London to John O 1 Groat's. 397 



went down to the wharf or quay and had some con- 

 versation with one of the masters of the business. He 

 cured and put up about 30,000 barrels of herrings him- 

 self in a season, employing, while it lasted, 500 persons. 

 Their chief market is the North of Europe, especially 

 Poland, and the business was consequently much de- 

 pressed on account of the troubles in that country. The 

 occupation of this little sea-side village illustrated the 

 ramifications of commerce. They imported their salt 

 from Liverpool, their staves from Norway and their 

 hoops from London. 



Set out again immediately after breakfast, feeling 

 that I was drawing near to the end of my journey. 

 I was soon in the treeless county of Caithness, so 

 fraught with the wild romance of the Norsemen. 

 Passed over the bleakest district I had yet seen, called 

 Old Ord, a cold, rough, cloud-breeding region that the 

 very heavens above seem to frown upon with a scowl 

 of dissatisfaction. Still, the road over this dark, 

 mountain desert, though staked on each side to keep 

 the traveller from wandering in the blinding snows 

 of winter, was as beautifully kept as the carriage-way 

 in the park of Dunrobin Castle. The sending of an 

 English queen to conciliate the Welsh, by giving birth 

 to a son in one of their castles, was not a much better 

 stroke of policy than that of England in perforating 



