jointed with mortar as to give them a bright and cheery appearance.  These, of course, are the last edition of cottages, enlarged and amended in every way.  The old issues are ragged volumes, mostly bound in turf or bog grass, well corded down with ropes of heather, giving the roof a singular ribby look, rounded on the ridge.  In many cases a stone is attached to each end of the rope, so as to make it hug the thatch closely.  I noticed that in a considerable number of the old cottages, the stone wall only reached up a foot or two from the ground, the rest being made up of blocks of peat.  Some of the oldest had no premonitory symptoms of a chimney, except a hole in the roof for the smoke.  These in no way differed from the stone-and-turf cottages in Ireland.

Again occasional showers brought me into acquaintance with the people living near the road.  In every case I found them kind and hospitable, giving me a pleasant welcome and the best seat by their peat-fire.  I sat by one an hour while the rain fell cold and fast outside.  The good woman and her daughter were busy baking barley-cakes.  They were the first I had seen, and I ate them with a peculiar zest of appetite.  Told them many stories about America in return for a great deal of information about the customs and condition of the working-people.  They generally built their own cottages, costing from 40 to 50 pounds, not counting their own labor.  I met on the road scores of fishermen returning to their homes at the conclusion of the herring season; and was struck with their appearance in every way.  They are truly a stalwart race of men, broad-chested, of intelligent physiognomy, with Scandinavian features fully developed.  A half dozen of them followed a horse-cart containing their nets, all done up in a round ball, like a bladder of snuff, with the number of their boat marked upon it.

At about four p.m., I came in sight of the steeples of Wick, a brave little city by the Norse Sea, which may not only be called the Wick but the Candle of Northern Scotland; lighting, like a polar star, this hyperborean shoreland of the British isle.  I never entered a town with livelier pleasure.  It is virtually the last and farthest on the mainland in this direction.  Its history is full of interest.  Its great business is full of vigor, daring and danger.  Here is the great land-home of the Vikings of the nineteenth century; the indomitable men who walk the roaring and crested billows of this Northern Ocean in their black, tough sea-boats and bring ashore the hard-earned spoils of the deep.  This is the great metropolis of Fishdom.  Eric the Red, nor any other pre-Columbus navigator of the North American Seas, ever mustered braver crews than these sea-boats carry to their morning beats.  Ten thousand of as hardy men as ever wrestled with the waves, and threw them too, are out upon that wide water-wold before the sun looks on it—­half of them wearing the features of their Norse lineage, as light-haired