“Then ye haven’t seen the biggest sight in the old town,” said he. “Seven hunder tons of fish are landed every day at the wharves and sold at auction. Get down early in the morning and ye’ll aye have a fish story to tell, I’ll warrant.”
And it proves an astonishing sight, to be sure. A great cement wharf a mile or more in length is rapidly being covered with finny tribes of all degrees, sorted and laid in rows according to size. They range from small fish such as sole and bloater to huge monsters such as cod, haddock and turbot, some of which might weigh two or three hundred pounds. It would take a naturalist, or an experienced deep-sea fisherman, to name the endless varieties; it is a hopeless task for us to try to remember the names of even a few of them. The harbor is filled with fishing craft waiting to unload their catch, and when one boat leaves the wharf its place is quickly occupied by another. And this is not all the fish-show of Aberdeen, for herring and mackerel are brought in at another dock. We return to our hotel quite willing to concede our waiter-friend’s claim that the tourist who does not see the fish-market misses, if not the “biggest,” as he styled it, certainly the most interesting sight in Aberdeen.
We linger a few hours about the town, which is one of the cleanest and most substantially built it has been our good fortune to see. It shows to best advantage on a sunny day after a rain, when its mica-sprinkled granite walls glitter in the sun, and its clean, granite-paved streets have an unequalled attractiveness about them. Granite has much to do with Aberdeen’s wealth and stateliness, for it is found in unlimited quantities near at hand and quarrying, cutting and polishing forms one of the greatest industries of the place. Civic pride is strong in Aberdeen and there are few cities that have greater justification for such a sentiment, either on account of material improvement or thrifty and intelligent citizens.
XI
IN SUTHERLAND AND CAITHNESS
It is a wild, thinly inhabited section—this strangely named Sutherland—lying a thousand miles nearer the midnight sun than does New York City; but its silver lochs, its clear, dashing streams and its unrivalled vistas of blue ocean and bold, rugged islands and highlands will reward the motorist who elects to brave its stony trails and forbiddingly steep hills. Despite its loneliness and remoteness, it is not without historic and romantic attractions and its sternly simple people widely scattered throughout its dreary wastes in bleak little villages or solitary shepherd cottages, are none the less interesting and pleasant to meet and know.
The transient wayfarer can hardly conceive how it is possible for the natives to wrest a living from the barren hills and perhaps it does not come so much from the land as from the cold gray ocean that is everywhere only a little distance away. Fishing is the chief industry of the coast villages, while the isolated huts in the hills are usually the homes of shepherds. The population of Sutherland proper is sparse indeed and one will run miles and miles over the rough trails which serve as roads with rarely a glimpse of human habitation. No railway reaches the interior or the western coast and the venturesome motorist will often find himself amid surroundings where a break-down would surely mean disaster—a hundred miles or more from effective assistance. The precipitous hills and stony roads afford conditions quite favorable to mishap, and for this reason the highways of Sutherland are not frequented by motor cars and probably never will be until a different state of affairs prevails. The Royal Automobile Club, however, has mapped a fairly practicable route, following roughly the coast line of the shire, and with this valuable assistance, we are told, a considerable number of motorists undertake the trip during the course of the summer.
The name Sutherland—for the most northerly shire of a country which approaches the midnight sun—strikes one queerly; a Teutonic name for the most distinctly Celtic county in Scotland—both anomalies to puzzle the uninformed. But it was indeed the “land of the south” to the Norsemen who approached Scotland from the north, and landing on the shores of Caithness, they styled the bleak hills to the south as “Sudrland.” There was not much to tempt them to the interior, the good harbors of Caithness and the produce of its fertile plains being the objective of these hardy “despots of the sea.” The county of Caithness contains the greater part of the tillable land north of Inverness and this, with the extensive fisheries, supports a considerable population. The traveler coming from the south finds a pleasant relief in this wide fertile plain with its farmhouses and villages and its green fields dotted with sleek domestic animals. It was this prosperity that attracted the Norseman in olden days and he it was who gave the name to this county as well as to Sutherland—Caithness, from the “Kati,” as the inhabitants styled themselves.
We leave the pleasant city of Inverness on a gray misty morning upon—I was going to say—our “Highland tour.” But Inverness itself is well beyond the northern limit of the Highland region of Scott and the wayfaring stranger in Scotland to-day can hardly realize that the activities of Rob Roy were mostly within fifty miles of Glasgow. A hundred years ago the country north of the Great Glen was as remote from the center of life in Scotland as though a sea swept between. To-day we think of everything beyond Stirling or Dundee as the “Wild Scottish Highlands,” and I may as well adopt this prevailing notion in the tale I have to tell.
For the first half hour the splendid road is obscured by a lowering fog which, to our delight, begins to break away just as we come to Cromarty Firth, which we follow for some dozen miles. The victorious sunlight reveals an entrancing scene; on the one hand the opalescent waters of the firth, with the low green hills beyond, and on the other the countryside is ablaze with the yellow broom. Dingwall, at the head of the firth, is a clean, thriving town, quite at variance with our preconceived ideas of the wild Highlands; and a like revelation awaits us at Tain, with its splendid inn where we pause for luncheon on our return a few days later. It is built of rough gray stone and its internal appointments as well as its service are well in keeping with its imposing exterior. But an excellent inn, seemingly out of all proportion to the needs of a town or the surrounding country, need surprise no one in Scotland—such, indeed, is the rule rather than the exception.