4 INTRODUCTION. 



its light as well as shade. The almost fabulous 

 rents paid for all the best beats brings money 

 into the country, and the sportsmen, to say no- 

 thing of being fleeced by the natives, are lavish of 

 their purses, which also swells the stream of wealth 

 flowing into the Highlands. To recur to my open- 

 ing sentence, not a few fine aristocratic young 

 Englishmen, who without this rugged attraction 

 would have been confined to the hunting-field, 

 stubbles, and turnips, are initiated into the more 

 hardening and fatiguing sports of the deer-forests 

 and the grouse-moors. These are the young fel- 

 lows to endure privations and suffer hardship : 

 they have done it before for amusement, and can 

 do it again for duty. 



Highland touring was in vogue long before the 

 furore for its wild sports began, and to the " Lord 

 of the buried past" we owe the interest first ex- 

 cited in the northern wilds. A Scotch tour, 

 however, was in those days an expensive and 

 often very uncomfortable luxury. Most of our 

 southern neighbours were quite content with one 

 trial, feeling satisfied they had seen enough of 

 the uncultivated region and its savages to last 



