CHAPTEK X 



DEER-STALKING— Con^iwweti 



I SHALL now follow up my uncle's account of deer- 

 stalking by some of my own doings in that line in the 

 fifties. I was about sixteen and residing with my mother 

 at Pool House, and had Inverewe hired as my shooting, 

 when one day our great friend, the gentleman farmer, 

 Hector Mackenzie of Taagan, Kenlochewe, called. 

 Knowing me to be very keen on deer-stalking, and being 

 aware also that I seldom had a chance of a deer in those 

 days, he remarked that he wondered I did not try to 

 ingratiate myself with my eccentric old English neigh- 

 bour, who owned some seventy thousand acres, forty- 

 five or fifty thousand of which were the most famous 

 stag ground in the country. It was then still all under 

 sheep, but notwithstanding this, it had a good stock of 

 its original breed of deer on it. Was it not famous even 

 in the Fingalian days, when they killed the monster boar 

 in Gleann na Muic ? The very name of Srath na Sealg 

 (the Valley of Hunting) suffices to show its special 

 merits. 



The owner, who had then been thirty years in the 

 county, had never even attempted to stalk. My friend 

 of Taagan thought that if I went and made myself 

 agreeable to the young ladies of the house, and could 

 manage to offer something, even a small sum, in the 



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