32 A HUNDKED YEARS 



and upright. The floor was made of planks, and these 

 sledge carts did all that was needed for moving peat, 

 and nearly every kind of crop. Movable boxes planted 

 on the sledge floor between the front and back served to 

 carry up fish from the shore and lime and manure, and 

 it was long ere my father Sir Hector paid a penny a year 

 to a cartwright. The sledges could slide where wheeled 

 carts could not venture, and carried corn and hay, etc., 

 famously." 



My readers will perhaps wonder how we got our 

 letters before the Loch Maree road was made. Well, 

 there was a mail packet, a small sloop which ran between 

 Stornoway and Poolewe and carried all the Lews and 

 Harris letters for the south, and which was supposed to 

 run twice a week, though, as a matter of fact, she seldom 

 did it even once. There was a sort of post office at 

 Poolewe, to which the Gairloch and Aultbea letters 

 (if there were any) found their way, and the whole lot 

 was put into a small home-made leather bag which Iain 

 Mor am Posda (Big John the Post) threw on his shoulder. 

 With this he trudged, I might say climbed, through the 

 awful precipices of Creag Thairbh (the BulFs Rock) 

 on the north side of Loch Maree, passing through 

 Ardlair and Letterewe, and so on at one time to Ding- 

 wall, but latterly only to Achnasheen. Imagine the 

 letters and newspapers for the parish of Gairloch and 

 Torridon (part of Applecross), with about 6,000 souls, 

 and the Lews, with a population of nearly 30,000 

 inhabitants, all being carried on one man's back in 

 my day ! 



The only possible way of getting baker's bread in 



