In the yard we noticed a large number of loose stones and the remains of a wall which we supposed had been part of the kirk.  The name of the village near here was Mid Clyth, and the ruins those of an old Roman Catholic chapel last used about four hundred years ago.  Several attempts had been made to obtain power to remove the surplus stones, but our informant stated that although they had only about a dozen Romanists in the county, they were strong enough to prevent this being done, and it was the only burial-ground between there and Wick.  He also told us that there were a thousand volunteers in Caithness.

[Illustration:  THE NEEDLE OF IRESGOE.]

The people in the North of Caithness in directing us on our way did not tell us to turn to right or left, but towards the points of the compass—­say to the east or the west as the case might be, and then turn south for a given number of chains.  This kind of information rather puzzled us, as we had no compass, nor did we know the length of a chain.  It seemed to point back to a time when there were no roads at all in that county.  We afterwards read that Pennant, the celebrated tourist, when visiting Caithness in 1769, wrote that at that time there was not a single cart, nor mile of road properly so called in the county.  He described the whole district as little better than an “immense morass, with here and there some fruitful spots of oats and bere (barley), and much coarse grass, almost all wild, there being as yet very little cultivated.”  And he goes on to add: 

Here are neither barns nor granaries; the corn is thrashed out and preserved in the chaff in bykes, which are stacks in the shape of beehives thatched quite round.  The tender sex (I blush for the Caithnessians) are the only animals of burden; they turn their patient backs to the dunghills and receive in their cassties or straw baskets as much as their lords and masters think fit to fling in with their pitchforks, and then trudge to the fields in droves.

A more modern writer, however, thought that Pennant must have been observant but not reflective, and wrote: 

It is not on the sea coast that woman looks on man as lord and master.  The fishing industry more than any other leads to great equality between the sexes.  The man is away and the woman conducts all the family affairs on land.  Home means all the comfort man can enjoy!  His life is one persistent calling for self-reliance and independence and equally of obedience to command.

The relations Pennant quoted were not of servility, but of man assisting woman to do what she regarded as her natural work.

To inland folk like ourselves it was a strange sight to see so many women engaged in agricultural pursuits, but we realised that the men had been out fishing in the sea during the night and were now in bed.  We saw one woman mowing oats with a scythe and another following her, gathering them up and binding them into sheaves, while several others were cutting down the oats with sickles; we saw others driving horses attached to carts.  The children, or “bairns,” as they were called here, wore neither shoes nor stockings, except a few of the very young ones, and all the arable land was devoted to the culture of oats and turnips.