I cannot forbear to interrupt my narrative.  Boswell, with some of his troublesome kindness, has informed this family, and reminded me, that the 18th of September is my birthday.  The return of my birthday, if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape.  I can now look back upon threescore and four years, in which little has been done, and little has been enjoyed; a life, diversified by misery, spent part in the sluggishness of penury, and part under the violence of pain, in gloomy discontent, or importunate distress.  But, perhaps, I am better than I should have been, if I had been less afflicted.  With this I will try to be content.

In proportion as there is less pleasure in retrospective considerations, the mind is more disposed to wander forward into futurity; but, at sixty-four, what promises, however liberal, of imaginary good can futurity venture to make? yet something will be always promised, and some promises will be always credited.  I am hoping, and I am praying, that I may live better in the time to come, whether long or short, than I have yet lived, and, in the solace of that hope, endeavour to repose.  Dear Queeney’s day is next:  I hope she, at sixty-four, will have less to regret.

I will now complain no more, but tell my mistress of my travels.

After we left the Macraes, we travelled on through a country like that which we passed in the morning.  The highlands are very uniform, for there is little variety in universal barrenness; the rocks, however, are not all naked, for some have grass on their sides, and birches and alders on their tops, and in the valleys are often broad and clear streams, which have little depth, and commonly run very quick; the channels are made by the violence of the wintry floods; the quickness of the stream is in proportion to the declivity of the descent, and the breadth of the channel makes the water shallow in a dry season.

There are red deer and roe bucks in the mountains, but we found only goats in the road, and had very little entertainment, as we travelled, either for the eye or ear.  There are, I fancy, no singing birds in the highlands.

Towards night we came to a very formidable hill, called Rattiken, which we climbed with more difficulty than we had yet experienced, and, at last, came to Glanelg, a place on the seaside, opposite to Skie.  We were, by this time, weary and disgusted, nor was our humour much mended by our inn, which, though it was built of lime and slate, the highlander’s description of a house, which he thinks magnificent, had neither wine, bread, eggs, nor any thing that we could eat or drink.  When we were taken up stairs, a dirty fellow bounced out of the bed, where one of us was to lie.  Boswell blustered, but nothing could be got.  At last, a gentleman in the neighbourhood, who heard of our arrival, sent us rum and white sugar.  Boswell was now provided for, in part, and the landlord