Page:A Companion and Useful Guide to the Beauties of Scotland.djvu/338

320 satisfied. He, therefore, when he travelled through the country, in order to save time and trouble, made it a custom, the moment he went into an inn, to accost the landlord with, "I am Benjamin Franklin; I am a printer; I live at Philadelphia; I am going to Boston, or ; I have with me a servant and two horses: now pray tell me what I can have for supper?"

Perhaps this sort of curiosity may be common to all thinly inhabited, and seldom visited, countries, where the novel sight of strangers, leads to a desire of knowing every thing concerning them; particularly as in such an uniform round of life, where their minds are less employed and filled, than in cities and places of commerce and trade; their mental powers are open, and quickly alive to every adventitious incident.

The worthy Mr. Mackay accompanied me to the fence of the yew tree, which is surrounded by a high wall, to secure it from being diminished by depredations for ornamental boxes, &c. The door leading to the tree was nailed up, and I found the wall too high for me to scale. The black wild mountains in the closer and higher parts of Glen Lyon now caught my eye; at the same time saying to my reverend conductor, "these are