in length and breadth, with the walls six or seven feet thick.  The roar of the water was like the sound of distant thunder, lending a melancholy charm to the scene.  It was from here that we obtained our first land view of those strange-looking hills in Caithness called by the sailors, from their resemblance to the breasts of a maiden, the Maiden’s Paps.  An old man directed us the way to Lybster by what he called the King’s Highway, and looking back from this point we had a fine view of the town of Wick and its surroundings.

Taught by past experience, we had provided ourselves with a specially constructed apparatus for tea-making, with a flask to fit inside to carry milk, and this we used many times during our journey through the Highlands of Scotland.  We also carried a reserve stock of provisions, since we were often likely to be far away from any human habitation.  To-day was the first time we had occasion to make use of it, and we had our lunch not in the room of an inn, but sitting amongst the heather under the broad blue canopy of heaven.  It was a gloriously fine day, but not a forerunner of a fine day on the morrow, as after events showed.  We had purchased six eggs at a farmhouse, for which we were only charged fourpence, and with a half-pound of honey and an enormous oatmeal cake—­real Scotch—­we had a jovial little picnic and did not fare badly.  We had many a laugh at the self-satisfied sublimity of our friend the barber, but the sublimity here was real, surrounded as we were by magnificent views of the distant hills, and through the clear air we could see the mountains on the other side of the Moray Firth probably fifty miles distant.  Our road was very hilly, and devoid of fences or trees or other objects to obstruct our view, so much so that at one point we could see two milestones, the second before we reached the first.

We passed Loch Hempriggs on the right of our road, with Iresgoe and its Needle on the seacoast to the left, also an old ruin which we were informed was a “tulloch,” but we did not know the meaning of the word.  After passing the tenth milestone from Wick, we went to look at an ancient burial-ground which stood by the seaside about a field’s breadth from our road.  The majority of the gravestones were very old, and whatever inscriptions they ever had were now worn away by age and weather; some were overgrown with grass and nettles, while in contrast to these stood some modern stones of polished granite.  The inscriptions on these stones were worded differently from those places farther south.  The familiar words “Sacred to the memory of” did not appear, and the phrasing appeared rather in the nature of a testimonial to the benevolence of the bereft.  We copied two of the inscriptions: 

ERECTED BY ROBERT WALLACE, MERCHANT, LYBSTER, TO THE MEMORY
OF HIS SPOUSE CHARLLOT SIMPSON WHO DEPARTED THIS LIFE NOV. 21
1845 AGED 30 YEARS.
Lovely in Life.

PLACED BY JOHN SUTHERLAND, FISHERMAN, LYBSTER, IN MEMORY OF
HIS WIFE WILLIAMINIA POLSON WHO DIED 28TH MAY 1867 AGED 29
YEARS.
At Death still lovely.