The Highland monthly - National Library of Scotland

T/irouo7i Dm'kest Inz'erness-skirc. 631
broken rock, mingled with sleepers and iron rails, and
clamber as best we could into an open stone truck, which
was to take us the rest of our journey.
The change from a close van into an open truck was not
without some disadvantages. In the van we could sit and
keep ourselves dry :
in the truck we had to stand and get
wet, for by this time the dense fog had softened into a thick,
wetting drizzle. In the truck we had certainly more
security from choking, but, on the other hand, we were in
imminent danger of falling out with the extraordinary and
erratic motions, or rather sets of motions, with which we
were now beset. When the engine moved on, as it did
suddenly and without previous warning, we were nearly all
thrown out behind en bloc, and, as I was at the back end, I
got my full share of a stratum of superincumbent navvy,
which was forced back like an avalanche upon me. Before
we had time to recover our perpendiculars, we as nearly
went by the board in a lateral direction, owing to a pick-
shaft or some such obstruction on the rail.
Commend me to a railway truck under such circumstances,
to prove the everlasting brotherhood of man. Each
one clung to his neighbour as if he were a long lost relative,
and I was more intimately associated with the Irish question
than I hope ever to be again, by clinging for mutual support
to a villainous-looking Irishman, who smelled so of nicotine
that he would have made himself a fortune if he could
be let out to owners of greenhouses, and such like breeders
of vermin, as an insecticide. It was with a feeling then of
intense relief that at last, after being nearly projected headlong
into the engine, we drew up on a bleak hillside, where
shanties, bothies, barracks, blacksmiths' and joiners' shops
were associated with heaps of rails, sleepers, and miscellaneous
" plant " of all kinds, and the clang of hammers
and the general noise and bustle of work betokened that
we had reached a " base " of operation.
A curious reflection it is, that away up here in this
nhospitable moorland, far from house or hut, except these