A HUNDRED YEARS IN THE HIGHLANDS 213 



leather and a distant connection of ours, was of course 

 nailed for dinner. He was bound for Skye, and hearing 

 I was longing for a chance of getting there to visit our 

 friends, the Mackinnons of Corry, Mrs. Mackinnon being 

 sister to Aunty Kerry sdale, James offered me a passage. 

 When on board next day he asked me to guess his cargo. 

 I said ' Salt for herrings,' but his reply was: ' Tubs of 

 brandy ! I'm straight from Bordeaux, and the cruiser 

 is not afloat that can lay salt on the Bride if there is an 

 air of wind.' 



" Even so late as then, say 1820, one would go a 

 long way before one met a person who shrank from 

 smuggling. My father never tasted any but smuggled 

 whisky, and when every mortal that called for him — they 

 were legion daily — had a dram instantly poured into 

 him, the ankers of whisky emptied yearly must have 

 been numerous indeed. I don't believe my mother or 

 he ever dreamed that smuggling was a crime. Ere 

 I was twenty he had paid £1,000 for the * superiority ' 

 of Platcock, at Fortrose, to make me a commissioner of 

 supply and consequently a Justice of the Peace and one 

 of the about thirty or forty electors of the county of 

 Ross; and before it had occurred to me that smuggling 

 was really a serious breach of the law, I had from the 

 bench fined many a poor smuggler as the law directs. 

 Then I began to see that the ' receiver ' — myself, for 

 instance, as I drank only ' mountain dew ' then — was 

 worse than the smuggler. So ended all my connection 

 with smuggling except in my capacity as magistrate, to 

 the grief of at least one of my old friends and visitors, 

 the Dean of Ross and Argyle, who scoffed at my resolu- 

 tion and looked sorrowfully back on the happy times 



