DOCKS INSTEAD OF OSIERS. 267 



the farmer's ponies, leaving our own couple to recover from 

 the process of perspiration, and drove seven or eight miles 

 further on, crossing the base of the Butt, and visiting Cal- 

 ligol and other fishing creeks and stations. The people 

 scarcely speak English, so without the factor we should 

 have made little and unproductive progress. I may men- 

 tion, as a proof of the rarity of shrubs here, that the people 

 never cut the dockens, but let them grow as tall as pos- 

 sible. You see them everywhere, like little brown poplars 

 among the stubble, after the plots of barley have been 

 shorn. At a certain time they pull them up, twist them 

 about in some way, and eventually make them into baskets 

 to carry bait, &c, to the fishing. It was when we were 

 lunching on venison sandwiches, and taking them out of a 

 beautiful basket with a flap over it, all made of beautifully 

 plaited cane- work, that the factor overheard one of the 

 lookers-on say in Gaelic, ' Eh, what grand dockens they 

 mun hae in their country ! ' We got back to the farm-house 

 about four. There we found our horses at their hay and 

 corn, and we had not sat two minutes in a neat parlour, 

 with a table-cloth ready laid, and white as snow, when in 

 came a large tureen of sumptuous barley-broth, two large 

 dishes of potatoes, a beautiful little leg of roasted mutton, 

 a neat plate of sliced cold beef, and two fowls nicely roasted. 

 These we immediately consumed, took one turn of whisky- 

 toddy, ordered our gallant grays, shook hands with the 



