Scotland/Scots > Reminiscences of a Highland parish

THE MINISTER AND HIS WORK.
IOI
touching in that same tour of the old Doctor’s,
when we remember the tastes and habits of the
man, with the state of the country at the time in
which he visited it. Unaccustomed to physical
exercise, obese in person and short-sighted in
vision, he rode along execrable roads, cautiously
felt his way across interminable morasses, on a
Highland shelty. He had no means of navi¬
gating those stormy seas but an open boat, pulled
by sturdy rowers, against wetting spray, or tacking
from morning till night amidst squalls, rain, and
turbulent tideways. He had to put up in wretched
pot-houses, sleeping, as he did at Glenelg, “ on a
bundle of hay, in his riding-coat; while Mr Bos
well, being more delicate, laid himself in sheets,
with hay over and above him, and lay in linen like
a gentleman.’' In some of the houses, he found
but clay floors below and peat-reek around,
and nowhere did he find the luxuries of his own
favourite London. Yet he never growls or ex¬
presses one word of discontent or peevishness.
Whether this was owing to his having for the first
time escaped the conventionalities of city life; or
to the fact of the Highlands being then the last