wade, and through which horses, carts, &c. are drawn. A beautiful young woman, lately, coming to one of these fords, the water, which is very clear, appearing not deep, she wished to cross it as fast as possible. Having taken off her shoes and stockings, and adjusted her petticoats for wading, she took a stick, by way of staff, to steady herself in wading. Near the middle of the river, finding the water deep, and far above her knees, she began to hesitate, whether to proceed or return. People a hay-making, on the opposite bank, saw her a coming; but the river not being swollen, and several having crossed in the same manner that day, they thought there was no danger. However, when they saw the young woman stand a considerable time, and then cry for help, they ran to her assistance; but, while they were doing this, she fell forward, and was carried away by the stream. In about a quarter of an hour, she was found a quarter of a mile from where she was crossing; but, though ali means were used, recommended by the society for recovering drowned people, animation could not be restored.

Indeed, not unfrequently people are drowned while crossing the rivers in the Highlands. A clergyman lately having occasion to go from Banffshire to Elgin, in Murray, thought there was no danger, it being summer and fine weather, in trying a ford about ten miles from the mouth of the Spey. Being on horseback, he rode before, and his servant followed on another horse with a cart, and the clergyman's wife in it, with some articles going to. town. When they were near the middle of the stream, the servant informed his master that his

head was giddy, and stopped the horse. His master said he might return, which he attempted to do, but, losing his balance in the turning, he fell and disappeared; and the horse, with the lady in the cart, in turning, went off the ford into deep water, and was plunged over head. The clergyman, who had been married only a few months before, seeing the servant disappear, alighted from his horse, and making towards the cart, got to it just as his wife had left it, she being up to the neck. However, both he and she, in their early days, having learned to swim, though carried off their feet, swam to the side at which they had entered; but the servant, though taken out of the water in ten minutes, and the people persevered for six hours, at which I myself assisted, in rubbing him with warm grains, which happened to be at hand, he being laid on a bed before a good fire; as also in chaffing his hands, arms, legs, &c. and putting the pipe of a pair of bellows into one nostril, and blowing gently with it, while the other and the mouth was carefully kept shut; and practising the other means recommended. for the recovery of drowned people by the Dutch physicians and physiologists, and after them by many others, yet all proved ineffectual. In the

*

Though Dr. Hawes would fain insinuate, that he, forsooth, is, if not the discoverer, yet a great improver in this matter! If men of talents, genius, and regular education, did not scorn to appear in the train of quackery, parade, and mummery, they might naturally be induced to take the lead in the management, and make many important observations on suspended animation and the restoration of life. There are some important observation on the quackery, &c. now alluded to in the English Review, for March

young man's pockets were found money and bills to the amount of sixty pounds, which he meant to put into the bank at Elgin.

The domesticated animals, as well as the fowls in the interior of the Highlands, shew often peculiar marks of sagacity. In a gentleman's house I was amused to see, one morning at breakfast, a cock, a beautiful bird, the door being open, come into the room. The mistress of the house threw some crumbs to him; but though it was early, and he had got nothing that morning, he would not touch them, but ran to the door and called his wives in a curious significant tone, till hearing him, he brought them to where the crumbs were; and taking some of them in his nib, though he ran, and collecting them, laid them down before his wives, particularly one who was, it seems, also one of his daughters.

In the course of my peregrinations one day through this part of the country, I went into a small hut, at the foot of a hill, where I only found a poor old woman about eighty years of age and her cat. As the poor woman was making some pottage for herself, the cat seemed clamorous for a share of it; and, indeed, grew so noisy, that the poor woman, with a spoon, took some boiling hot out of the pan, and put it into the cat's dish. The cat being hungry, immediately put her mouth to it; but, finding it too warm, she put her foot gently, though hastily, among it, but evidently spread it with a view to it cooling the sooner; and, in the mean time, took some out of

1795, p. 209. This article might be read with advantage by the subscribers to many funds set on foot by interested managers.

the dish on her foot, and having twirled it about in a curious manner, also to cool it, first ate what was on her foot, and then went to what was in the dish.

Indeed, not only the wild, but almost every species of domesticated animals in the Highlands seem to possess an uncommon share of sagacity. When the little Highland horses come to any boggy, soft, or miry piece of ground, they first put their nose to it several times, and then pat on it in a peculiar way with one of their fore feet; and some way or other, from the sound and feel of the ground, know whether they will not sink in it. They do the same thing with ice, and generally determine in the course of a minute whether they will proceed or not. Not far from Bamff, a physician, who had been extremely useful, and netted some thousands of pounds, besides bringing up a genteel family, but who sometimes fell from his horse, and slept for hours by the road side, having one of these small horses, it never once went away when he fell off or lay down to sleep, but tarried till its master awoke. Nay, sometimes it would go round about him, and, by pushing him and rubbing him with its nose, awake him. Others of them, when any thing about their feet have been wrong, have been known to go to the smithy, and hold up the foot of their own accord that gave them uneasiness, or required to be shod. But of all animals in the Highlands, the dog is, perhaps, the most sagacious. Not long ago, while a young man, an acquaintance of the coachman's, was walking, as he had often done, in lord Fife's stables at Bamff, a Highland cur, that generally was *He died lately.

about the stables, gave the young man no trouble. However, having taken an opportunity, when the servants were not observing, to put a bridle, &c. in his pocket, the dog began to bark at the young man, and when he came to the stable door, would not suffer him to pass, but actually bit his leg to prevent him. As the servants had never seen the dog do so before, and the same young man had been often with them, they could not conceive what could be the reason for the dog's conduct. However, when they saw the end of a valuable bridle peeping out of the young man's pocket, they were able to account for it; and upon the young man giving the servants the bridle, &c. the dog left the middle of the stable door, where he for some time had stood, and allowed him to go out. And I recollect, when I passed some time at the viscount of Arbuthnot's, at Hatton, in the parish of Mary Kirk, one of his lordship's estates, when the out-of-door servants went out one morning, they found a man that they knew, and that lived at a few miles distance, lying on the road a few yards from the stable, with a number of bridles, girths, &c. &c. near him, and the house dog, which was of the Highland breed, lying also at his ease, holding the seat of the man's breeches in his mouth. The man confessed his crime, and told them, that the dog had struggled with him, and held him in that situation for five hours; but that immediately after the servants appeared, the dog let go his hold. It is well known, that in London, the other year, a box, properly directed, came to a merchant's shop to lic there all night, and be shipped off with other goods