84 FIELD AND FERN. 



and Brydon, besides winning the first prize for 

 Cheviot and black-faced gimmers, only suffered 

 one defeat in the Cheviot tup classes at the hands of 

 Donald Home of Langwell. Inverness' s attempts in 

 a turf point of view have been much less striking. 

 In 1823 its race-sheet consisted of two matches, two 

 races of two, a couple of walks over, and hack and 

 pony races to follow next day. In 1827, when it 

 was the scene of The Northern Meeting, it soared 

 into three days, and eleven events, and among them 

 a Caithness Plate, a Macaroni Stakes in two classes, 

 a Cromarty Gold Cup, and an Isle of Skye Plate 

 (given by Lord Macdonald and M'Cleod of M'Cleod) ; 

 but only one horse arrived in 1830, and the Racing 

 Calendar knew it no more. 



Its character market is the great bucolic glory of 

 Inverness. The Fort William market existed before ; 

 but the Sutherland and Caithness men, who sold 

 about 14,000 sheep and 15,000 stones of wool an- 

 nually as far back as 1816, did not care to go there. 

 They dealt with regular customers year after year, 

 and roving wool staplers with no regular connexion 

 went about and notified their arrival on the church 

 door. Patrick Sellar, "the agent for the Suther- 

 land Association," saw exactly that some great caucus 

 of buyers and sellers was needed at a more central 

 spot, and on February 27th, 1817, that meeting of 

 the clans was held at Inverness, which brought the 

 fair into being. Huddersfield, Wakefield, Halifax, 

 Burnley, Aberdeen, and Elgin signified that their 



