to be fixed on the Wolf Rock; that I had taken notes of the
bearings of several sunk rocks, and a drawing of the lighthouse,
and of Cape Cornwall. Further, that I had refused the honour of
Lord Edgecombe's invitation to dinner, offering as an apology that
I had some particular business on hand."'

My grandfather produced in answer his credentials and letter of
credit; but the justice, after perusing them, 'very gravely
observed that they were "musty bits of paper,"' and proposed to
maintain the arrest. Some more enlightened magistrates at Penzance
relieved him of suspicion and left him at liberty to pursue his
journey,--'which I did with so much eagerness,' he adds, 'that I
gave the two coal lights on the Lizard only a very transient look.'

Lighthouse operations in Scotland differed essentially in character
from those in England. The English coast is in comparison a
habitable, homely place, well supplied with towns; the Scottish
presents hundreds of miles of savage islands and desolate moors.
The Parliamentary committee of 1834, profoundly ignorant of this
distinction, insisted with my grandfather that the work at the
various stations should be let out on contract 'in the
neighbourhood,' where sheep and deer, and gulls and cormorants, and
a few ragged gillies, perhaps crouching in a bee-hive house, made
up the only neighbours. In such situations repairs and
improvements could only be overtaken by collecting (as my
grandfather expressed it) a few 'lads,' placing them under charge
of a foreman, and despatching them about the coast as occasion
served. The particular danger of these seas increased the
difficulty. The course of the lighthouse tender lies amid iron-
bound coasts, among tide-races, the whirlpools of the Pentland