Caithness--Wick--Herring Fisheries--John O'Groat's: Walk's End.

CHAPTER XIX. Anthony Cruickshank--The Greatest Herd of Shorthorns
in the World--Return to London and Termination of my Tour.



PREFACE.



In presenting this volume to the public, I feel that a few words of
explanation are due to the readers that it may obtain, in addition
to those offered to them in the first chapter. When I first visited
England, in 1846, it was my intention to make a pedestrian tour from
one end of the island to the other, in order to become more
acquainted with the country and people than I could by any other
mode of travelling. A few weeks after my arrival, I set out on such
a walk, and had made about one hundred miles on foot, when I was
constrained to suspend the tour, in order to take part in movements
which soon absorbed all my time and strength. For the ensuing ten
years I was nearly the whole time in Great Britain, travelling from
one end of the kingdom to the other, to promote the movements
referred to; still desiring to accomplish the walk originally
proposed. On returning to England at the beginning of 1863, after a
continuous residence of seven years in America, I found myself, for
the first time, in the condition to carry out my intention of 1846.
Several new motives had been added in the interval to those that had
at first operated upon my mind. I had dabbled a little in farming
in my native village, New Britain, Connecticut, and had labored to