mountains before me, and, on either hand, covered with heath.  I looked around me, and wondered, that I was not more affected, but the mind is not at all times equally ready to be put in motion; if my mistress, and master, and Queeney had been there, we should have produced some reflections among us, either poetical or philosophical; for though “solitude be the nurse of woe,” conversation is often the parent of remarks and discoveries.

In about an hour we remounted, and pursued our journey.  The lake, by which we had travelled for some time, ended in a river, which we passed by a bridge, and came to another glen, with a collection of huts, called Auknashealds; the huts were, generally, built of clods of earth, held together by the intertexture of vegetable fibres, of which earth there are great levels in Scotland, which they call mosses.  Moss in Scotland is bog in Ireland, and moss-trooper is bog-trotter; there was, however, one hut built of loose stones, piled up, with great thickness, into a strong, though not solid wall.  From this house we obtained some great pails of milk, and having brought bread with us, we were liberally regaled.  The inhabitants, a very coarse tribe, ignorant of any language but Erse, gathered so fast about us, that, if we had not had highlanders with us, they might have caused more alarm than pleasure; they are called the clan of Macrae.

We had been told, that nothing gratified the highlanders so much as snuff and tobacco, and had, accordingly, stored ourselves with both at Fort Augustus.  Boswell opened his treasure, and gave them each a piece of tobacco roll.  We had more bread than we could eat for the present, and were more liberal than provident.  Boswell cut it in slices, and gave them an opportunity of tasting wheaten bread, for the first time.  I then got some half-pence for a shilling, and made up the deficiencies of Boswell’s distribution, who had given some money among the children.  We then directed, that the mistress of the stone-house should be asked, what we must pay her.  She, who, perhaps, had never before sold any thing but cattle, knew not, I believe, well what to ask, and referred herself to us:  we obliged her to make some demand, and one of the Highlanders settled the account with her at a shilling.  One of the men advised her, with the cunning that clowns never can be without, to ask more; but she said that a shilling was enough.  We gave her half-a-crown, and she offered part of it again.  The Macraes were so well pleased with our behaviour, that they declared it the best day they had seen, since the time of the old laird of Macleod, who, I suppose, like us, stopped in their valley, as he was travelling to Skie.

We were mentioning this view of the highlander’s life at Macdonald’s, and mentioning the Macraes, with some degree of pity, when a highland lady informed us, that we might spare our tenderness, for she doubted not but the woman, who supplied us with milk, was mistress of thirteen or fourteen milch cows.