I made haste I might perhaps find them at a town called Brekin, or Brechin, two and thirty miles from Saint Johnstone whereupon I took a guide to Brechin the next day, but before I came, my lord was gone from thence four days.
Then I took another guide, which brought me such strange ways over mountains and rocks, that I think my horse never went the like; and I am sure I never saw any ways that might fellow them I did go through a country called Glen Esk, where passing by the side of a hill, so steep as the ridge of a house, where the way was rocky, and not above a yard broad in some places, so fearful and horrid it was to look down into the bottom, for if either horse or man had slipped, he had fallen without recovery) a good mile downright; but I thank God, at night I came to a lodging in the Laird of Edzell's land, where I lay at an Irish house, the folks not being able to speak scarce any English, but I supped and went to bed, where I had not laid long, but I was enforced to rise, I was so stung with Irish musquitoes, a creature that hath six legs, and lives like a monster altogether upon man's flesh, they do inhabit and breed most in sluttish houses, and this house was none of the cleanest, the beast is much like a louse in England, both in shape and nature; in a word, they were to me the A. and the Z. the prologue and the epilogue, the
