156 A HUNDKED YEARS 



wlien Gairlocli got possession, and what a job it was 

 thought to be, when a clumsy sea-boat had to be dragged 

 over nearly five miles of bogs and rocks, and across a 

 ridge of something approaching eight hundred feet high. 

 Many a boat did we drag up to it in succeeding years, 

 until at last I made a private road for carts and motors, 

 with two good iron bridges over rivers, and built a pier 

 and a boat-house up at the loch-side. 



When the loch first became ours, a pair of white- 

 tailed eagles had their eyrie on the island, still called 

 Eilean na h'lolaire (the Island of the Eagle). It was 

 quite small and low, and covered with little trees, 

 but at one end a steep, bare mass of rock rose up sud- 

 denly out of the water, and on the top of this rock was 

 the large nest. It was, however, quite accessible, 

 and well do I remember, as a very small boy, clambering 

 up to it, or rather to the mass of sticks of which it had 

 been composed, and collecting no end of skulls and bones 

 of beasts and birds, which lay scattered all around in 

 great profusion. 



The white-tailed eagles had evidently trusted entirely 

 for their security to the fact of there having been no boat 

 on the loch for many years, but after being robbed several 

 times they flitted to a shelf in that stupendous precipice 

 at the back of Beinn Airidh Charr just above Cam nan 

 Uamhag (the Cairn of the Small Caves) — that wonderful 

 cairn and stronghold of foxes and wild-cats, where the 

 last of our martens was killed. When I was not more 

 than seven or eight years old, I was already quite a keen 

 collector of eggs, and greatly coveted a clutch of those 

 of the sea-eagle, which were always rare in this district, 



