CHAPTEE XXXVIII. 



Warm showery Summer, disagreeable for the Tourist, but pastorally and agriculturally 

 favourable Xiphias Gladius, or Sword-Fish, cast ashore during a Midsummer Gale 

 Garibaldi dining on Potatoes and Sword-Fish steaks at Caprera The General's Drink 

 Medicinal virtues of an Onion Nettle Broth Translation of a New Zealand Maori 

 Song. 



"RATHER showery, sir," exclaims the pleasure-seeking butterfly 

 tourist as he stands at his hotel window, or settles himself as 

 comfortably as may be on the box-seat of the coach in the 

 morning. " N"ot a bit of it, sir," responds the sturdy agriculturist 

 or well-to-do drover; "not a bit of it, sir, the finest growing 

 weather we could have : cattle and sheep getting into condition 

 famously!" [July 1873]. In such a case it is best to avoid 

 declaring positively for either party. In medio tutissimus ibis. 

 Both are right from their individual standpoint; that of the 

 agriculturist and drover being the utilitarian and anti-poetic, while 

 the sentimental tourist, bent on sight-seeing and recreation, very 

 pardonably grumbles that instead of clear skies and refreshing 

 breezes he is as often as not enveloped in mist and small rain. In 

 any case the country is at present most beautiful, and despite 

 the grumblings of a few, who foolishly expect to have " a' the 

 comforts of the Sautmarket " about them whithersoever they 

 wander, such batches of tourists as we forgather with from time 

 to time are in raptures with our glens, and bens, and lochs, and 

 richly wooded shores, as well they may. And never before 

 in the West Highlands were all the conveniences for " touristing " 

 with ease and comfort, and all reasonable despatch, so perfect and 

 so varied. 



