RAMBLES OP A GEOLOGIST. 353 



less. " Poor object !" she muttered in reply, " poor object ! 

 very hungry ;" but her scanty English could carry her no 

 further. I slipped into her hand a small piece of silver, for 

 which she overwhelmed me with thanks and blessings ; and, 

 bringing her to one of the broader avenues, traversed by a 

 road which leads out of the wood, I saw her fairly entered 

 upon the path in the right direction, and then, retracing my 

 steps, crossed the log-bridge. The old woman, little, I 

 should suppose from her appearance, under ninety, was, I 

 doubt not, one of our ill-provided Highland paupers, that 

 starve under a law which, while it has dried up the genial 

 streams of voluntary charity in the country, and presses hard 

 upon the means of the humbler classes, alleviates little, if at 

 all, the sufferings of the extreme poor. Amid present suf- 

 fering and privation there had apparently mingled in her 

 dotage some dream of early enjoyment, a dream of the days 

 when she had plucked berries, a little herd-girl, on the banks 

 of the Auldgrande ; and the vision seemed to have sent her 

 out, far advanced in her second chijdhood, to poke among the 

 bushes with her crutch. 



My old friend the minister of Alness, uninstalled at the 

 time in his new dwelling, was residing in a house scarce half 

 a mile from the chasm, to which he had removed from the 

 paiish manse at the Disruption ; and, availing myself of an 

 invitation of long standing, I climbed the acclivity on which 

 it stands, to pass the night with him. I found, however, 

 that, with part of his family, he had gone to spend a few 

 weeks beside the mineral springs of Strathpeffer, in the hope 

 of recruiting a constitution greatly weakened by excessive la- 

 bour, and that the entire household at home consisted of but 

 two of the young ladies his daughters, and their ward the 

 little Buchubai Hormazdji. 



And who, asks the reader, is this Buchubai Hormazdji ? 

 A little Parsi girl, in her eighth year, the daughter of a Chris- 



