We walked on as rapidly as the hilly nature of our road would permit, without seeing a house or human being, until we approached Helmsdale, when we were surprised by the sudden appearance of the stage-coach drawn by three horses and displaying its enormous red lamp in front.  The driver suddenly pulled up his horses, for, as he said, he did not know “what the de’il it was coming in front”:  he scarcely ever met any one on that road, and particularly on such an “awful” stormy night.  We asked him how far we were from the town, and were delighted to hear it was only about two miles away.  It was after ten o’clock when we arrived at Helmsdale, tired and footsore, but just in time to secure lodgings for the night at the Commercial Inn.

(Distance walked thirty miles.)

Thursday, September 21st.

Helmsdale was a pleasant little town inhabited chiefly by fishermen, but a place of some importance, for it had recently become the northern terminus of the railway.  A book in the hotel, which we read while waiting for breakfast, gave us some interesting information about the road we had travelled along the night before, and from it we learned that the distance between Berriedale and Helmsdale was nine and a half miles, and that about half-way between these two places it passed the Ord of Caithness at an elevation of 1,200 feet above the sea-level, an “aclivity of granite past which no railway can be carried,” and the commencement of a long chain of mountains separating Caithness from Sutherland.

Formerly the road was carried along the edge of a tremendous range of precipices which overhung the sea in a fashion enough to frighten both man and beast, and was considered the most dangerous road in Scotland, so much so that when the Earl of Caithness or any other great landed proprietor travelled that way a troop of their tenants from the borders of Sutherland-shire assembled, and drew the carriage themselves across the hill, a distance of two miles, quadrupeds not being considered safe enough, as the least deviation would have resulted in a fall over the rocks into the sea below.  This old road, which was too near the sea for modern traffic, was replaced by the present road in the year 1812.  The old path, looked at from the neighbourhood of Helmsdale, had more the appearance of a sheep track than a road as it wound up the steep brow of the hill 300 or 400 feet above the rolling surge of the sea below, and was quite awe-inspiring even to look at, set among scenery of the most wild and savage character.

We had now cleared the county of Caithness, which, like Orkney and Shetland, was almost entirely devoid of trees.  To our way of thinking a sprinkling of woods and copses would have much enhanced the wild beauty of the surroundings, but there was a difference of opinion or taste on this point as on everything else.  A gentleman who had settled in America, and had had to clear away the trees from his holding,