Archibald McQuaigh was an old Highlander who had emigrated from Strathtoddy, and who prided himself greatly on his ancestry, and on having been the man who “felled the first tree in Leeds,” in 1817; since which time the township had made marvellous strides in advancement and prosperity, and McQuaigh was fond of saying that the crash of the first victim to the axe was still ringing in his ears. He had pushed his way boldly into the woods, with nothing but an axe, a set of bagpipes, a peck of oatmeal, and a bottle of whiskey,—the last two being the remains of the stock of provisions which he had taken on board with him at Glasgow. With this scanty outfit he began the hardy life of a settler,—borrowing flour and pork from his neighbours, the nearest of whom was fifteen miles off, until the gathering of his first crop, when he became an independent man. Years, although not without a fight for it, had produced their effect even on McQuaigh. He had shrunk somewhat in all his proportions, but his skin and flesh looked like plastic horn, which seemed to bid defiance to decay. Blungle felt qualmish, when first presented to him, for he had still a very fiery look, calculated to affect the nervous,—his hair, which was becoming grey at the tips, now looking like so many red-hot wires elevated to a white heat at the points. His manly activity had not yet forsaken him, his frame being still well knit and compact, and there were few in the township who would even then venture to wrestle with him. He had been originally a deer-keeper to the Marquis of Glen-Fuddle, and his early vocation gave him a taste for the chase which never forsook him, and it was in the double capacity of an enthusiastic sportsman and a hospitable man, that we carried letters of introduction to him. We were received with true Highland hospitality, after the old style. After dinner McQuaigh repeated half of “Ossian” in the original to us, giving us incidentally to understand that the poet belonged to a younger branch of his family. He spoke English as a convenience, but had great contempt for it as a language. Indeed, he used to call it, sneeringly, “a tongue,” and maintained that Gaelic was the only real language on earth.