"which, though we could not think ourselves in danger, we could scarcely survey without some recoil of mind." lie thought that "it might have served as a shelter from storms to the little vessels used by the northern rovers." Sir Walter Scott, however, was told that this was impossible, for "in a high gale the waves rush in with incredible violence. An old fisher said he had seen them flying over the natural wall of the Bullers, which cannot be less than two hundred feet high.[1] In the Gentleman's Magazine for 1755 (p. 200), two strange pictures are given of this curious place, which must surely have been drawn in St. John's Gate, Clerkenwell, by an artist who had never seen it.
Not far off is Dun Buy,[2] a lofty island rock placed in an angle of the shore that is formed by no less lofty cliffs. The sea, with its dark waters in endless rise and fall, washes through the narrow channel, its ceaseless murmur answering to the cries of the countless water-fowl who high up on the ledges breed in safety. On one side, where there is a steep, grassy slope, Dun Buy can be scaled. I climbed up it many years ago one hot summer's day, and thought that I had never seen so strange and wild a spot. Johnson had also visited it, but his mind was not affected as was my young imagination, for he said that "upon these rocks there was nothing that could long detain attention."
Banff and Elgin (August 25-26).
Starting from Slains Castle on the morning of August 25, Boswell and Johnson drove on to Banff, where they spent the night in an indifferent inn. In this little town a dreadful sight had been witnessed when the Duke of Cumberland's army arrived on an early day in April, 1746. The savage way in which the narrative is written, testifies to the ferocity of many of the followers of "the butcher duke."
