ORNITHOLOGICAL RAMBLES. 27 



employed in collecting their matutinal meal of grubs 

 and worms, or foraging for carrion or eggs to feed their 

 callow brood. A few more weary miles, and we enter 

 the town of Wick. This is a seaport, so fragrant of 

 fish, that Miss Sinclair observes * " that when she 

 entered it she thought of her brother's voyage in a 

 herring smack, when the seats were barrels of herrings, 

 and the staircase from the cabin formed by piles of 

 casks." It is the great emporium of the north Scotch 

 fisheries, and supports no less than fourteen hundred 

 fishing boats, each of which is manned by at least 

 seven men, so that some idea may be formed of the 

 busy scenes that are enacted, and the general activity 

 that prevails here in the fishing season. The popula- 

 tion is consequently very large, and as this sea is 

 peculiarly dangerous at times, numerous are the tales 

 of death and misery which each season contributes to 

 the page of time. The men are intensely bronzed by 

 the cutting sea blast, and the women appeared to me 

 to grow wrinkled and careworn at an early age. At 

 11.30 on the morning of thejlst^of June, I mounted 

 the coach for its last northern stage across the north 

 west corner of Caithness. For the first few miles, 

 although the surrounding country is completely 

 denuded of trees and vegetation, except such scanty 

 herbage as serves to offer an equivocal subsistence to 



* ' Shetland and the Shetlanders,' by Catherine Sinclair. 

 1840. 



