34 ROADS. 



in the chaff in bykes, which were low stacks in the 

 shape of bee-hives, thatched quite round. 



Thurso, the chief place in Caithness, carried on a 

 trade with Norway and Denmark, long before it began 

 to communicate with the rest of Scotland. The sea 

 was by far the easiest mode of transit; and all tne 

 people along the coast were sailors. But, indeed, there 

 was very little traffic to be carried on. The only two 

 clusters of houses in the county were Thurso and 

 Wick. Thurso must have been the more important 

 place, as it not only had a church, but also a bishop 

 the Bishop's Palace being close at hand. Thurso was a 

 small fishing town, and Wick contained only a few 

 hundred inhabitants. But the fishing ha,s long left 

 Thurso, and gone to Wick. " The only fishing at 

 Thurso now," said Dick, "is sillocks and sillock scrae. 

 The salmon fishing, however, is the best in the king- 

 dom." 



There were then no roads in Caithness. The exten- 

 sive hollows in the flat slaty ground were filled with 

 morasses. There was not a single wheel-cart in the 

 county before 1780. Crubbans were the substitutes for 

 carts. They were wicker baskets. Two of them, hung 

 one on each side of a pony from a. wooden saddle, be- 

 neath which was a cushion of straw, carried corn, goods, 

 and other articles. Six or seven ponies thus loaded, 

 says Henderson in his Agricultural Survey of Caithness, 

 might be seen going in a kind of Indian file, each tied 

 by the halter to the other's tail, a person leading the 

 front horse, and each of the others was pulled forward 



