1 8 FAMOUS SCOTS 



that had excited their curiosity, and for which, hints 

 his distinguished son, the Custom-house dues were 

 never very punctually or rigorously paid. Pressed, 

 however, by a man-of-war that had borne down upon 

 the Indiaman when in a state of mutiny, after a brief 

 experience of the stern discipline of the navy not yet 

 tempered by the measures of reform introduced after 

 the mutiny of the Nore, he returned when not much 

 turned thirty to Cromarty, where his savings enabled 

 him to buy a coasting sloop and set up house. For 

 this the site was purchased at ^400, a very consider- 

 able sum in those days, and thus his son could, even 

 in the high franchise qualifications after the Reform 

 Bill, exercise the right of voting for the Whig party. 

 The kelp trade, of which we have spoken, among other 

 things engaged the efforts of his father, who had been 

 appointed agent in the North and Hebrides for the 

 Leith Glass-works. Driven by a storm round Cape 

 Wrath and through the Pentland Firth, the vessel, 

 after striving to reach the sheltered roadstead of the 

 Moray Firth, was forced to put in at Peterhead. On 

 the Qth of November 1807 he set sail, but foundered 

 with all hands, by the starting, as was believed, of a 

 plank. During more than one hundred years the sea 

 had been the graveyard of the family : Miller's father, 

 grandfather, and two grand-uncles had been all drowned 

 at sea. 



At the time of his father's death the son had just 

 by one month completed his fifth year. At that time 



