wedged in my memory, mainly for the peculiar light which it casts on the times of the hereditary jurisdictions. It forms an example of one of the judicial banishments of an age that used, in ordinary cases, to save itself all sorts of trouble of the kind, by hanging its victims. I may add, that I saw a good deal of the neighbourhood at this time in the company of my cousin, and gleaned, from my visits to shieling and cottage, most of my conceptions of the state of the Northern Highlands, ere the clearance system had depopulated the interior of the country, and precipitated its poverty-stricken population upon the coasts. There was, however, one of my excursions with Cousin William, that turned out rather unfortunately. The river Shin has its bold salmon-leap, which even yet, after several hundred pounds' worth of gunpowder have been expended in sloping its angle of ascent, to facilitate the passage of the fish, is a fine picturesque object, but which at this time, when it presented all its original abruptness, was a finer object still. Though distant about three miles from my uncle's cottage, we could distinctly hear its roarings from beside his door, when October nights were frosty and still; and as we had been told many strange stories regarding it--stories about bold fishers who had threaded their dangerous way between the overhanging rock and the water, and who, striking outwards, had speared salmon through the foam of the cataract as they leaped--stories, too, of skilful sportsmen, who, taking their stand in the thick wood beyond, had shot the rising animals, as one shoots a bird flying,--both my Cromarty cousin and myself were extremely desirous to visit the scene of such feats and marvels; and Cousin William obligingly agreed to act as our guide and instructor by the way. He did look somewhat askance at our naked feet; and we heard him remark, in an under tone, to his mother, that when he and his brothers were boys, she never suffered _them_ to visit her Cromarty relations unshod; but neither Cousin Walter nor myself had the magnanimity to say, that _our_ mothers had also taken care to see us shod; but that, deeming it lighter and cooler to walk barefoot, the good women had no sooner turned their backs than we both agreed to fling our shoes into a corner, and set out on our journey without them. The walk to the salmon-leap was a thoroughly delightful one. We passed through the woods of Achanie, famous for their nuts; startled, as we went, a herd of roe deer; and found the leap itself far exceeded all anticipation. The Shin becomes savagely wild in its lower reaches. Rugged precipices of gneiss, with scattered bushes fast anchored in the crevices, overhang the stream, which boils in many a dark pool, and foams over many a steep rapid; and immediately beneath, where it threw itself headlong, at this time, over the leap--for it now merely rushes in snow adown a steep slope--there was a caldron, so awfully dark and