CHAPTEE XLIV. 



A " Blessed Thaw " after a Severe Frost— Longevity in Lochaber— A ready " Saline draught " 

 — A probatum est Recipe for Catarrh and Colds — Egg-shell Superstition — Curious old 

 Gaelic Poem. 



How intense was the recent frost [January 1875], and how hyper- 

 borean all our surroundings, may be judged of from the fact that 

 on coming out of church yesterday, one of our people, a greyheaded, 

 pious old man, spoke of the happy change to open weather and 

 " westlan' breezes " very solemnly as " the blessed thaw"- — an 

 t'aiteamli heannaichte. Before any one else north or south of the 

 Tweed made any reference to the coming winter, our readers may 

 .remember that we did, and that we inculcated on every one the 

 wisdom of keeping themselves warm and comfortable, by means of 

 good fires and otherwise, as the best way of being jolly in the best 

 and truest sense of that much misapprehended and frequently mis- 

 applied term. It was, in truth, a trying season ; but sensibly and 

 thickly clad in many a fold of honest home-spun curain, or plaiding, 

 our people for the most part got over it without any very serious 

 ailments. Influenzas, catarrhs, and colds in every form were of 

 course common, and, for a time, one was met on every side by an 

 uncomfortable and sometimes disagreeable amount of coughing, 

 expectoration, sniftering, sneezing, and nose-blowing ; but now all 

 this has almost or altogether passed away, and people are again 

 going about as usual, clad no otherwise than ordinarily, and as 

 becometh the inhabitants of a temperate zone : plaids, comforters, 

 double-ply mittens, and " bosom-friends," having been laid aside as 

 unnecessary incumbrances in weather that is now actually warm 



