IN THE HIGHLANDS 159 



north side of the Fionn Loch, he planned a small hare 

 drive. 



There were only four or five guns, and I was one of 

 them. We crossed the loch in a boat, strode up the 

 steep hill, and were posted along the ridge on the very 

 top, while a limited number of beaters walked in line 

 along the sides of the hill. When the first beater came 

 in sight, and called out to me in Gaelic, " How many 

 hares have you got V 1 replied that I thought I must 

 have at least fifty, as my gun had got so hot that I could 

 hardly hold it. Well, he gathered forty-seven. Twice 

 I killed a brace of hares with one shot, as two of them 

 happened to cross each other. We got quite a big bag 

 that day. 



This hill-top was also famous for ptarmigan in days 

 gone by, and William Grant, who accompanied us to 

 St. Kilda and was my right hand during the season I 

 stalked at Cam Mor, told me that when he was in the 

 service of a sporting innkeeper at Aultbea as a boy, they 

 often used to make expeditions to the Beinn a Chaisgean, 

 the worthy host armed with an old flint blunderbuss. 

 It was, he said, never a question as to whether or not 

 they would get any ptarmigan, but rather how it would 

 be possible for him to carry home what his master shot ; 

 for the latter soon made a big bag, not by firing at them 

 on the wing, but by taking pot shots at them on the 

 ground, thus often getting several with one discharge. 

 I am told that now there is not a hare and hardly a 

 ptarmigan to be seen on those forty or fifty thousand 

 acres. 



A few years later, when the ground had been cleared 



