An Lochan Uaine 



ward the ground reaches an elevation of four thousand 

 feet; and in winter, for months on end, the loch is in 

 deep shadow. 



The white mists hang low on the lochan for days 

 together. Sweeping straight across from the distant 

 Atlantic, the winds from the west often carry with 

 them soft fleecy clouds which at first rest lightly on the 

 hill-tops and gradually, imperceptibly, slip down to the 

 surface of the loch, hiding it from the gaze of the eagle 

 or of the soft-flying ptarmigan. I have often watched from 

 the ridge above the playing of the winds on the waters of 

 the lochan. No air current, except perhaps, from a due 

 northerly point, strikes full on the loch. Often when a 

 westerly wind approaching gale force was sweeping the 

 mountain, I could see the eddying currents meeting on 

 Lochan Uaine, and ruffling its waters from every point of 

 the compass; white-tipped wavelets being hurried now in 

 one direction, now in another, before the fitful gusts. 



On quiet summer days, when the lochan lay unruffled 

 by the faintest breeze, the veteran watcher of that part of the 

 forest was wont, from the ridge above, to scan the waters of 

 the lochan for the ripple of rising trout. But no ever-widening 

 circle of wavelets rewarded his watching, for the infant 

 burn which drains the loch descends in a series of cascades 

 to the great glen beneath, so that no trout, however active, 

 could force its way up. And then, one hot July day, it 

 occurred to two fishermen that the loch might with advan- 

 tage be peopled. With no difflculty they succeeded in 

 luring fourteen trout from the big burn and placed them 

 in a large biscuit tin. And now came the difflcult part of 

 the undertaking — the transporting of the future population 

 up the precipitous hillside. The heat was intense, and 

 the water in the tin had to be renewed with great frequency, 

 for the fish rapidly exhausted the limited supply of oxygen 

 and lay gasping feebly on their sides until a new draught 

 of burn water gave them fresh life. At length the loch 



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