the only tourist who, in his need of rest and food, has relieved his feelings by quarrelling with his companion.
When they were not far from the end of their ride they passed the barracks at Bernera. "I looked at them wistfully," writes Boswell; "as soldiers have always everything in the best order; but there was only a sergeant and a few men there." Pennant, who had visited them a year earlier, describes them as "handsome and capacious, designed to hold two hundred men; at present occupied only by a corporal and six soldiers. The country lament this neglect. They arc now quite sensible of the good effects of the military, by introducing peace and security; they fear lest the evil days should return, and the ancient thefts be renewed as soon as the banditti find this protection of the people removed."[1] The banditti were the Highlanders of this district in general. Less than thirty years earlier "the whole country between Loch Ness and the sea to the west had been," he says, "a den of thieves. The constant petition at grace of the old Highland chieftains was delivered with great fervour in these terms: 'Lord, turn the world upside down, that Christians may make bread out of it.'"[2]
The country had to lament a loss of trade as well as of security. The cottagers who had been drawn together to supply the wants of the soldiers are described by Knox, a few years later, as being in the utmost poverty. The barracks had fallen into so ruinous a state, that it justified the report that the building of them had been "a notorious job." Even the sergeant and his six soldiers had been removed. "I was entertained," says Knox, "by the commanding officer and his whole garrison. The former was an old corporal, and the latter was the corporal's wife: the entertainment snuff and whisky."[3]
When at length our travellers, "weary and disgusted," reached Glenelg, "our humour," writes Johnson, "was not much mended by our inn, which, though it was built of lime and slate, the Highlander's description of a house which he thinks magnificent, had neither wine, bread, eggs, nor anything that we could eat or drink. When we were taken upstairs a dirty fellow bounced out of the bed where one of us was to lie. Boswell blustered, but nothing could be got. At last a gentleman in the neighbourhood, who heard of
