26 ORMISTOUN'S LETTERS 



them ; nobody will buy them. The moment they were to be had 

 every body bought. Now it is all one, a Cabbage is a Cabbage, 

 a lettuce a lettuce, any kind of Salad is a Salad, pease are pease 

 old or young, an apple an Apple, and so on, no difference made 

 between good or bad of a kind. All this is as wrong and as 

 little true as the saying at first, why shall we raise Garden 

 stuff, nobody will buy. People would presently come to dis- 

 tinguish as they came in to buy when Garden stuff was first 

 introduced. But our people are lazie and saying no body will 

 buy and no body will distinguish is chiefly owing to the want 

 of activity. Industry and care in providing at all or good of 

 their kinds, and bustling a little to introduce and get 

 Customers at first. We are glad of all excuses for our sleep- 

 ing on in poverty and our old jog trott. How shall things 

 be carried to Eden: and nobody will buy in the Country are 

 other very good difficulties and convenient enough excuses, 

 wherein excuse is wanted. I don't know if you have a Carrier 

 at Orm: but I am convinced one who understood his business, 

 would get Employment for a Cart such as the Higlers^ to 

 the Gardiners who come to Covent Garden use. They would 

 carry things cool and clean- and one man with two horses in 

 such a Cart, would carry in as much as four Carriers with 4 

 horses carry in our common way ^ and if you put your things up 

 in Baskets carefully as Gardiners do here, by which they'l not 

 be wet. Bruised or Broiled in the Sun the Cart being covered 

 as the Garden Stuff commonly is, in carrying to Eden. Even 

 care in this will make them fresher and better than what is 

 now to be had there. Or a man of your own with a horse as 

 we got things to the Admty. may go in once or twice a week 

 the year . . . and bring you always out ready money, or the 



which this climate brings to perfection is the cause that the inhabitants set any- 

 thing on their tables after dinner that has any appearance of it ; and I have 

 observed at the houses of principal people a plate of small turnips, which they 

 call 'neeps,' introduced in the desert, and eat with as much avidity as if they 

 had been fruit.' ^ Pedlars, costermongers. 



2 Evidence that wheel traffic was known but little used for long distances, and 

 that horse pack, with panniers or creels, was the usual carriage, as in the days 

 of Henryson's Fables. Till well into the century coals from Tranent, hay, and 

 other country produce reached Edinburgh in this fashion. See also p. 55 — 

 * Go in to Leith — take a cart with you, or horses to get all safe out. ' 



