IN THE HIGHLANDS 37 



a population of about 5,400. She was most successful, 

 and so famous did she become that on one occasion they 

 brought a good-sized idiot, carried on a man's back 

 in a creel from Little Loch Broom, to be healed, such 

 was their faith in her ! But after the doctor arrived her 

 work became a little easier, and she began to take me 

 constantly with her on her riding expeditions, my little 

 Shetland pony carrying me everywhere. I then started 

 fishing, both on sea and loch, and took up ornithology 

 and egg-collecting, in which she encouraged me in every 

 possible way. When I was about seven and knew Gaelic 

 perfectly, she sent for a French boy of twelve from a 

 Protestant orphanage at Arras to come as a sort of 

 page, and to go out with me, and I never had any trouble 

 in learning French, which seemed to come to me quite 

 naturally. Edouard, the French boy, learnt Gaelic as 

 quickly as I learnt French, and could be sent all over 

 the country with Gaelic messages. 



How different from nowadays many things were when 

 I first remember Gairloch ! Such a thing as a lamp I 

 never saw in the Tigh Dige. Only candles were used; 

 paraffin was quite unknown and had not even been heard 

 of; and the black houses depended for light chiefly on 

 the roaring fires in the centre of the room, with, perhaps, 

 an old creel or barrel stuck in the roof to let out the 

 smoke. For use in very exceptional cases the people 

 had tiny tin lamps made by the tinkers and fed with oil 

 made out of the livers of fish which were allowed to get 

 rotten before they were boiled down. But the main 

 lighting at night was done by having a big heap of 

 carefully prepared bog-fir sphnters full of resin all 



