and cranny, and his th, however, he capitulated--ter, heard with horror and disreement between us on the previous day, mainly in order to screen the fine fellow of a shi+p-boy, that I should be regarded as the owner of the powder; but here was a consequence on which I had not calculated; and the strong desire to seeheld responsible by his parents and sisters for the accident And so, h to visit him I was coldly received by his mother, and, what vexedthat he had been enerous use of our late treaty, I took leave in high dudgeon, and caed him: he had stoutly denied, as I afterwards learned, that I had any share in the powder; but his friends dee with ly, and after ive h our hearts beat quick and high every tile word On one occasion, however, shortly after the accident, we did exchange letters I wrote to hiht to have been engaged with my tasks, a stately epistle, in the style of the billets in the ”Fean, I reht I had a friend whom I could rely upon; but experience tells me he was only nominal For, had he been a real friend, no accident could have interfered with, or arbitrary command annihilated, his affection,” &c, &c As I was rather an indifferent scribe at the time, one of the lads, known as the ”copperplate writers” of the class, made for ant dashes, and in which the spelling of every as scrupulously tested by the dictionary

And, in due course, I received a carefully engrossed note in reply, of which the manual portion was performed by my old companion, but the composition, as he afterwards told me, elaborated by some one else It assured me he was still my friend, but that there were ”certain circu for the future on our old terms We were, however, destined to ; and narrowly ether rown infirm in her nether parts at the time, when he was the outed minister of Small Isles, and I editor of the _Witness_ newspaper

I had a hlands of Sutherland, as soher eldest boy, she had, when on a visit to the low country, assisted also in nursing her The boy had shot up into a very clever lad, who, having gone to seek his fortune in the south, rose, through the several degrees of clerkshi+p in a mercantile firm, to be the head of a coh ultimately unsuccessful, seemed for so For about three of these the portion of the profits which fell to my cousin's share did not fall short of fifteen hundred pounds per annuhland home in the heyday of his prosperity, after an absence of years, it was found that he had a great many friends in his native district on whoreatly in the habit of visiting his e, but who now came to lunch, and dine, and take their ith him, and who seemed to value and admire hih company, and found herself, like Martha of old, ”cuhtand active at the tiht, I was included in the invitation The place was not much above thirty hlands, which I had never before seen, save on the distant horizon; and, to a boy who had to walk all the way, even thirty s had penetrated so far, represented a journey of no inconsiderable distance Mywo of the second day, we reached together e, in the ancient Barony of Gruids It was a low, long, dingy edifice of turf, four or five rooentle acclivity, so up the hill As the lower apartment was occupied by my uncle's half-dozen milk-cows, the declination of the floor, consequent on the nature of the site, proved of signal ie which it secured; the second apart upwards, which was of considerable size, forhland style, its fire full in the middle of the floor, without back or sides; so that, like a bonfire kindled in the open air, all the inmates could sit around it in a wide circle--the woed on the one side, and the men on the other; the apartment beyond was partitioned into small and very dark bed-rooms; while, further on still, there was a closet with a littlein it, which was assigned to my mother and me; and beyond all lay as emphatically ”the room,” as it was built of stone, and had bothand chie box-bed, and a small but well-filled bookcase And ”the room” was, of course, for the tiht, and the hospitable refectory in which he entertained his friends by day

My aunt's family was one of solid worth Her husband--a cohlander, rather below the rave and somewhat melancholy aspect, but in reality of a temperament rather cheerful than otherwise--had been soood shot and a skilful angler, and had danced at bridals, and, as was cohlands at the time, at lykewakes; nay, on one occasion he had succeeded in inducing a new-madeto take the floor in a strathspey, beside her husband's corpse when every one else had failed to bring her up, by roguishly reht have refused to dance at poor Donald's death wake, he little thought it would have been she But a great change had passed over hi man, much respected in the Barony for honest worth and quiet unobtrusive consistency of character His wife had been brought, at an early age, under the influence of Donald Roy's ring, and had, like her ion into her household

They had two other sons besides the merchant--both well-built, robust men, somewhat taller than their father, and of such character, that one ofout his way, by dint of frequent and sedulous inquiry, to their dwelling, found the general verdict of the district elish of a poor old wo her best to direct hi, ”It's a goot oot two lads” The elder of the two brothers superintended, and partly wrought, his father's little far as a sort of humble factor for the proprietor of the Barony, who lived at a distance, and had no dwelling upon the land The younger was aseasons, at a distance; but in winter, and, on this occasion, for a feeeks during the visit of his brother the merchant, he resided with his father Both were h, was an ingenious, self-taught s to fashi+on a nu the rest, Highland snuff-mulls, hich he supplied all his friends; and he was at this tihland barn, and, to vary the work, fabricating for hiht for a few years at his trade in the south of Scotland, was a great reader, wrote very tolerable prose, and verse which, if not poetry, to which he made no pretensions, was at least quaintly-turned rhyeoe accomplishment for a Celt--he was an adept in the noble science of self-defence But George never sought out quarrels; and such was his amount of bone and muscle, and such the expression of manly resolution stamped on his countenance, that they never caht

