Another recollection of these old days brings back the excise-officers who used to be on the watch at the English frontier to examine the luggage of passengers from the north. One of the surviving relics of Scottish independence was to be found in the inland revenue duties, which, as they differed on the two sides of the border until they were equalised in 1855, led to a good deal of smuggling. Whisky was then contraband, and liable to extra duty when taken into England. At that time, this liquor was hardly known south of the Tweed, save to the Scots who imported it from their native country. But now it has made its way everywhere, and has almost completely supplanted the gin that had previously filled its place. It is prescribed by the medical faculty as, on the whole, a safer drink than much of the wine that comes from abroad. The quantity of it made every year is enormously larger than it was fifty years ago. Not only is it to be found everywhere in this country, but on the continent, and indeed wherever English-speaking people travel. If one were asked to name the two most conspicuous gifts which Scotland has made in recent times to the United Kingdom, one could hardly go wrong in answering Whisky and Golf. There used to be, and probably still are, many quiet, unpretending, but remarkably comfortable little inns in Galloway. The innkeepers were also farmers, and probably in many cases their farms formed the chief and most profitable part of their avocations. Fresh farm produce was supplied to their guests with the amplest liberality--excellent beef and mutton, fowls, eggs, butter, milk, and such cream as one seldom met with in other parts of the country.