We came to
BANFF
late in the afternoon, just as the fishing-boats were putting out to sea, one beyond another on the gray water, the farthest but faint specks on the horizon. The best thing about Banff is that in fifteen or twenty minutes you can be out of it and in Macduff. The shore here makes a great curve. On one point is Banff, on the other Macduff; half-way between, a many-arched bridge spans the river Deveron, and close by the big house of the Earl of Fife shows through the trees of his park. High on the hill of Macduff stands the white kirk; it overlooks the town, with its many rows of fishermen's houses, and the harbor, where the black masts rise far above the gray walls, and the fishermen spread out their nets to dry, and the dark-sailed boats are always coming and going, and boys paddle in the twilight. And if you go to the far end of the harbor, where the light-house is, you look to the spires and chimneys and roofs of Banff climbing up their hill-side, and beyond to a shadowy point of land like a pale gray cloud-bank on the water.
It was easy to see what they thought of us at the Fife Arms, where we stayed in Banff. We were given our breakfast with the nurse and children of an A. R. A., while the great man breakfasted in state in a near dining-room. They ate very like ordinary children, but their clothes showed them to be little boys and girls of æsthetic distinction. I fear, however, we were not properly impressed.
NEAR BANFF.
There was no doubt that now our walking was all done. We asked about the stage for Fraserburgh, as if staging with us was a matter of course. It was a relief not to begin the day by strapping heavy knapsacks to our backs. The hours of waiting were spent partly in strolling through the streets of Banff, where here and there is an old gray house with pretty turret at its corner, or quaint old inscription with coat of arms or figures let into its walls; partly in sitting on the beach looking out on a hot blue sea.
But hot as it was in the morning, a sharp, cold wind was blowing when, at three o'clock, we took our seats in the little old-fashioned stage that runs between Banff and Fraserburgh. Stage and coachman and passengers seemed like a page out of Dickens transposed to Scotland. Inside was a very small boy, put there by a fat woman in black, and left, with many exhortations and a couple of buns, to make the journey alone; opposite to him sat a melancholy man who saw but ruin staring in the face of farmers and fishermen alike. At every corner in Banff and Macduff we stopped for more passengers, until the stage, elastic as it seemed, was full to overflowing, and we took refuge on the top. Here the seats were crowded with men, their heads tied up in scarfs. The coachman was carrier as well, and at different points in the open country women and children waited by the road to give him, or to take from him, bundles >and boxes and letters. He was the typical cheery carrier. He had a word for everybody, even for a young man who dropped his wheelbarrow to flap his arms and greet us with a vacant smile. He was a puir thing, the driver explained, who went wrong only four years ago. He was the third we had seen in two days.