London to John O' Groat's. 399 



American, the whole family, old and young, including 

 the landlord, gathered around me and had a hundred 

 questions to ask. They related many incidents about 

 the great eviction in Sutherland, which was an event 

 that seems to make a large stock of legendary and 

 unwritten stories, like the old Sagas of the Northmen. 

 When I had dried my clothes and eaten a comfortable 

 dinner before their kitchen fire and resumed my staff, 

 they all followed me out to the road, and then with 

 their wishes for a good journey as long as I was in 

 hearing distance. Continued my walk around head- 

 lands, now looking seaward, now mountainward, now 

 ascending on heather-bound esplanades, now descend- 

 ing in zig-zag directions into deep glens, over massive 

 and elegant bridges that spanned the mountain streams 

 and their steep and jagged banks. After a walk of 

 eighteen miles, put up at an inn a little north of the 

 village of Dunbeath, kept by an intelligent and indus- 

 trious farmer. The rain had continued most of the 

 day, and I was obliged to seek shelter sometimes under 

 a stunted tree which helped out the protecting power 

 of a weather-beaten umbrella ; now in the doorway of 

 an open stable or cow-shed, and once with my back 

 against the door of a wayside church, which kept off 

 the rain in one direction. This being a kind of border- 

 season between summer and autumn, there were no 



