CHAP, x.] PROSPECTS OF IMPROVEMENT. 451 



got a penny left from the last hawking excursion. There is 

 no necessity for the females labouring at out-door work. There 

 are few trades in this country where industrious men have a 

 better chance to make money than fishermen have, especially 

 when they are equipped with proper machinery for their call- 

 ing. At Arbroath, Auchmithie, and Footdee (Fittie), the 

 fishing population are at the very bottom of the scale for 

 enterprising habits and social progress. When the wind 

 is in any way from the eastward, or in fact blowing hard 

 from any direction, the fishermen at these places are very 

 chary about going to sea unless dire necessity urges them. 



The people of " Fittie " are progressing in morals and 

 civilisation. One of the local journalists who took the trouble 

 to visit the place lately, in order to describe truthfully what 

 he saw, says : " They have the reputation of being a very 

 peculiar people, and so in many respects they are ; but they 

 have also the reputation of being a dirtily-inclined and de- 

 graded people, and this we can certify from personal inspec- 

 tion they are not. We have visited both squares, and found 

 the interior of the houses as clean, sweet, and wholesome as 

 could well be desired. Their white-washed walls and ceiling, 

 their well-rubbed furniture, clean bedding, and freshly-sanded 

 floors, present a picture of tidiness such as is seldom to be 

 met with among classes of the population reckoned higher in 

 the social scale. And this external order is only the index 

 of a still more important change in the habits and character 

 of our fisher-toun, the population of which, all who know it 

 agree in testifying, has within the past few years undergone 

 a remarkable change for the better in a moral point of view. 

 Especially is this noticed in the care of their children, whose 

 education might, in some cases, bring a tinge of shame to the 

 cheek of well-to-do town's folks. Go down to the fisher 

 squares, and lay hold of some little fellow hardly able to 

 waddle about without assistance in his thick made-down 



