ed of the deck, he caught a rope, and leaped on board. In
an instant, a young man, a passenger, with his wife and child, were
slung, as it were, miraculously on board our little boat. The waves went
up in spouting foam betwixt the wreck and the boat, and then subsiding,
heaved us with a tremendous crash against the side of the vessel; and I
remember no more till I awoke to misery, in a kelp hut by the sea-shore.
I found that my son, with the woman and child, had perished; but that
the husband, my shepherd, and myself, had been cast ashore, and with
difficulty resuscitated. My grief and his mother's grief were loud and
severe. But 'what cannot be cured must be endured.' The stranger was a
native of Fife, who had been to America on a mercantile speculation, and
having married at New York, and become a father, was on his way towards
Kirkcaldy, his native place, when this dreadful accident occurred. He
had lost all his effects, and some money in the wreck, and was content
to take part of my humble dwelling for a season. In the meantime, my
lease expired, and another proprietor had arisen, who knew not Donald
Sutherland. The rent offered by my next and more wealthy neighbour was
far above what I would think of promising, so I behoved to leave sweet
Edderachills, with all its heath, and moss, and muir, for a sea-shore
appointment in the manufacturing of kelp from sea-weed--at that time a
very flourishing employment in the West Highlands in particular. The
stranger about this time took his departure, but not without many
promises of returning again to visit the grave of his wife and child,
and to renew his acquaintance with my wife, my daughter, and myself. For
a time the kelp concern did pretty well; we had good and regular payment
for the article, and an increasing demand; and we contrived to live at
least as comfortably as we had done as sheep-farmers. But man is always
finding out inventions; a method was devised of dispensing, by means of
a chemical discovery, with our kelp entirely; and we were suddenly and
entirely ruined. It was at this period that I, in a manner, _cursed_,
like you, the spirit of discovery and invention. I was disgusted by the
change which the progress of science had made, and I did not know how to
turn myself for a bare subsistence. In this situation of affairs, my
daughter Nelly within there (pointing to the door) was courted by a
neighbouring sheep-farmer's son, of a somewhat disreputable character,