ABERDEEN TO THE SHETLANDS. 7 



the road are wild and open, and the cottars' white 

 crops are rich and yellow with runchy. Some few 

 planes and stunted elders, and a hermit ash in a garden 

 are the only apologies for a tree. At the distance is 

 a lowly straw-thatched hamlet, and seawards a hold 

 Bass Rock, which seems a very Gibraltar to the Che- 

 viots. 



Public-houses and milestones there are none. " If 

 you'll call at some respectable house, and say you're 

 hungry, it's quite enough/ 3 was our primitive " office 55 

 on this head. Even among the humbler folk you can 

 get eggs and oat-cake, and as much buttermilk as you 

 can drink ; and a trifle in the baby's hand at parting 

 will send you away with a blessing. Eggs, it must 

 be remembered, are fourpence a dozen, " except when 

 the fleet comes, 5 ' and then even the mildest Shetlander 

 is not caught napping. For threepence you may gene- 

 rally buy a chicken, for sixpence to ninepence a 

 good fat hen, and for eighteen-pence a goose. The 

 latter are of the small grey sort, and are put out to 

 wander on the hills from Whitsuntide to the end of 

 November, and the procurator-fiscal descends with a 

 month on any one who disregards the slit-mark in 

 the web of the foot. A ewe costs about seven shil- 

 lings; and a cottar's wife, who fastened her two- 

 year-old stot with a cord and a peg among the ooze, 

 and lamented that it was not " longer-leg-ged," 

 thought it very odd of us that we would not close 

 with her 2 offer. In short, for J60 one could stock 

 a miniature farm, and have a team of four mare 



