on deck, and from this place of ambush overheard Soutar and a comrade conversing in their oilskins.  The smooth sycophant of the cabin had wholly disappeared, and the boy listened with wonder to a vulgar and truculent ruffian.  Of Soutar, I may say tantum vidi, having met him in the Leith docks now more than thirty years ago, when he abounded in the praises of my grandfather, encouraged me (in the most admirable manner) to pursue his footprints, and left impressed for ever on my memory the image of his own Bardolphian nose.  He died not long after.

The engineer was not only exposed to the hazards of the sea; he must often ford his way by land to remote and scarce accessible places, beyond reach of the mail or the post-chaise, beyond even the tracery of the bridle-path, and guided by natives across bog and heather.  Up to 1807 my grand-father seems to have travelled much on horseback; but he then gave up the idea—­’such,’ he writes with characteristic emphasis and capital letters, ’is the Plague of Baiting.’  He was a good pedestrian; at the age of fifty-eight I find him covering seventeen miles over the moors of the Mackay country in less than seven hours, and that is not bad travelling for a scramble.  The piece of country traversed was already a familiar track, being that between Loch Eriboll and Cape Wrath; and I think I can scarce do better than reproduce from the diary some traits of his first visit.  The tender lay in Loch Eriboll; by five in the morning they sat down to breakfast on board; by six they were ashore—­my grandfather, Mr. Slight an assistant, and Soutar of the jolly nose, and had been taken in charge by two young gentlemen of the neighbourhood and a pair of gillies.  About noon they reached the Kyle of Durness and passed the ferry.  By half-past three they were at Cape Wrath—­not yet known by the emphatic abbreviation of ’The Cape’—­and beheld upon all sides of them unfrequented shores, an expanse of desert moor, and the high-piled Western Ocean.  The site of the tower was chosen.  Perhaps it is by inheritance of blood, but I know few things more inspiriting than this location of a lighthouse in a designated space of heather and air, through which the sea-birds are still flying.  By 9 p.m. the return journey had brought them again to the shores of the Kyle.  The night was dirty, and as the sea was high and the ferry-boat small, Soutar and Mr. Stevenson were left on the far side, while the rest of the party embarked and were received into the darkness.  They made, in fact, a safe though an alarming passage; but the ferryman refused to repeat the adventure; and my grand-father and the captain long paced the beach, impatient for their turn to pass, and tormented with rising anxiety as to the fate of their companions.  At length they sought the shelter of a shepherd’s house.  ‘We had miserable up-putting,’ the diary continues, ’and on both sides of the ferry much anxiety of mind.  Our beds were clean straw, and but for the circumstance of the boat, I should have slept as soundly as ever I did after a walk through moss and mire of sixteen hours.’