m acquainted with
English manners, the culture of their lands was unskilful, and their
domestick life unformed; their tables were coarse as the feasts of
Eskimeaux, and their houses filthy as the cottages of Hottentots.

Since they have known that their condition was capable of improvement,
their progress in useful knowledge has been rapid and uniform. What
remains to be done they will quickly do, and then wonder, like me, why
that which was so necessary and so easy was so long delayed. But they
must be for ever content to owe to the English that elegance and culture,
which, if they had been vigilant and active, perhaps the English might
have owed to them.

Here the appearance of life began to alter. I had seen a few women with
plaids at Aberdeen; but at Inverness the Highland manners are common.
There is I think a kirk, in which only the Erse language is used. There
is likewise an English chapel, but meanly built, where on Sunday we saw a
very decent congregation.

We were now to bid farewel to the luxury of travelling, and to enter a
country upon which perhaps no wheel has ever rolled. We could indeed
have used our post-chaise one day longer, along the military road to Fort
Augustus, but we could have hired no horses beyond Inverness, and we were
not so sparing of ourselves, as to lead them, merely that we might have
one day longer the indulgence of a carriage.

At Inverness therefore we procured three horses for ourselves and a
servant, and one more for our baggage, which was no very heavy load. We
found in the course of our journey the convenience of having
disencumbered ourselves, by laying aside whatever we could spare; for it
is not to be imagined without experience, how in climbing crags, and
treading bogs, and winding through narrow and obstructed passages, a
little bulk will hinder, and a little weight will burthen; or how often a
man that has pleased himself at home with his own resolution, will, in
the hour of darkness and fatigue, be content to leave behind him every
thing but himself.

LOUGH NESS

We took two Highlanders to run beside us, partly to shew us the way, and
partly to take back from the sea-side the horses, of which they were the
owners. One of them was a man of great liveliness and activity, of whom
his companion said, that he would tire any horse in Inverness. Both of
them were civil and ready-handed. Civility seems part of the national
character of Highlanders. Every