CHAP. VIII. WANT OF HIGHLAND ROADS. 379 



a few years before my time may be judged of from 

 Bozzy's ' Letter to Lord Braxfield,' published in 1780. 

 He thinks that, besides a carriage and his own carriage- 

 horses, every judge ought to have his sumpter-horse, 

 and ought not to travel faster than the waggon which 

 carried the baggage of the circuit. I understood from 

 Hope that, after 1784, when he came to the Bar, he and 

 Braxfield rode a whole north circuit ; and that, from the 

 Findhorn being in a flood, they were obliged to go up 

 its banks for about twenty-eight miles to the bridge of 

 Dulsie before they could cross. I myself rode circuits 

 when I was Advocate-Depute between 1807 and 1810. 

 The fashion of every Depute carrying his own shell on 

 his back, in the form of his own carriage, is a piece of 

 very modern antiquity." ] 



North of Inverness, matters were still worse, if pos- 

 sible. There was no bridge over the Beauley or the 

 Conan. The drovers coming south swam the rivers 

 with their cattle. There being no roads, there was little 

 use for carts. In the whole county of Caithness there 

 was scarcely a farmer who owned a wheel-cart. Burdens 

 were conveyed usually on the backs of ponies, but quite 

 as often on the backs of women. 2 The interior of the 

 county of Sutherland being almost inaccessible, the only 

 track lay along the shore, amongst rocks and sand, 

 covered by the sea at every tide. " The people lay 

 scattered in inaccessible straths and spots among the 

 mountains, where they lived in family with their pigs 

 and kyloes (cattle), in turf cabins of the most miserable 

 description ; they spoke only Gaelic, and spent the whole 

 of their time in indolence and sloth. Thus they had 

 gone on from father to son, with little change, except 

 what the introduction of illicit distillation had wrought, 

 and making little or no export from the country beyond 



Memorials of his Time,' by I of Sir John Sinclair, Bart.,' vol. i., p, 



Henry Cockburn, pp. 341-3. 



2 ' Memoirs of the Life and Writings 



339. 



