40 A HIGHLAND LAIRD 



a pennyweight less than sixteen pounds, in prime con- 

 dition, clean run from the sea, and covered still with 

 the sea-lice he has brought with him. A fish like that 

 deserves a dram ; and the laird takes a hearty pull at 

 his flask before passing it on to his gillie. Nor has he 

 seen the last of him, as he is happy to think, when the 

 salmon is sent promptly off to the kitchen ; and the 

 well-spread table of a well-conducted Highland mansion 

 is far from being one of its least agreeable features. 

 The cook is something of a cordon bleu> and never at a 

 loss for materials. What haunches and necks of hill- 

 flavoured venison ! and to our mind, the red deer, with 

 the sauce of a Highland appetite, is no whit inferior to 

 the park-fed fallow deer. At all events, there is no 

 saying a word in detraction of the saddles and cutlets 

 of the mountain mutton. We have adverted already 

 to the tureens of hare-soup, that should be delicately 

 flavoured with port or Madeira ; and then there are 

 the grouse of the season, that have just been sufficiently 

 hung, without sacrificing the piquancy of the bitter of 

 the backs grouse en salmi, and in pies, and split and 

 " brandered " ; the woodcocks fat as butter, with their 

 melting trails ; the black-game, that make an agreeable 

 variety ; the snipe and the ducks ; the salmon, served 

 in the sublime simplicity of the water that boiled him, 

 and in cutlets, and in curry, and in kipper ; the pink- 

 coloured sea-trout and the white little burn-trout by no 

 means bad in their way as a pis aller for breakfast ; 

 herrings from the loch, delicate as those of Loch Fyne ; 

 and fresh haddocks from the neighbouring ocean that 



