WHY I WENT. 
3 
the junior partner, we arrived at the same conclusion, 
viz., that quill-driving was not my particular voca¬ 
tion, nor a three-legged stool the exact amount of 
range to which I was willing to restrict myself 
through the sunniest part of life. So I went into 
Forfarshire to learn farming — very pleasant, but 
ending in what our transatlantic friends term a 
difficulty with the master. I changed my location 
to a West Highland farm, where on thirteen miles 
square of mountain, flood, moor, and lakes, some 
two acres of arable land, and two whiskey stills, 
the fond parent no doubt imagined that his hard- 
worked son was being duly initiated into all the 
science and mysteries of light Scotch farming. Be 
that as it may, what with the game, fish, and vermin, 
my dogs and the round of trysts with old L-, 
than whom a better-hearted fellow never 6 took his 
morning,’ I was what might be called master of the 
situation. I look upon those years as among the 
happiest of my life. But time wore on, and having 
no earthly prospect of the command of anything 
like a moor or a stud in the old country, I cast 
about me for some land of greater liberty (at least 
of foot), and had engaged a fine young Scotchman 
to go with me ; but while debating whether Canada 
or the western prairies of America was to be my 
destination, two intimate friends, the sons of a 
neighbouring gentleman, who were going to Natal, 
advised that colony ; and Gordon Cumming’s book, 
which appeared at that moment, and as I thought 
B 2 
