42 TOUR IN SUTHERLANDSHIKE. 



know that trolling with parr is as efficient a way of killing 

 salmon in several waters as fly-fishing, though not so generally 

 practised : nay, many a salmon dies an ignoble death from 

 taking a worm. 



This year I was fishing on a river in the North of Scotland, 

 near a town where there was plenty of anglers, young and 

 old, good and bad. There was one old piscator, who was 

 most assiduous in his attention to the river, and whom I 

 have seen for hours together at one small pool ; changing his 

 bait from fly to worm and from worm to fly, as he fancied 

 the inclinations of the fish might be turned at the moment. 

 One day we saw him in his usual position at the head of a 

 rocky pool, and found that he had risen a salmon. After 

 tempting the fish with every fly contained in an old bible, 

 which served as a fishing-book, without success, he told us, 

 as we greeted him in passing, that he ivould have the fish 

 before dark : and sure enough, late in the evening, while 

 taking a stroll up the river, we met the old gentleman 

 coming home, and after a little coquetry on the subject, he 

 produced the salmon, wrapped up in a stuffy pocket hand- 

 kerchief, and crammed into his trousers, where he carried it 

 in order to avoid notoriety on the subject. Not having per- 

 mission, I fancy, to kill salmon in the river, he had killed 

 the fish with a worm late in the evening, after everything 

 else had failed. 



The first few miles of the drive from Lairg to Aultna- 

 harrow we skirt the edge of Loch Shin, passing through a 

 beautiful wood of birch, at this season (June) full of singing- 

 birds, wood-pigeons, &c. Beyond this we pass for many miles 

 through a desolate and dreary-looking range of hill ground 

 the more desolate-looking too from the ground being covered 

 with a kind of coarse grass, instead of the rich brown red of the 

 heather. The number of curlews and golden plovers is very 

 great all along this grassy tract of country. The plovers are 

 very tame, running along the road in front of the horse, and 

 at last only flying a few yards to some higher hillock or 

 stone, where they stop watching us till we pass. These 

 birds have their nests rather high up on the hills : their 

 eggs are peculiarly large and beautifully marked, the pre- 

 vailing colour being a brown, shaded and spotted with darker 

 markings of a brownish-green colour. It is very difficult, 

 however, to describe the eggs of many of these birds, no two 

 of them being exactly alike. The curlews are far more shy 



