The ‘Cleopatra’, as she swept past the town of Cromarty, was greeted with three cheers by crowds of the inhabitants and the emigrants returned the salute, but mingled with the dash of the waves and the murmurs of the breeze, their faint huzzas seemed rather sounds of wailing and lamentation than of a congratulatory farewell.

Carved by Richard Kindersley on a Caithness stone slab above the beach at Cromarty are the above words of Hugh Miller. The young journalist - and future geologist - was reporting for the on one of the ships that left the waters of the Cromarty Firth in the summer of 1831, bound for North America. That stone slab was erected in 2002 as part of the bicentenary celebrations of Miller’s birth,