Our Journey to the Hebrides. Joseph Pennell

77 Vignette for Second Paper 81 In the Transept of the Cathedral, Iona 85 Iona 87 Tomb of Macleod 90 Castle Bay, from Barra 103 Town of Barra 109 Mountains of Harris, from Tarbet 113 Gathering Peat 125 The "Dunara Castle" 131 Interior of a Weaver's Cottage 135 Doing Skye 141 A real Highland Lassie 147 Dunvegan Castle 153 Graveyard of the Macleod 156 Tail-piece 163 Vignette for Third Paper 165 Fisher-boats hauled up near Buckie 183 The only Castle I drew 186 Near Cullen 187 Bit of Macduff 190 Near Banff 193 Banff, from Macduff 195 Fraserburgh 199 In the Harbor, Fraserburgh 203 Gutters at Work, Fraserburgh 207 Coming Home from the Fisheries, Fraserburgh 211 Entrance to the Harbor at Montrose 215 Ruins at Arbroath 221

IN THE HIGHLANDS.

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      We never looked forward to a pleasure trip with so much misery as we did to our journey to the Hebrides. We wanted a holiday.

      "Go to Scotland," suggested the editor of Harper's.

      "Let us rather wander through unexplored France," we proposed, in a long letter, though we had already explored it for ourselves more than once.

      "Scotland would be better," was the answer in a short note.

      "But why not let us discover unknown Holland?" we asked, as if it had not been discovered a hundred times already.

      "Scotland would be better," was still the answer, and so to Scotland we went.

      It was a country about which we cared little, and knew less. We had heard of Highlands and Lowlands, of Melrose and Stirling, but for our lives we could not have pointed them out on the map. The rest of our knowledge was made up of confused impressions of Hearts of Mid-Lothian and Painters' Camps in the Highlands, Macbeths and Kidnappers, Skye terriers and Shetland shawls, blasted heaths and hills of mist, Rob Roys and Covenanters; and, added to these, positive convictions of an unbroken Scotch silence and of endless breakfasts of oatmeal, dinners of haggis, and suppers of whiskey. Hot whiskey punch is a good thing in its way, and at times, but not as a steady diet. Oatmeal we think an abomination. And as for haggis—well, we only knew it as it was once described to us by a poet: the stomach of some animal filled with all sorts of unpleasant things and then sewed up. We recalled the real dinners and friendly peasants of France and Italy, and hated the very name of Scotland.

      It will easily be understood that we could not plan a route out of our ignorance and prejudice. It remained to choose a guide, and our choice, I hardly know why, fell upon Dr. Johnson. Every one must remember—I say this though we did not even know it until we looked into the matter—that Dr. Johnson met Boswell in Edinburgh, and in his company journeyed up the east coast as far as Inverness, then across the Highlands to the west, and so to the Hebrides, coming back by way of Inverary, Loch Lomond, and Glasgow. It looked a long journey on the map, and seemed a weary one in the pages of Boswell and Johnson; but as if this were not bad enough, we made up our minds, for the sake of novelty, to walk.

      Of our preparations for the journey I will say nothing. We carried less than Stanley and more than the average tramp. We took many things which we ought not to have taken, and we left behind many things which we ought to have taken. But this matters little, since our advice to all about to start on a walking tour is, Don't.

      On the 28th of July we arrived in

EDINBURGH,

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      "a city too well known to admit description." If Dr. Johnson thought so a hundred years ago, it is not for us, who propose to be his followers, to differ from him. Indeed, during our stay in that city, so eager were we to be faithful to him in all things that we should have allowed ourselves to be dined, teaed and suppered, even as he was, but for an obstacle. The only person whom we knew in Edinburgh was away, and the fame of our coming had not, as with Dr. Johnson, gone before us.

      We were careful to find St. James's Court, where Boswell lived, and where clothes, drying in what sun there is, now hang from his windows. And we went to the old White Horse Inn, where the Doctor, on his arrival, stayed until Boswell came to carry him off in triumph; and where probably the tourist of another year will not go, for already in the court-yard are signs of the coming of the destroyer.

      We had resolved to reverse the order of their journey by going to the Western Islands first, and coming home along