TAIN TO INVERNESS. 75 



terriers and their decoy-fox, have plenty to do in 

 Ross-shire, and sometimes extend their labours to 

 Lewes. These " sheep farm police/" as they are 

 termed, would have to become a great band, and 

 watch men as well as foxes, to be thoroughly worthy 

 of their title; as a large ex-sheep farmer, who 

 can now look back and smile at his losses, states deli- 

 berately that he never could account for some 

 hundreds annually out of a flock of eight thousand 

 except in one way. The crofters on the east coast 

 of Ross-shire, or " Easter Ross," are a superior race 

 of people, who have picked up the Scottish tongue, 

 and hobble as well as they can after the times. Like 

 the farm servants, they generally keep a pig, which 

 journeys with a rope round its waist to the local 

 market at Kildary, when it is nearly a year old, and 

 is bought by jobbers for the south. Here, as, in 

 fact, throughout nearly the whole of Scotland, there 

 is among the poorer classes, not exactly a Judsean de- 

 testation, but an aversion to ham and bacon. They 

 will rear it, but only for sale ; and the home com- 

 missariat is more dependent on a bit of mutton, 

 which is either a cade lamb purchased out of the 

 cartloads of Cheviot or black-faced " shots" which 

 the farmers send to the Muir, or a keery bred by 

 themselves, with crosses innumerable. These pets 

 seem to wander over their little unfenced crops just 

 as they like, and to eat out of the pot as well. Their 

 wool supplies the gude wife's spinning-wheel all 

 winter ; and two or three of them, a pair of High- 



