junctions at points which had never felt the navvy's pick a dozen years ago. Here is one heading towards John O'Groat's, grubbing its way like a mole around the firths, cutting spiral gains into the rock-ribbed hills, bridging the deep and dark gorges, and holding on steadily north-poleward with a brave faith and faculty of patience that moves mountains, or as much of them as blocks its course. The progress is slow, silent, but sure. The world, busy in other doings, does not hear the pick, nor the speech of the powder when it speaks to a huge rock a-straddle the path. The world, even including the shareholders, hears but little, if anything, of the progress of the work for months, perhaps for a year. Then the consummation is announced in the form of an invitation to the public to "assist" at the opening of a railroad through towns and villages that never saw the daylight the locomotive brings in its wake. So it will be here. Some day, in the present decade, there will be an excursion train advertised to run from London to John O'Groat's; and perhaps the lineal descendant of Sigurd, or some other old Norse jarl, will wear the conductor's belt and cap or drive the engine. The weather was still unsettled, with much wind and rain. Resumed my walk, and at about four miles from Tain, crossed the Dornoch Firth in a sail ferry boat, and at noon reached Dornoch, the capital of Sutherlandshire. This was one of the fourteen cities of Scotland; and its little, chubby cathedral, and the tower of the old bishop's palace still give it a kind of Canterbury air. The Earls of Sutherland for many generations lie interred within the walls of this ancient church. After stopping here for an hour or two for dinner, I continued on to Golspie, the residence of the mighty lord of the manor, or the owner, master and human disposer of this great mountain county of Scotland. It is stated that full four-fifths of it belong to him who now holds the title, and that his other great estates, added to this territory, make him the largest landowner in Great Britain and probably in Europe. Just before reaching Golspie, a lofty, sombre mountain, with its bald head enveloped in the mist, and which I had been two hours apparently in passing, cleared away and revealed its full stature--and more. Towering up from its topmost summit, a tall column lifted a human figure in bronze skyward cloud-high and frequently higher still. I believe the brazen face that thus looks into the pure and holy skies without blushing, is a duplicate of the one worn in human flesh by His Grace, Evictor I., who unpeopled his great county of many thousands of human inhabitants, and made nearly its whole area of 18,000 square miles a sheep-walk. But I will not break the seal of that history. It was full of bitter experience to multitudes. Not for the time being was it joyous, but grievous exceedingly--surpassing endurance to many. But it is all over now. The ship-loads of