Some of them were of a greatly more robust, and some of a slimmer type, than others. I was struck by another peculiarity in the west coast Highlanders. I found the men in general greatly better-looking than the women, and that in middle life they bore their years much more lightly. The females seemed old and haggard at a period when the males were still comparatively fresh and robust. I am not sure whether the remark may not in some degree apply to Highlanders generally. The "rugged form" and "harsher features," which, according to Sir Walter, "mark the mountain band," accord worse with the female than with the male countenance and figure. But I at least found this discrepancy in the appearance of the sexes greatly more marked on the west than on the eastern coast; and saw only too much reason to conclude that it was owing in great part to the disproportionately large share of crushing labour laid, in the district, in accordance with the practice of a barbarous time, on the weaker frame of the female. There is, however, a style of female loveliness occasionally though rarely exemplified in the Highlands, which far transcends the Saxon or Scandinavian type. It is manifested usually in extreme youth--at least between the fourteenth and eighteenth year; and its effect we find happily indicated by Wordsworth--who seems to have met with a characteristic specimen--in his lines to a Highland girl. He describes her as possessing as her "dower," "a very _shower_ of beauty." Further, however, he describes her as very young. "Twice seven consenting years had shed Their utmost bounty on her head." I was, besides, struck at this time by finding, that while almost all the young lads under twenty with whom I came in contact had at least a smattering of English, I found only a single Highlander turned of forty with whom I could exchange a word. The exceptional Highlander was, however, a curiosity in his way. He seemed to have a natural turn for acquiring languages, and had derived his English, not from conversation, but, in the midst of a Gaelic-speaking people, from the study of the Scriptures in our common English version. His application of Bible language to ordinary subjects told at times with rather ludicrous effect. Upon inquiring of him, on one occasion, regarding a young man whom he wished to employ as an extra labourer, he described him in exactly the words in which David is described in the chapter that records the combat with Goliath, as "but a youth, and ruddy, and of a fair countenance;" and on asking where he thought we could get a few loads of water-rolled pebbles for causewaying a floor, he directed us to the bed of a neighbouring rivulet, where we might "choose us," he said, "smooth stones out of the brook." He spoke with great deliberation, translating evidently his Gaelic thinking, as he went on, into scriptural English. CHAPTER XIII.