our arrival, sent us rum and white sugar. Boswell was now provided fur in part, and the landlord prepared some mutton chops which we could not eat, and killed two hens, of which Boswell made his servant broil a limb, with what effect I know not. We had a lemon and a piece of bread, which supplied me with my supper." Boswell's account of the place is no less dismal. "There was no provender for our horses; so they were sent to grass with a man to watch them. A maid showed us upstairs into a room damp and dirty, with bare walls, a variety of bad smells, a coarse black greasy fir table, and forms of the same kind; and out of a
SKYE, FROM GLENELG.
wretched bed started a fellow from his sleep, like Edgar in King Lear, 'Poor Tom's a cold.'" Johnson slept in his clothes and great coat, on a bed of hay; "Boswell laid sheets upon his bed which he had brought from home, and reposed in linen like a gentleman."
Here, again, was I struck by the contrast between the past and the present. Of the old inn, with all its magnificence of lime and slate, not even the site is known. In its place stands a roomy and comfortable hotel. It was on the 21st of June when we visited
