After a walk of eighteen miles, put up at an inn a little north of the village of Dunbeath, kept by an intelligent and industrious farmer.  The rain had continued most of the day, and I was obliged to seek shelter sometimes under a stunted tree which helped out the protecting power of a weather-beaten umbrella; now in the doorway of an open stable or cow-shed, and once with my back against the door of a wayside church, which kept off the rain in one direction.  This being a kind of border-season between summer and autumn, there were no fires in the inns generally except in the kitchen, and I soon learned to make for that, and always found a kindly welcome to its comforts; though sometimes the good woman and her lassie would look a little flushed at having their busiest culinary operations revealed so suddenly to a stranger.  Some of these kitchens are fitted for sleeping apartments; occasionally having two tiers of berths like a ship’s cabin, slightly and rudely curtained.

The family of this wayside inn, seemingly like every other family in the country, had connections in America, embracing brothers, uncles and cousins.  I was shown a little paper casket of hair flower-work, sent by post!  It was wrought of locks of every shade and tint, from the snow of a grandmother over one hundred years of age to the little, sunny curls of the youngest child in the circle of kindred families.  The Scotch branch had collected specimens from relatives in Great Britain and forwarded them to the family in America, one of whose daughters had worked them into two bouquets of flowers, sending one of them by post to this little, white cottage on the Northern Sea, as a memento of affection.  What enhanced the beauty of this interchange was the fact, that forty-eight years had elapsed since the landlord’s brother left his native land for New England, and had never seen it since.  Still, the cousins, who had never seen each other’s faces, had kept up an affectionate correspondence.  A son and son-in-law of the brother in America were in the Federal army, and here was a sea-divided family filled with all the sad, silent solicitude of affection for beloved ones exposed to the fearful hazards of a war sundering more ties of blood-relationship than any other ever waged on earth.

Saturday, September 27th.  Resumed my walk with increased animation, feeling myself within two days’ distance of its end.  The scenery softens down to an agricultural aspect, the country declining northerly toward the sea.  Passed through a well-cultivated district, never unpeopled or wasted by eviction, but held by a kind of even yeomanry of proprietors.  The cottages are comfortable, resembling the white houses of New England considerably.  They are nearly all of one story, with a chimney at each end, broadside to the road, and a door in the middle, dividing the house into two apartments.  They are built of stone, the newest ones having a slate roof.  Some of them are whitewashed, others so liberally