sharp visages, indicative of both intelligence and want. I was at pains to inquire into the diet of these poor people." Breakfast, meal and bree, that is water-gruel, not the sub stantial porridge of the Lowlanders.
“Dinner, meal and bree kail, or a kind of soup meagre, in which there is boiled, perhaps, some barley or grits, with some kail, and a scanty allowance of barley-cakes. Supper, meal and bree: or, in place of this, sowens, a kind of frumarty, made from the husks of grits, or oatmeal. On Sundays, or other festivals, they have, after their meal and bree, some milk, or perhaps two eggs. If any farmer is reported to eat flesh; the laird considers this as a fraud on him. I must look sharp after this man: he has his farm too cheap. They tell me he eats flesh-meat.
"It is a common thing for labourers, or farmers' servants, to stipulate with their masters, that, besides their meal and bree, or soup meagre for dinner, they shall have a certain number of stocks of kail to be eaten with bread and salt. This must appear to an Englishman wholly incredible; as being altogether insufficient to keep soul and body together. Nevertheless, there is nothing more
certain, and I dare to appeal for the truth of it to any one acquainted with Caithness.”
Mr. H. leaving Cape Wrath, 20 immense rock, but not quite so stupendous-as the Red-bead in Angus, went back to Thurso; and from thence crossing the Pentland Frith to the Orkneys, and took up his bead quarters at the house of his old acquaintance, the Rev. Mr. Allison, minister of St. Andrews, and Deerness. He did not go to the Shetlands, but an account of the present state of these islands, was communicated to him by a minister of a parish there; which, indeed, forms the most interesting and valuable part of his publication. Leaving the Orkneys, he set sail to the Hebrides; where he found a class of mortals called Scollags, a kind of prædial slaves, in a condition still more wretched than that of the labouring class of people in Caithness. From the Hebrides he set sail for Fort William. From thence he went to Inverary, and from Inverary by Lochlomond and Dunbarton to Glasgow. From Glasgow he went up the course or valley of the Clyde, as far as Lanark, and from thence returned to Edinburgh.