246 THE JOURNEYMAN. 



the shoal quits the frith before it settles on this bank, 

 the fishing is so scanty as scarcely to cover the fisher- 

 men's expenses in fitting out their boats. This, though 

 not generally known, is so well understood by those con- 

 cerned, that an intelligent fisherman could mark a chart 

 of the Moray Frith with cross lines, like the index of a 

 thermometer, and affix a statement of what the average 

 profit or loss of the respective seasons would prove, in 

 which the fish turned and went off at the different places 

 marked/ 



It was on this Bank of Guilliam that Hugh Miller 

 passed a night in a herring boat ten years before 

 the time at which he wrote. The letter in which his 

 experiences on the occasion are recorded is the most 

 carefully executed of the series, and derives additional 

 interest from containing, in their original form, the ex- 

 tracts from the Herring Fishery letters which he included, 

 many years subsequently, in the Schools and School- 

 masters. They thus enable us to compare his descriptive 

 manner in 1829 with that which he ultimately preferred. 

 Miller seems never to have been able to let a sample of his 

 composition leave his hand without making it as good as, 

 at the time of its quotation, he was capable of making it. 

 Some may be disposed to think that in the easy and art- 

 less vigour, the youthful animation and freshness, of the 

 earlier style, there is something to compensate for the 

 studied compactness and elaborate polish of the later. 



A NIGHT ON GUILLTAM. 



'In the latter end of August, 1819, I went out to 

 the fishing then prosecuted on Guilliam in a Cromarty 

 boat. The evening was remarkably pleasant. A low 

 breeze from the west scarcely ruffled the surface of the 



