The Highland Smugglers (Volume 1) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: which way now??which is your Highland domicile? A seat and a drop of the mountain dew?or, faith, even a glass of the less appropriate, but not unpalatable liquor yclept 'old madeira,' would prove exceedingly consolatory to the inward man?h! what say you?" By all means, Hal?follow me." And he led the way to the low-browed entrance of the hut before which they had been standing. "What! there? this your bothy? this your hunting seat? it's a bothy this, with a vengeance, man!" and Tresham stopped for a moment ere he entered, to examine the exterior of his future quarters. CHAPTER II. A HIGHLAND FORESTER. A blessing upon thy heart, he said, Good fellowe, thy shooting is good, For an' thy heart be as good as thy hand, Thou wert better than Robin Hood., The bothy, to all appearance, was built precisely of the same materials and in the same fashion as other Highland huts, or shealings, (as the occasional abodes of shepherds in remote glens are generally termed,) except in as far as it was larger and more lofty than those around it. The walls, externally at least, were formed of divots; that is, sods cut with the heather or grass trowing on them, the matted roots of which give a rmer texture to the soil of which the mass is composed. These are built one upon another, in courses, longwise or edgewise, like bricks; and, supported by a frame work of timber, make a firm and warm wall. The roof was formed of the same materials, laid upon small rafters, (or as they are called in the c9untry, kebers,) and covered with a heather thatch; and in this manner, bating only the heather thatch, are the majority of the black huts, which form the abodes of the Highland peasantry chiefly or entirely built, to the great injury of the ground in their neighbourhood, the surface of whi...