The Big Glen 



sea and move rapidly up to these hill lochans. On a calm 

 day one sees many trout breaking the surface of the loch, 

 and a solitary cormorant may often be spied — for I feel 

 sure it is the same bird — perched on a stone near the 

 middle of the loch, digesting a heavy meal of fish. 



Curlew haunt the loch during spring and summer days. 

 In June, when rain has fallen and refreshed the land, their 

 vibrating and melancholy notes carry far — and there is no 

 call so plaintive or so charming as that of the curlew — the 

 birds sailing downwards from a height, calling all the 

 while, till they alight at their feeding grounds at the loch's 

 edge. 



Three miles from the mouth of the burn is a deep fall- 

 pool where the salmon pause awhile before pressing up the 

 linn above it. Here in the small hours of a midsummer 

 morning, when the air is altogether still and every blade 

 of grass saturated with dew, many fine fish are caught 

 by the angler who is ready to forgo his night's rest. For 

 a number of years now — as far back as 1886 I heard of 

 her nest being there — a water ouzel has built in a niche 

 of rock bathed by the spray of the falls, and, on a heather- 

 clad ledge near the tail of the pool, a pair of ring ouzels 

 rear their young with the murmur of the waters ever in 

 the ears of the mother bird as she broods her eggs. 



A lonely shepherd's house stands near the linn, remote 

 from civilization, and often have I passed the shepherd 

 tramping the hill. On Sundays he may sometimes be seen 

 wearing the kilt — I mention this because the national dress 

 has so nearly disappeared from the Highlands, so that it is 

 always a pleasure to see it nowadays — and the glen is the 

 very place where one would expect to find it worn. His 

 district is a wide one, and he goes to the hill in all 

 weathers; when the rain brings down every mountain burn 

 in spate, and when drifting snow out of the frozen north 

 sweeps blindly across the high ground. 



At the western end of the glen, where the land opens 



35 