At the close of the day, when the members of the household had assembled in a wide circle round the fire, my uncle ”took the Book,” and I witnessed, for the first time, family-worshi+p conducted in Gaelic

There was, I found, an interesting peculiarity in one portion of the services which he conducted He was, as I have said, an elderly man, and had worshi+pped in his family ere Dr Stewart's Gaelic translation of the Scriptures had been introduced into the county; and as he possessed in those days only the English Bible, while his domestics understood only Gaelic, he had to acquire the art, not uncolish chapter for theue; and this he had learned to do with such ready fluency, that no one could have guessed it to be other than a Gaelic work fro Nor had the introduction of Dr

Stewart's translation rendered the practice obsolete in his household

His Gaelic was _Sutherlandshi+re_ Gaelic, whereas that of Dr Steas Argyleshi+re Gaelic His fa better, in consequence, than that of the Doctor; and so he continued to translate frolish Bible _ad aperturam libri_, many years after the Gaelic edition had been spread over the country The concluding evening prayer was one of great solee in which it was couched; but it was i, with its wrestling earnestness and fervour The man who poured it forth evidently believed there was an unseen ear open to it, and an all-seeing presence in the place, before whoht lay exposed The entire scene was a deeply i the celebration of high mass in a Popish cathedral many years after, the altar suddenly enveloped in a di smoke of the incense ascended, and heard thein the distance frohland cottage, where, aht of the fire fell with uncertain gli for the upper portion of the roof, overhung the floor like a ceiling, and there arose aloom the sounds of prayer truly God-directed, and poured out from the depths of the heart; and I felt that the stoled priest of the cathedral was h a skilful one, but that in the ”priest and father” of the cottage there were the truth and reality from which the artist drew No bolt was drawn across the outer door as we retired for the night The philosophic Biot, when employed with his experiments on the second pendulum, resided for several months in one of the smaller Shetland islands; and, fresh fro about with it, if I uillotine--the state of trustful security in which he found the simple inhabitants filled hi the twenty-five years in which Europe has been devouring herself,” he exclaimed, ”the door of the house I inhabit has reht” The interior of Sutherland was at the time of e, unfurnished with lock or bar, opened, like that of the hermit in the ballad, with a latch; but, unlike that of the hermit, it was not because there were no stores within to demand the care of the master, but because at that comparatively recent period the crime of theft was unknown in the district

I rose early next rass and lichen, curious to explore a locality so new to neiss districts of Scotland; and I found the nearer hills comparatively low and confluent, and the broad valley in which lay

Still there were a few points to engage me; and the row The western slopes of the valley are lacier, around and over which there rose, at this period, a loidely-spreading wood of birch, hazel, andat the tiht in orange and scarlet In looking adown the hollow, a group of the green toainst the blue hills of Ross; in looking upwards, a solitary birch-covered hillock of siainst the calm waters of Loch shi+n and the purple peaks of the distant Ben-Hope In the bottoe, Iabove the general level; and, ranged along these, there were groups of what seee boulder stones, save that they were less rounded and water-worn than ordinary boulders, and were, what groups of boulders rarely are, all of one quality And on examination, I ascertained that some of their number, which stood up like broken obelisks, tall, and comparatively narrow of base, and all hoary with moss and lichen, were actually still connected with the mass of rock below They were the wasted upper portions of vast dikes and veins of a grey, large-grained syenite, that traverse the fundaneiss of the valley, and which I found veined, in turn, by threads and sea in drusy cavities, thickly lined along their sides with sprig crystals Never had I seen such lovely crystals on the shores of Cromarty, or anywhere else They were clear and transparent as the purest spring water, furnished each with six sides, and sharpened a-top into six facets Borrowing one of Cousin George's haems, which even my mother and aunt were content to admire, as what of old used, they said, to be called Bristol diamonds, and set in silver brooches and sleeve buttons Further, within less than a hundred yards of the cottage, I found a lively little streaor, as I soon ascertained, in trout, lively and little like itself, and gaily speckled with scarlet

It wound through a flat, dank h; for it had been a burying-ground of old, and flat undressed stones lay thick arass And in the lower corner, where the old turf-wall had sunk into an inconspicuous hty tree, all solitary, for its fellows had long before disappeared, and so hollow-hearted in its corrupt old age, that though it still threw out every season a e, I was able to creep into a little chah circular openings where boughs once had been, and listen, when a sudden shower ca of the rain-drops amid the leaves The valley of the Gruids was perhaps not one of the finest or hland valleys, but it was a very admirable place after all; and amid its woods, and its rocks, and its to streahtfully away

My cousin Williauests; but they were all too grand to take any notice of htful reat deal about rocks and stones, that, having heard of e crystals, desired to see both them and the boy who had found theranites, andthe mountains in nooks and crannies I am afraid I would not now deeh of his conversation to conclude that he knew but little, and that little not very correctly: but not before Werner or Hutton could I have bowed doith a profounder reverence He spoke of the marbles of assynt--of the petrifactions of Helmsdale and Brora--of shells and plants embedded in solid rocks, and of forest trees converted into stone; and erly, as those of the Queen of Sheba of old when she listened to Soloe