"THE MOOR AND THE LOCH" 237 



lovely inland archipelago. Though we set more store 

 in those days by shooting than scenery, we could have 

 been comparatively indifferent to the contents of the 

 bag in admiring the endless beauties of the prospect. 

 But though the shooting was rough and the ground 

 but half preserved, the bag contained a little of most 

 things, for there was a touch of the softer richness of 

 the Lowlands relieving the savagery of the Highland 

 landscape. Sixty years ago young Colquhoun could 

 follow the keepers over the broad rolling stretches of 

 the grouse-moor into the recesses of the hills ranged by 

 the red deer. There were black game in the hanging 

 coverts and roe in the thickets of bramble and bracken. 

 There was abundance of low-country shooting on the 

 lower ground, and whatever there may have been then, 

 now there is a fair sprinkling of pheasants. There 

 were trout in the loch and salmon in the streams that 

 have been poisoned since by chemical works and manu- 

 facturies ; while in the sea-lakes and out of the season, 

 there was always the rougher fishing which seems to 

 have an indefinable charm of its own. No wonder 

 that such a sportsman had become catholic in his tastes, 

 for as Laidlaw remarked of Walter Scott, after the 

 excursions in Liddesdale, "he was making himself all 

 the time " to be the author of a Scottish sporting 

 encyclopaedia. 



