CHAPTER II. 



BEN MORE LODGE. 



IT was up and down hill, mostly up, and the driver apologized for 

 the bad roads. To me they seemed passably good, but then I am 

 accustomed to American roads. There was not an inch of this way 

 which was not made ground, broken stone, pounded hard and firm. 

 There were little inequalities, of course, that could not be avoided, 

 but on the whole, the entire road was one which in America would 

 be called good. Alongside the way as we went, were road makers 

 who might have stepped bodily out of "A Window in Thrums" for 

 my delectation breaking the flints with hammers. Slow-moving, 

 "deeleeberate," making every move count, and being mighty careful 

 not to count too fast. These all seemed men past middle age. 



As we went our way upward the country became rougher, more 

 and more often a stone outcrop, and less and less frequent the 

 trees. We came out at last upon rather high land which showed 

 many a stone outcrop, was treeless, in places grass covered, in others 

 grass and heathergrown, while peat hags glared. 



Do you know what a peat hag is? I did not until I went to 

 Scotland, but now I do. You know peat, of course; it is coal in 

 its first stages; black, the product of hundreds, perhaps thousands of 

 years of slow growth. Soft in places to the point of mushiness, it 

 wears away by the action of the water and holes are gouged out of 

 what looks like the solid ground holes from a pin size to the 

 diameter and depth of a biggish house, the walls of the cavity black. 



And water never except upon the ocean have I seen so much 

 water. Burns roaring and tumbling and murmuring and trickling 

 down the hills everywhere. Never out of the sound of a stream, and 

 lochs of all sizes, forms and descriptions. 



By a heather hill a covey of grouse are treading nervously on their 

 toes drawing courage to stand fast within twenty yards as we roar 



