it was proper to give the food of Christians to horses." After a long dispute she yielded. "In these islands," he adds, "horses seldom taste oats."[1] "The bottom of the ferry-boat," says Boswell, "was strewed with branches of trees or bushes upon which we sat. We had a good day and a fine passage, and in the evening landed at Oban, where we found a tolerable inn." This place, which I have seen recommended to cockney tourists in huge advertisements as The Charing Cross of the North, was then a little hamlet. In 1786 Knox found "about twenty families collected together with a view to the fisheries."[2] It boasted of a custom-house and a
KERRERA ISLAND.
post-office. In the islands no customs were paid, for there was no officer to demand them.[3] Faujas Saint-Fond gives a curious account of his stay in the inn, a few years after Johnson's visit. He would have got on very well, for the food though simple was good, and his bed though hard was clean, had it not been for a performer on the bag-pipes—"un maudit joueur de cornemuse" who played "une musique d'un genre nouveau, mais bien terrible pour mon oreille." The day of their arrival this man had strutted up and down before the inn with haughty and warlike looks, and had stunned them with his airs. "Nous crûmes d'abord que ce personnage était une espèce d'insensé qui gagnait sa vie à ce métier." They were informed that he was an accomplished musician, "de l'école
