bridges, &c. along with it; which happened the other year, and cost government about two thousand pounds.

Hearing that the people on the banks of the Avon, as well as many others where the rivers often come down so rapidly as to destroy the bridges, however well built, cross the river on stilts, a forked stick, in which they put their feet, and such as boys sometimes amuse themselves with even in the streets and neighhourhood of London, I took an opportunity to go to the church of Kirkmichael, that I might hear a sermon in the Gaelic language, and see near the half of the parish, which they must do or stay at home, passing the river on stilts. In one place was to be seen a stout handsome girl tucking up her petticoats, and walking on stilts, perhaps four or five feet high, carrying her mother across the river to church. In-another quarter, a stout young fellow on the same unsteady implements, with his mistress on his back. In short, almost every where for some time before the church service begins, you see men, women, and children, crossing the river in this curious manner, which saves them the trouble of stripping off their shoes and stockings, and wading. This mode of passing rivers, both here and in other parts of the highlands, is generally practised without any other accident happening than now and then a wet skin; which, though it should happen, gives them little or no uneasiness, as they think nothing of sitting all the time of sermon in the church, in a frosty day, in their wet clothes, which

only a few minutes before came dripping with them out of the water.

Having found the clergyman here, whose name is Grant, a good divine and critic, and withal hospitable and obliging, I proceeded up the river side, after sermon, till I came to Tamintoul, a small village with an inn, where I found the landlady, though above seventy years of age, gay, lively, polite, and insinuating, and one that had no objections now and then to a glass or two of good warm punch. When saying to a gentleman with whom I fell in, and whom I found well informed, that our landlady had a civil way of treating strangers, he told me that her history is given in Sir John Sinclair's Statistical Account of Scotland, for the parish of Kirkmichael, or Strathdoun; that being a very fine girl, about fourteen years of age, herding sheep in a neighbouring parish on the road side, upon a sergeant going past with some soldiers, and inquiring if she would go with him, though she had never seen him before, she said she would, and instantly leaving her sheep, actually went; that a captain, seeing such a fine handsome girl, took her from the sergeant, and with him to Germany. That next a superior officer had her; and that, last of all, a certain marquis, the commander in chief of the British forces, was, for some time, her constant companion; that she afterwards returned to this place in casy circumstances, where she married a handsome young fellow, whom she induced to enlist for a soldier, and went along with him abroad as a suttler to the army, where she saved money; that she had in all twenty

three children, including homunculi; that she has a number of grand-children; and, that thinking prostitution a crime of no consequence, she had induced one of her daughters, and actually pushed her into the carriage to go and live with a young man, who, she knew, was squandering away a paternal estate, in the ruins of which her daughter would largely participate. The young woman went to Edinburgh, where she soon died, in circumstances that loudly arraigned the unnatural advice and persuasion of the profligate mother.

All around this part of the country, and, indeed, all the way from its mouth, on both sides of the Spey, to its source, there are only small patches of ground under culture; and the roads in general are neither good, nor in the best line of direction. The truth is, not a twentieth part of the surface, that is improvable, is in a state of cultivation; nor will it be, till the proprietors give longer leases, or some security to a diligent improving farmer, that he will not be turned out of the farm he has improved, at the end of nineteen years.

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CASTLE GRANT, AND SPEY SIDE.

I HAD often heard of Strathspey and Castle Grant, where Sir James Grant, the chief of the Grants, resides. Being only a few miles distant, I went to see it, and found it a noble and extensive building, surrounded by distant mountains, but improvements of a thousand kinds all around it, in the vicinity, and to a considerable distance.

There happened to be a sale by auction of sheep, cattle, horses, &c. &c. belonging to Sir James, that day, and all the Grants, and chief men for a dozen or fifteen miles round, were assembled upon the occasion. Whether they thought their chief's horses, cows, &c. better than others, I know not: this much I know, many of the gentlemen present gave more for them than they were worth. However, to reward them for the active part they had taken in the business of the day, as is usual, it seems, on such occasions, there was an elegant dinner at Grantown, solely at Sir James's expense, and about twenty gentlemen sat down to it. Being a stranger, I had the honour to be invited to it, and found here the best wine, and London porter; and, while the gentlemen were drinking heartily, and I was admiring the good sense, the beautiful exterior and politeness of most of them, for most of them were among the handsomest men I ever saw, either in Scotland or England,* it

Almost all the younger sons of the gentlemen here, as well as in other northern and highland districts of Scotland, go, when they are