The Pleasures of June 73 



II 



To most of us the Highlands seem changeless to 

 wear the same face all the months round. So many 

 things have to be done, and the demands on time by 

 political, professional, and other duties are so varied 

 and incessant, that only a trip a year is possible, and 

 for many a grouse-shooter and deer-stalker the High- 

 lands exist but as stretches of heather past its first 

 bloom, and lying russet under a grey autumnal sky. 

 Who, indeed, shall tell us what they are like in winter, 

 when the snowy Bens look down on vacant lodge 

 and empty caravanserai and half-dispeopled clachan ? 

 Thus, too, the angler returning to his accustomed 

 lochs and streams in April and May, when after 

 making valley and lowland green, the Spring lags 

 slowly up these heights, remembers them by the ever- 

 lasting bleakness of the hills, their bare cold copses, 

 and those chilling winds and frozen rains that numb 

 the fingers till they are past managing a reel, and 

 lend a lasting and peculiar charm to the glow of the 

 tavern ingle. To both shooter and fisherman the 

 June Highlands are an unknown land. And the leafy- 

 month is also well-nigh sacred from that common and 

 gregarious tourist who in July and August so often 

 makes a seat in the coach, a bed at the hotel, or a 

 walk unvulgarised and unprofaned, the rankest im- 

 possibility. 



It is the quiet rambler for rambling's sake that is 



