CHAPTER X. 



PEOPLE WE HAVE MET. 



OUR travels up and down the British Isles have 

 naturally thrown us amongst curious characters 

 of all classes, and it is my intention to relate in 

 this chapter something of our doings with the 

 most interesting of them. 



In the late spring of 1895 my brother and 

 I left Oban in a steamer plying amongst the 

 Western Isles of Scotland. The passengers we met 

 on board were of a rather mixed order tourists, 

 missionaries, Highland servants of both sexes on 

 their way to or from engagements, commercial 

 travellers, pedlars, and migrants. 



One hearty old Highland woman and her buxom 

 daughter were moving to the bleak and lonely Isle 

 of Rum, with their few sticks of household furni- 

 ture, a cow, yearling calf, arid half a dozen domestic 

 fowls. The cow had not been milked the morn- 

 ing she was put on board, and as the day wore 

 on the poor creature's udder became distended, and 

 she lowed as cows will under similar circum- 

 stances for relief. I noted this, and asked the 

 owner's daughter whether I might milk the animal. 

 At this she laughed until the tears shone upon 

 her brown healthy-looking cheeks. The mere 

 incongruity of a Heeland coo being milked by what 

 she no doubt took to be a Cockney tourist, struck 



