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he had paid to her; and, being a handsome young man, and in excellent business, she blushed consent. They were married without delay; and the same letter informed her father both of her good and bad fortune; as also, that all the lives on board were, though with difficulty, saved.

I was amazed to find, in traversing this part of the country, that though the established clergy are in general intelligent, and of liberal sentiments, yet, in some places, the repenting stool in their churches is not quite abolished. In former times, among the Roman Catholic clergy, when any person had gone over to the Reformers, before he could be admitted again into the bosom of the church, it was necessary for him to do penance, and sit on a peculiar seat in the church, called the repenting stool, for three Sundays following. The Reformers, though they rejected almost all the ceremonies of the church of Rome, good, bad, and indifferent, retained this; and obliged not only adulterers, but even fornicators, both the man and the woman, to appear publicly, and do penance before the congregation, in order to their being re-admitted into communion with the church. But the idea that this causes child murder, and that the Scottish women are the greatest infantirides in the world, has induced the greatest part of the clergy to lay this part of church discipline aside.

A storm having happened lately, I saw many of the farmers collecting the alga marina, or dilce, as they name it, which is thought a wholesome plant for children and others, and which is often gathered by poor people over all the sea coast's in

Scotland, and sold through the country. I observed them also collecting large sea-weed, the stems of which were as thick as an ordinary staff, and sometimes twelve feet long, that grow from the rocks at the bottom of the sea, near the edge. The saline particles attached to this weed fertilizes the ground, and gives grass a relish peculiarly grateful to cattle. As this may be called the spoils of the ocean, being torn from the rocks at the bottom, and cast ashore by the fury of the waves, how far it is proper in the proprietors to make their tenants pay for the liberty of using it, I do not pretend to know. This much I know, that the tenants here are often obliged to pay for the liberty to use and gather it.

PORTSOY.

Portsoy, about half way between Bamff and Cullen, is a little town, situated on a small promontory running into the sea. This place has not a little of both manufactures and commerce. Its principal exports are corn, thread for stockings, salmon, herrings, and white fish: its imports, flax, wine, wood, iron, and other articles, both for home consumption and foreign trade. There are also at Portsoy some salt-pans; but, I should suppose, the expense of coals, in conjunction with the heavy tax, must make the profits arising from making salt here very inconsiderable. When the duke of Cumberland passed through this village, in the spring of

1746, he proposed setting it on fire, as he had been informed the people in it were, to a man, attached to the Pretender. He, however, passed it without putting his resolutions in practice.

Not far from Cullen, a little to the eastward, there is a rock at the edge of the sea, that has been fortified by the Danes; and which, in those days, before the use of gunpowder was known, must have been impregnable.

Not far from this place, on a peninsulated rock, stands the old castle of Finlater. The massy ruins that cover the rock; the outer walls, particularly those fronting the sea, corresponding exactly with the face of the precipice, in the same manner as those of Cardinal Bealon's castle which I had seen, at St. Andrews; the strongly walled apartments; the walls and double ramparts that defended the isthmus on which the castle stood: these remains make a strong impression, and carry back the mind, as by force, to the times in which all this was necessary for protection.

Cullen House, the present mansion of the earls of Finlater, is situated on the edge of a glen. The plantations around it are very extensive. A bridge of one arch, of seventy feet in height, is thrown over the glen just by the house, at the bottom of which there runs a rapid stream. There is a fine library in Cullen House, enriched with many thousand volumes of books, well chosen, and in splendid order. The late earl of Finlater was a man of genius, learning, taste, and public spirit. He was better acquainted than any other nobleman with the inte

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rests of Scotland, and the best means for promoting them.

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The people in England, who are unacquainted with this part of the country, and who may be prejudiced by Dr. Johnson's account of Scotland, have scarcely any conception how much the roads, and almost every thing, is improved here. Formerly the jolts in a carriage, from the roughness of the road, were, no doubt, extremely disagreeable; but now a London alderman, if he chooses to take a trip thus far, may loll at his ease in his carriage, as scarcely a stone is to be found on the road bigger than an egg.

At Cullen House, the seat of the earl of Finlater, there is one of the finest gardens in Britain. The hot house, I believe, cost his lordship not much less than antiently would have built a palace, and produces as fine pine-apples, grapes, &c. &c. as any in Britain; and the pleasure ground, next to lord Fife's, and that at Gordon Castle, is among the prettiest and most extensive in Scotland.

Besides the beautiful marbles and granites to be found in the lower parts of the county of Bamff, there are, on the top of a hill near Portsoy, and not far from Cullen, beautiful specimens of the chrystal stone almost transparent, and thousands of thousands of tons of a beautiful species of agate. There are great numbers of large stones on the top of this hill, as white as chalk, and as hard as flint, which are rolled down, put on shipboard, and being carried to the potteries about Newcastle, &c. are pounded, by mills for the purpose, to a powder, and then made into a thousand different kinds of

pottery, and sent to most parts of the world. As there are water-falls and room enough in the neighbourhood of this hill, why are not the stones pounded and formed into earthernware in the country where they are found?

At the fisher town of Cullen, I found on immense number of curs, which, it seems, like the dogs of Kamskatka, feed upon fish, and sometimes go themselves and catch crabs, lobsters, &c. among the rocks. Upon inquiring the reason of their having so many dogs, I was told they breed them for their skins, which being sewed and blown up like bladders, are fixed by the fishers to their lines, with hooks, to prevent them from sinking. And this is not an unnatural idea: for it is well known that the skins of dogs, and all the canine species, are less porous than others. Hence, as they do not perspire, but their perspiration comes off by foam at the mouth, which is very visible when they are warm, so they are more apt to go mad and be infected by the hydrophobia than any other animals. A clergyman from Aberdeenshire being bit by one of these curs, which he had reason to conclude was mad, instantly ran to the house, and having got a large sharp knife, cut out the flesh all around the wound, which happened to be the root of the thumb, and would not be prevented by those that saw him. The consequence was, the clergyman escaped the hydrophobia, though at that time many cattle died mad, and several people were infected with that dreadful distemper. Lap-dogs too are dangerous animals in this point of view.

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