WILD SPORTS OF THE HIGHLANDS 



an environment most meet for one of his mood. Cheerless 

 as the brown moorland of Sutherland may seem to the 

 shivering town-dweller, inhospitable its lonely straths and 

 dismal its mist-mantled mountains, the country was and 

 still is far richer in variety of feral life than more opulent 

 districts. Remaining to this day a rich hunting-ground for 

 the field naturalist, to St John it proved a perfect paradise, 

 affording refuse to birds and beasts which had been exiled 

 from richer lands, such as the wild-cat and the marten, the 

 sea-eagle and the osprey. Its rivers and countless lochs 

 teemed with salmon and trout; red-deer on the hills, roe- 

 deer in the glens, grouse on the moors, wild-fowl on the 

 coast, and liberty to shoot and fish where and when he 

 chose, without leave, let or hindrance — in what realm or 

 region could St John have found his idiosyncrasy more 

 perfectly provided for? Herewereno formal duties or social 

 functions to interrupt that leisure which an active mind 

 and body was never to allow to degenerate into loitering. 

 As for human intercourse, were there not shepherds and 

 gillies to exchange ideas withal.'' Companions, these, of a 

 very desirable kind — haud inexperius loquor — especially 

 that blend of Norseman and Celt which peoples the north- 

 eastern horn of Scotland. What more should the solitary 

 hunter desire as a relief from pursuit or study of beasts, 

 birds and fishes? Something, it seems, for in 1834 he wooed 

 and won a bride. Miss Ann Gibson, daughter of a Newcastle 

 banker, who, in addition to a substantial dower, brought 

 with her a keen sympathy with her husband's study of wild 

 nature. 



Matrimony brought with it the need for a change of abode, 



viii 



