Karel Čapek

“ And there was displayed to me another Scotland beneath grey skies; bare and straggling glens with ruined stone huts, stone walls ranging along the hill-sides, for miles and miles scarcely a single stone cottage, and even that seemingly uninhabited, here and there fields of oats with a finger-high crop—all the rest only bracken and stones and tough grass like moss; sometimes a sheep without a shepherd will bleat as it crawls over the slope; sometimes a bird will utter a cry of lament ”

“ Clouds trail across the hill-tops, a rainy veil shadows the mournful and empty region, which has not yet yielded itself to the hand of man, and below over the black stones roars the black river Dochart. ”

“ The Scottish Sunday is even worse than the English one, and the Scottish religious services evoke the conception of infinity. The pastors wear prickly moustaches, and are neither so rosy nor so bland as the Anglican clergy. Throughout Scotland on Sunday the trains stop running, the railway stations are closed and nothing whatever is done; I am surprised that the very clocks do not stop. ”