London to John O' Groat's. 389 



walk in the rain, and was received as one of the family ; 

 the eldest daughter, who had all the grace and intelli- 

 gence of a cultivated lady, helping me off with my wet 

 overcoat, and even offering to pull off my water-soaked 

 boots an office no American could accept, and which I 

 gently declined, taking the will for the deed. A large 

 number of Scotch navvies were at the inns of the town, 

 making an obstreperous auroval in celebration of the 

 monthly pay-day. They had received the day pre- 

 ceding a month's wages, and they were now drinking 

 up their money with the most reckless hilarity ; swal- 

 lowing the pay of five long hours at the pick in a 

 couple of gills of whiskey. How strange that men 

 can work in rain, cold and heat at the shovel for a 

 whole day, then drink up the whole in two hours 

 at the gin-shop ! These pickmen pioneers of the 

 Iron Horse, with their worst habits, are yet a kind 

 of John-the-Baptists to the march and mission of 

 civilization, preparing its way in the wilderness, and 

 bringing secluded and isolated populations to its light 

 and intercourse. It is wonderful how they are working 

 their way northward among these bald and thick-set 

 mountains. When I first visited Scotland, in 1846, 

 the only piece of railroad north of the Forth was 

 that between Dundee and Arbroath, hardly an hour 

 long. Now the iron pathways are running in every 



