Volume 3 - Electric Scotland

448 ROADS.
have done to-day ; as if to-morrow, and to-morrow, and
to-morrow, did not here always creep on in the same
exact mode, form and manner. The only remedy in such
cases, would be to possess one of those horses which
Paracelsus proposed to form by extracting the spirit out
of two or three, and condensing it into another. But my
friend Roger was not a double-distilled horse ; and,
what was worse, he was that very same " wise" horse of
which I spoke formerly, that possessed the troublesome
talent of thinking for himself. Had I not lost my road,
had Mercury not been misaffected in my geniture, the
consequences which flow from a Highland breakfast
might not have been completed. Yet there is an advan-
tage in losing- your road in the Highlands, because you
are sure of finding it again ; provided you can under-
stand, the language first, and the directions afterwards.
In South Wales or in North Wales, if by any persever-
ance of effort or civility, you can extract an answer about
your road from a genuine Briton, it is either given in
such a careless manner as to be useless, or you are for-
tunate if he does not intentionally deceive you. Nine
times out often, he will stare in your face and affect not
to understand English, rather than render you a service,
or be at the trouble of answering your question. The
case is far different in the Highlands. It seems, how-
ever, to have been otherwise formerly : for in the account
of Scotland, in 1670, among the Harleian MS., it is said
that the Highlanders " are so currish," that if a stranger
inquire the way in English, they will " only" answer
in Erse, unless by force of " a cudgel ;" which is exactly
the process that some travellers have occasionally found
it necessary to resort to in North Wales. But, indeed, of
Scotland, in general, as well as of the Highlands, I may
say, with truth, that the people are almost invariably civil,
and anxious to put a traveller right ; although it must