capacity of sheriff, administered the laws for a number of years,
during which there had been very few trials. The old feuds and local
interests, and rivalries, and animosities of the Scotch, however, still
slept, he said, in their ashes, and might easily be roused. Their
hereditary feeling for names was still great. It was not always safe to
have even the game of foot-ball between villages, the old clannish
spirit was too apt to break out. The Scotch, he said, were more
revengeful than the English; they carried their resentments longer, and
would sometimes lay them by for years, but would be sure to gratify
them in the end.

The ancient jealousy between the Highlanders and the Lowlanders still
continued to a certain degree, the former looking upon the latter as an
inferior race, less brave and hardy, but at the same time, suspecting
them of a disposition to take airs upon themselves under the idea of
superior refinement. This made them techy and ticklish company for a
stranger on his first coming among them; ruffling up and putting
themselves upon their mettle on the slightest occasion, so that he had
in a manner to quarrel and fight his way into their good graces.

He instanced a case in point in a brother of Mungo Park, who went to
take up his residence in a wild neighborhood of the Highlands. He soon
found himself considered as an intruder, and that there was a
disposition among these cocks of the hills, to fix a quarrel on him,
trusting that, being a Lowlander, he would show the white feather.

For a time he bore their flings and taunts with great coolness, until
one, presuming on his forbearance, drew forth a dirk, and holding it
before him, asked him if he had ever seen a weapon like that in his
part of the country. Park, who was a Hercules in frame, seized the