SHOAL OF FISH. 243 



decided than formerly, and lie began to teach in the 

 Sunday school. Hewing under sunny skies on the 

 chapel brae, he often finds Mr Stewart or some intelli- 

 gent friend stealing to his side to give and take an 

 hour's conversation, and sometimes his visitors are of 

 the fair sex. The journeyman mason has become the 

 literary lion of Cromarty. 



But ' nature's noblest gift ' to Miller, his ' grey 

 goose quill/ has not been laid aside. Turning his atten- 

 tion to prose, and availing himself of the columns of the 

 Inverness Courier, which his friend Carruthers gladly 

 throws open to him, he writes, in the summer of 1829, 

 five letters on the Herring Fishery, which, 'in con- 

 sequence/ said Mr Carruthers, ' of the interest they 

 excited in the Northern Counties, and in justice to 

 their modest and talented author/ were issued in pam- 

 phlet form in September of the same year. They are 

 written with much vivacity, and abound with pertinent 

 remarks and fine descriptive passages. In addition to 

 what he had personally witnessed in connection with the 

 Herring Fishery, Miller puts on record not a little which 

 he learned from his more aged townsmen. To the latter 

 is due the following graphic picture of Cromarty Bay 

 when in possession of an extraordinary shoal of fish : 



f I have heard one season spoken of as very remark- 

 able from the quantity of fish on the coast. One day in 

 particular, in the beginning of autumn, the bay of Cro- 

 marty presented a scene not easy to be forgotten. The 

 appearance was as if its countless waves were embodied 

 into fish and birds. No fewer than seven whales, some of 

 them apparently sixty feet in length, were seen within 

 the short space of half a mile. When they spouted, the 

 jet seemed in the rays of a noon -day sun as if speckled 

 with silver, an appearance given by shoals of garves (a 



