LINKS WITH THE PAST.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
Sia,—I send you a record which you can use if you wish. My grandmother was born in 1755, died in 1843, aged eighty-eight. My father, the Rev. James Dewar, of Nairn, was born in 1780 and died in 1842. He died of typhus, a common illness in Scotland in the middle of last century, now almost unknown. My father was at first an itinerant preacher, and regularly travelled on horseback through all the parishes north of the Caledonian Canal except three. His usual. route was by Fort William in Lochaber, John o' Groat's, and round by Cape Wrath. Ile preached in English in the forenoon and Gaelic in the afternoon. He was financed in his student days, and in part at least for some time after, by Mr. Robert Haldane, of Aithrey, whose family is now represented by Lord Haldane ef Chain. I was born at Nairn in 1837. I came to Arbroath by steamer in 1846. There was no railway then north of Arbroath. The mail coach, Arbroath to Aberdeen, travelled at ten miles an hour including stoppages, galloping all the way. Aberdeen was then an almost stationary county town.- -
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