176 A HUNDRED YEARS 



exhausted the housekeeper's ideas of variety in the 

 supper dishes. The meal was soon over, and when the 

 tray had been removed a rummer tumbler, hot-water 

 jug, milk-jug, sugar-bowl, and whisky-bottle, with 

 sufficient wine-glasses, were placed on the table. My 

 father put just one glass of ' mountain dew ' into the 

 rummer, then sugar, and then one toddy ladleful of 

 milk. Though the * dew ' would be coarse and fiery, 

 its toddy was made essentially mild as cream; only 1 

 nowadays would advise drinking the millc without the 

 * dew.' 



" My father was a great planter of trees, and all the 

 big hard-wood trees scattered about the Baile Mor 

 policies were planted by him. Wire fences were unborn 

 in his day, and enclosing by paling every tree he took 

 a fancy to plant here and there would have been im- 

 possible, so he adopted a most simple and effectual 

 protection to his young trees wherever planted. He had 

 a nursery whence hard-wood trees about eight to ten 

 feet high were always ready to be transplanted into 

 carefully prepared pits. In Gairloch in pre-sheep days 

 thousands of wild roses grew everywhere, often eight 

 to ten feet high. For every hard-wood tree transplanted 

 a wild rose with many stems was carefully taken up and 

 planted in the same pit. The rose stems were fastened 

 to the hard- wood tree by wire ties, the result being 

 that the most itchy cattle beast would go a mile for a 

 scratch rather than touch a tree so thorn-protected. 

 Every tree thus planted by my wise father was perfectly 

 safe from injury by cattle, the briers living many years 

 — indeed, almost for ever. 



