1936 On the Continent

loveliest treasures I ever saw, belonging to an old Edinburgh family, was a creamy white wool shawl,fine as lace, with a deep border shading from pale fawn, through every imaginable shade of golden, reddish tan, to a deep rich sepia black. It was far more lovely than much of the more modern designs.
Consider the Sunlight for Driving
    When you return across the R ACE (and the tides run wonderously strong between the isles) take the coast road to H ELMSDALE , and turn up by K INBRACE and A LTNAHARRA , and if you spend the night there, you can come sweeping back early, on a new road, through Lairg, next morning, and begin your return journey down the west coast.
    Do not think these notes as to early morning or evening roads casual. Remember the roads in the extreme North run due West-East. Every motorist will appreciate the error of driving against the light,
and especially among the hills it’s worth considering how the sun will lie before you start your round
. The dawn on a hill top—or sunset wide across the sea—is worth planning for at the ends of your day.
    Now—having got you to the North of Scotland—you must decide what you like best in the world! The roads down the west coast are good. They are good, because they follow the lie of the land and sweep in, and run between the mountains, away from the sea. And along these high roads, at proper intervals, are excellent hotels, and if creature comfort is what you mind about most, then you stick firmly to those main roads, and those good hotels.
    But if it’s carefree adventure you’re after, strike the first small footpath you see leading off west, and away with you on foot, down to the coast; to the fishing boats, or to some small peat-blackened inn by a loch, or shepherd’s hut in the mountain.
Plan Some Walks
    For you cannot, it is utterly and completely impossible, to get the best from the West Highlands unless you go on foot, and light of pack and heart.
    Therefore keep an elastic itinerary: if the weather is wet, or the mist slides down the hill, go fishing, or motor on the main road. If the day is fine and clear, with air like wine and the points of the hills visible, clear as glass for miles around you, then find a guide, do as he tells you,and away over the mountain top (and if you’re wise, you will leave word that you may not be back till next day, for the weather changes unaccountably in the West).
The Mystic West Coast
    There is a great deal that is unaccountable in the West, for in the West live people who have second sight. And that is something which indisputably exists, as an hereditary gift. The sailors that sail those wild west seas, and cross the North Minch and go in and out the islands, are a superstitious race and believe many things not commonly held by the ordinary man. And who is to say they are wrong, for very unaccountable things happen in those wild places.
    St. Brendan sailed from the west coast of Ireland, and he sailed through the sunset to the Fairy Isles of the West, and there’s many a fisherman in the North who believes firmly in those islands to this day. Men will affirm that they rise out of the sea, and sink into it again, and if mortal man sets foot on such between sunrise and sunset, even though he may do it unknowingly, thinking it to be land, of common soil, yet when he comes back he will not be the same man. There are thousands and thousands of small islands fringing the western coast; they are like the stars of the sky for number, and the boatmen know them all by their names. And some by their reputations. And by that reputation, they will not land on them.
Many Islands and Good Sailors
    I have been out in the small boats when they were taking the sheep away, for they grazed the sheep on some of the islands, knowing to a day, almost to a mouthful, how many sheep the sparse herbage can support.
    The boats are very strong, as needs be for those rocks. (The curraghs belong to Ireland.) The small sheep lie quiet at the bottom of the boat, they are so tame, and are lifted ashore, and stand watching as the boat goes away and leaves them marooned.
    If you’re lucky, and find some small homestead where they will take you in, you will live life at its very simplest. You will be given porridge, not as an adjunct to a meal, but as a meal in itself, served in bowls, with salt and creamymilk. There will be scones, white and soft as snow, with a floury crust to powder warmly your upper lip as your teeth sink in and find the