isky, often in his full rig of sou'-wester, oilskins,
and long boots; and I have often heard it described how insinuatingly he
carried himself on these appearances, artfully combining the extreme of
deference with a blunt and seamanlike demeanour. My father and uncles,
with the devilish penetration of the boy, were far from being deceived;
and my father, indeed, was favoured with an object-lesson not to be
mistaken. He had crept one rainy night into an apple-barrel on deck, and
from this place of ambush overheard Soutar and a comrade conversing in
their oilskins. The smooth sycophant of the cabin had wholly
disappeared, and the boy listened with wonder to a vulgar and truculent
ruffian. Of Soutar, I may say _tantum vidi_, having met him in the Leith
docks now more than thirty years ago, when he abounded in the praises of
my grandfather, encouraged me (in the most admirable manner) to pursue
his footprints, and left impressed for ever on my memory the image of
his own Bardolphian nose. He died not long after.

The engineer was not only exposed to the hazards of the sea; he must
often ford his way by land to remote and scarce accessible places,
beyond reach of the mail or the post-chaise, beyond even the tracery of
the bridle-path, and guided by natives across bog and heather. Up to
1807 my grandfather seems to have travelled much on horseback; but he
then gave up the idea--"such," he writes with characteristic emphasis
and capital letters, "is the Plague of Baiting." He was a good
pedestrian; at the age of fifty-eight I find him covering seventeen
miles over the moors of the Mackay country in less than seven hours, and
that is not bad travelling for a scramble. The piece of country
traversed was already a familiar track, being that between Loch Eriboll
and Cape Wrath; and I think I can scarce do better than reproduce from
the diary some traits of his first visit. The tender lay in Loch
Eriboll; by five in the morning they sat down to breakfast on board; by
six they were ashore--my grandfather, Mr. Slight an assistant, and
Soutar of the jolly nose, and had been taken in charge by two young
gentlemen of the neighbourhood and a pair of gillies. About noon they
reached the Kyle of Durness and passed the ferry. By half-past three
they were at Cape Wrath--not yet known by the emphatic abbreviation of
"The Cape"--and beheld upon all sides of them unfrequented shores, an
expanse of desert moor, and the high-piled Western Ocean. T