Three generations

ISABELLA BIRD (MRS. BISHOP) 267
fourth, was of a later generation. Miss Bird was the
daughter of an English clergyman who claimed
relationship with an Archbishop of Canterbury.
She and her younger sister, Miss Henrietta Bird,
orphans in affluent circumstances, chanced to visit
Edinburgh shortly after the great Disruption in the
Scotch Church, while the country, and especially the
capital, showed itself still instinct with the passion of
liberty and devotion to which they had attained where
its doctrines, and its Divine Head were in question.
The sisters were much impressed by the faith and the
disinterested action of what was close on the five
hundred withdrawers from the Established Church.
The ladies were enthralled by the eloquence of not a
few of the leaders of the Free Church. The pair were
led to make Scotland their home, and to cast in their
lot with the members of the new Presbyterian Church,
not that the elder sister coveted a settled home with
its quiet duties and requirements. Her genius and
taste tended to wandering far and wide, to positive
explorings of unknown regions. The younger sister
was content to serve the Church of her adoption,
especially in work done in the more primitive Islands
and Highlands.
Isabella Bird's adventures in the Rocky Mountains,
Japan, and the Golden Chersonese, are well known to
readers of her exciting letters. Two of my friends
were well acquainted with the famous traveller, and
took me to be introduced to her on one of the com-
paratively few occasions when she was to be found in
her Scotch home. She was a slight, fragile-looking
woman, having suffered in her youth from an internal
disease, and been subjected to a serious and then
rarely performed operation.