16 
ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY LIFE [ch. ii. 
—descriptions of all varieties of scenery, detailed 
lists of plants collected, notices of birds which 
were seen, and occasionally fine passages of 
reflective thought. 
On one occasion they met a band of tinkers, 
and as one of them, an ex-soldier, appeared to be 
rather threatening, they took the precaution of 
loading their fowling pieces in order to be ready 
for any emergency. 
As MacGillivray was accustomed to long 
journeys on foot, he did not feel much the fatigue 
of the journey, although the daily distances accom¬ 
plished at times were considerable; but it was 
otherwise with his friend, and the following is an 
interesting account of how they spent a night near 
the head of Loch Maree :— 
“We saw two people from Pollewe who' 
were driving cattle. They informed us that the 
Stornoway packet had sailed in the morning, but 
would be expected on Wednesday. After giving 
them a dram and taking one ourselves, we set out 
under the resolution of sleeping in the hills. 
Accordingly after proceeding about a mile we 
began to look out for a convenient station, and 
after some search found one. It was the bed of 
a torrent situated upon the side of a high valley at 
the upper end of Loch Maree. We pulled some 
heather which we put under us, and after eating 
of some biscuit and beef which we had taken with 
us, addressed ourselves to sleep. But the rain fell 
in heavy showers, and Mr Shand grew sick and 
shivered excessively. So after some time we again 
fell to pulling heather, with which we made a sort 
of canopy to protect our heads and shoulders from 
