1 1 6 THE JO URNEYMAN. 



spade, termed a cass chrom, and the hoe, supplying the 

 place of the latter, the Highlander himself, and more 

 particularly his wife, that of the former ; for here (shall 

 I venture the expression?), as in all semi-barbarous 

 countries, the woman seems to be regarded rather as the 

 drudge than the companion of the man. It is the part 

 of the husband to turn up the land and sow it ; the wife 

 conveys the manure to it in a square creel with a slip 

 bottom, tends the corn, reaps it, hoes the potatoes, digs 

 them up, and carries the whole home on her back. 

 When bearing the creel she is also engaged in spinning 

 with the distaff and spindle. I wish you but saw with 

 what patience these poor females continue working thus 

 doubly employed, for the greater part of a long summer's 

 day. I frequently let the mallet rest on the stone before 

 me, as some one of them passes by, bent nearly double 

 with the load she is carrying, yet busily engaged in 

 stretching out and turning the yarn with her right hand, 

 and winding it up with her left. Can you imagine a 

 more primitive system of agriculture, or wonder that I 

 should be half inclined to imagine that, instead of having 

 taken a journey of a few score miles to witness it, I had 

 retraced for that purpose the flight of time for the last 

 six centuries ? 



' I am now going to turn gossip, and to give you 

 some stories of myself. I am a great egotist ; but how 

 can I help it ? I have no second-hand narratives to re- 

 late ; and of what I myself see, I must tell you what I 

 myself think. With all the different members of the 

 minister's family I have become acquainted in some de- 

 gree or other. The minister himself occasionally honours 

 me with a nod ; his wife, who has no particular quarrel 

 with me, for 'twas not I who remarked that her milk 

 " smelt of the last week/' has once or twice had some little 



