340 A FARMER'S YEAR 



methods of conveyance elementary, but, so far as I am able to 

 discover, it never seems to have occurred to our forefathers that 

 they could possibly be improved, except, of course, by mending the 

 roads. This entire lack of imaginative foresight makes one 

 wonder whether it is not possible that within another four genera- 

 tions the modes of voyaging of the civilised races will not be 

 almost as much in advance of our own as ours are in advance of 

 those available to Dr. Johnson. We know that before then many 

 marvels will have happened ; that, for instance, individuals with 

 half the world between them will be able to talk to each other 

 across space by means of syntonised instruments that, of the 

 millions pulsing through ether, will catch and record only those 

 vibrations which are emitted by their own twin ; that the 

 word spoken in Brighton will be instantaneously heard by the 

 listener in Brisbane, and so forth. But what can it matter to us, 

 who so long ago will have become inhabitants of a land where all 

 things earthly are forgotten ? 



From Oban to Coll the traveller goes by steamboat, a journey 

 of six or seven hours, past the rugged heights of Appin, for so long 

 the home of the Stewart clan ; past the rock where a particularly 

 truculent Duart, desiring to be rid of his wife, hit upon the 

 expedient, admirable in its simplicity, of taking her out for a day's 

 sea-fishing and, just as the tide began to rise, finding that he had 

 business on shore. Unfortunately for him the lady had good 

 lungs and was rescued, but the rest of the story does not matter. 

 Steaming along the Sound of Mull and leaving wooded Tobermory 

 on the left, the vessel comes into Loch Sunart, over which tower 

 the rude heights of Ardnamurchan, now, I am told, no longer owned 

 by Highland chieftains. Indeed, the hereditary * laird ' is rapidly 

 becoming little more than a tradition in the sporting and more 

 picturesque portions of the Highlands, where his place is filled by 

 the successful southerner clothed in a very new kilt. 



After Ardnamurchan Point is left behind come ten or twelve 

 miles of open water, which, when the swell is pressing in from the 

 Atlantic, have been known to interfere with the digestions of the 



