io FAMOUS SCOTS 



rivals fairly the Ecclesiastical History of the old 

 wandering Scottish scholar Dempster, who had in 

 Italy patriotically found the Maccabees to be but an 

 ancient Highland family. According to Urquhart, 

 whose translation of Rabelais has survived his eccentric 

 disquisitions in genealogy and history, Alypos, the 

 forty-third lineal descendant of Japhet, was the first to 

 discover Cromarty, and, when the Scythians under 

 Ethus pitched on the moor bounding the parish on the 

 north, they had been opposed by the grandson of 

 Alcibiades; in proof of which Sir Thomas could 

 triumphantly point to remaining signs of 'trenches 

 and castrametation ' with a confidence which would 

 have won the heart of Jonathan Monkbarns in The 

 Antiquary. 



The population of the district is essentially a mixed 

 one, and strongly retains the distinctive features of 

 the Scandinavian and the Gael. From Shetland to the 

 Ord of Caithness, the population of the coast is gener- 

 ally, if not wholly, of the former type. Beyond the 

 Ord to the north of the Firth of Cromarty, we find a 

 wedge of Celtic origin, while from the southern shore 

 to the Bay of Munlochy the Scandinavian element again 

 asserts itself. Thus, as Carlyle escaped being born an 

 Englishman by but a few miles, the separation from the 

 Celtic stratum was, in Miller's case, effected by the 

 narrow single line of the one-mile ferry. In later years, 

 at all events, he would refer with evident satisfaction 

 to his Teutonic origin. There was, as we shall have 



