ck!' says Fletcher:
'Just sit down till I've done, _and don't go away till I tell
you_.'--Fancy! The General Post, with the letters of forty villages in a
leathern bag! . . . To-morrow at Oban. Sunday at Inverary. Monday at
Tarbet. Tuesday at Glasgow (and that night at Hamilton). Wednesday at
Melrose. Thursday at ditto. Friday I don't know where. Saturday at York.
Sunday--how glad I shall be to shake hands with you! My love to Mac. I
thought he'd have written once. Ditto to Macready. I had a very nice and
welcome letter from him, and a most hearty one from Elliotson. . . . P.S.
Half asleep. So excuse drowsiness of matter and composition. I shall be
full of joy to meet another letter from you! . . . P.P.S. They speak Gaelic
here, of course, and many of the common people understand very little
English. Since I wrote this letter, I rang the girl up-stairs, and gave
elaborate directions (you know my way) for a pint of sherry to be made
into boiling negus; mentioning all the ingredients one by one, and
particularly nutmeg. When I had quite finished, seeing her obviously
bewildered, I said, with great gravity, 'Now you know what you're going
to order?' 'Oh, yes. Sure.' 'What?'--a pause--'Just'--another
pause--'Just plenty of _nutbergs_!'"

The impression made upon him by the Pass of Glencoe was not overstated
in this letter. It continued with him as he there expressed it; and as
we shall see hereafter, even where he expected to find Nature in her
most desolate grandeur on the dreary waste of an American prairie, his
imagination went back with a higher satisfaction to Glencoe. But his
experience of it is not yet completely told. The sequel was in a letter
of two days' later date, from "Dalmally, Sunday, July the eleventh,
1841:"

"As there was no place of this name in our route, you will be surprised
to see it at the head of this present writing. But our being here is a
part of such moving accidents by flood and field as will astonish you.
If you should happen to have your hat on, take it off, that your hair
may stand on end without any interruption. To get from Ballyhoolish (as
I am obliged to spell it when Fletcher is not in the way; and he is out
at this moment) to Oban, it is necessary to cross two ferries, one of
which is an arm of the sea, eight or ten miles broad. Into this
ferry-boat, passengers, carriages, horses, and all, get bodily, and are
got across by hook or by crook if the weather be reasonably fine.
Yesterda