women in the island; had a good head, and as good a heart.  He said, she did not use force or fear in educating her children.  JOHNSON.  ’Sir, she is wrong[307]; I would rather have the rod to be the general terror to all, to make them learn, than tell a child if you do thus or thus, you will be more esteemed than your brothers or sisters.  The rod produces an effect which terminates in itself.  A child is afraid of being whipped, and gets his task, and there’s an end on’t; whereas, by exciting emulation, and comparisons of superiority, you lay the foundation of lasting mischief; you make brothers and sisters hate each other.’

During Mr. Boyd’s stay in Arran, he had found a chest of medical books, left by a surgeon there, and had read them till he acquired some skill in physick, in consequence of which he is often consulted by the poor.  There were several here waiting for him as patients.  We walked round the house till stopped by a cut made by the influx of the sea.  The house is built quite upon the shore; the windows look upon the main ocean, and the King of Denmark is Lord Errol’s nearest neighbour on the north-east[308].

We got immediately into the coach, and drove to Dunbui, a rock near the shore, quite covered with sea-fowls; then to a circular bason of large extent, surrounded with tremendous rocks.  On the quarter next the sea, there is a high arch in the rock, which the force of the tempest has driven out.  This place is called Buchan’s Buller, or the Buller of Buchan, and the country people call it the Pot.  Mr. Boyd said it was so called from the French Bouloir.  It may be more simply traced from Boiler in our own language.  We walked round this monstrous cauldron.  In some places, the rock is very narrow; and on each side there is a sea deep enough for a man of war to ride in; so that it is somewhat horrid to move along.  However, there is earth and grass upon the rock, and a kind of road marked out by the print of feet; so that one makes it out pretty safely:  yet it alarmed me to see Dr. Johnson striding irregularly along.  He insisted on taking a boat, and sailing into the Pot.  We did so.  He was stout, and wonderfully alert.  The Buchan-men all shewing their teeth, and speaking with that strange sharp accent which distinguishes them, was to me a matter of curiosity.  He was not sensible of the difference of pronunciation in the South and North of Scotland, which I wondered at.

As the entry into the Buller is so narrow that oars cannot be used as you go in, the method taken is, to row very hard when you come near it, and give the boat such a rapidity of motion that it glides in.  Dr. Johnson observed what an effect this scene would have had, were we entering into an unknown place.  There are caves of considerable depth; I think, one on each side.  The boatmen had never entered either of them far enough to know the size.  Mr. Boyd told us that it is customary for the company at Peterhead well, to make parties, and come and dine in one of the caves here.