NOVEMBER 209 



what he did in the short time between his resignation 

 of the living and his death, which seems to have been 

 in or soon after 1614. We are not informed whether he 

 had any assistant or companion in his peregrination of 

 Scotland ; we know not what instruments he possessed ; 

 this much only is certain, that, to quote the words of 

 his posthumous editor, Gordon : 



'He perambulated the whole of this realm afoot, which 

 none had ever done before ; he explored those islands which 

 were inhabited by hostile and barbarous people as well as 

 the most civilised ones, and heard a language different to 

 ours. He was often robbed, as he used to tell me, by savage 

 brigands, and often suffered the ills of unsafe travel ; yet he 

 never lost heart nor was beaten by difficulties.' 



To form any notion of the nature and extent of those 

 difficulties, one must visualise the Scottish Highlands 

 as they were at the close of the sixteenth century, 

 when Scotland was still a separate monarchy. The 

 glens, indeed, were far more populous than they are 

 now, but subsistence was extremely precarious, cattle- 

 lifting and raiding being the recognised means of relief 

 in seasons of scarcity. There were no roads, only 

 bridle and pack-horse tracks ; and although the clans- 

 men, as a rule, were very hospitable to strangers (a 

 virtue which remains conspicuous among their pos- 

 terity, as the present writer can testify from experi- 

 ence), Pont must often have been hard put to it for 

 food and shelter, and have found it no simple matter 

 to protect his charts and drawing materials, even from 

 summer storms, in such desolate regions as the 

 Monadh Liath, the Moor of Rannoch, and the wind- 



