IN THE HIGHLANDS 11 



dale, where the then comparatively new narrow bit of 

 road, more or less adapted to wheels, ran from this bay 

 of Loch Maree to the old mansion of Tigh Dige nam 

 gorm Leac, which, as my uncle says, " was looked upon 

 by us Gairlochs as the most perfect spot on God's earth/' 

 For the sake of the boys a halt was always made at one 

 of the twenty-five islands in the loch for a good hunt for 

 gulls' eggs, but in truth it did not require much hunting, 

 for my uncle says he and his brothers could hardly keep 

 from treading on the eggs, the nests were so plentiful 

 among the heather and juniper. I can remember them 

 equally numerous till I was about fifty years old, when 

 the lesser black-backed gulls very gradually began to 

 go back and back in numbers, until, alas ! they are now 

 all but extinct. 



I shall give my readers my uncle's description of the 

 arrival of the cavalcade on the Saturday evening at the 

 old home, the most perfect wild Highland glen any lover 

 of country scenery could wish to see. No sheep, he 

 says, had ever set hoof in it; only cattle were allowed 

 to bite a blade of grass there ; and the consequence was 

 that the braes and wooded hillocks were a perfect jungle 

 of primroses and bluebells and honeysuckle and all sorts 

 of orchids, including Habenarias and the now quite 

 extinct Epipactis, which then whitened the ground, 

 and which my uncle says he used to send as rare specimens 

 to southern museums. May I remark here that in the 

 course of my long life in the parish of Gairloch I have 

 only twice had the pleasure of seeing the Epipactis 

 ensifolia — once near the Bank of Scotland at Gairloch 

 about thirty years ago, and one other specimen on the 



