WINTER 261 



their wintry mantle, are few more imposing" landscapes ; 

 nor, of its kind, more lovely — the infinite dazzling 

 purity of white only broken where some gaunt crag or 

 scaur stands out bare and black, casting its deep-blue 

 shadow across the slopes below ; or where the dark 

 frondage of pine and fir struggles through its frozen 

 burden. 



For more than twenty years the Tenth of December 

 was to the author as sacred a date as the Twelfth of 

 August ; and no elemental power ever prevented — though 

 it oft delayed — -arrival at that remote spot which chanced 

 to be our shooting-quarters for the time. There was, 

 in those days, a pride and a fierce joy in facing the 

 worst that winter could oppose. What though the 

 route were doubled, the labour quintupled, yet one did 

 reach one's grateful rest and shelter some time during 

 the night, with clothes frozen hard as boards and icicles 

 hanging from either moustache! 



How changed, at such times, are all the conditions 

 of bird-life! Setting forth as the tardy daylight breaks, 

 the first sound heard will be the low gentle carol of the 

 dipper, poured forth by that winter-songster from some 

 mid-stream stone in the burn. Fast-ice fringes either 

 shore ; yet, ere we pass, that hardy amphibian has dived 

 beneath, presently to pop up unconcernedly in the narrow 

 water between, or landing on the ice-edge, there to resume 

 his song. 



The dipper is thoroughly at home ; but far differently 

 do his neighbours, the waterhens, regard the new conditions 

 of life. They are utterly dismayed at the loss of their 

 accustomed shelter amid rush and sedge, and splash 

 about in constant alarm. Even that secretive bird, the 

 water-rail, is now at fault in his consummate mastery 



