CHAPTER FIVE ON POACHERS 



Edinburgh, Glasgow, or other large towns, where they 

 have some confidential friend to receive and sell them. In 

 Edinburgh,there are numbers of men who work as porters, 

 (Sr'c.duringthe winter, and poach in the Highlands during 

 the autumn. When in town, these men are useful to their 

 friends on the hills in disposing of their game, which is all 

 killed for the purpose of being sent away, and not for con- 

 sumption in the country. 



Many poachers of the class I have here described are of 

 respectable origin, and are well enough educated. When 

 my aforesaid acquaintance Ronald called on me, he had a 

 neat kind of wallet with his dry hose, a pair of rather smart 

 worsted-worked slippers (he did not seem disposed to tell 

 me what fair hands had worked them), and clean linen, dr'c. 

 He wore also a small French gold watch, which had also 

 been given him. Several of the Highlanders who have liv- 

 ed in this way emigrate to Canada, and generally do well; 

 others get places as foresters and keepers, making the best 

 and most faithful servants. Their old allies seldom annoy 

 them when they take to this profession, as there is a great 

 deal of good feeling amongst them, and a sense of rio-ht, 

 which prevents their thinking the worse of their quondam 

 comrade because he does his duty in his new line of life. 



There is another class of hill poacher — the old, half worn- 

 out Highlander, who has lived and shot on the mountain 

 before the times of letting shooting-grounds and strict pre- 

 serving had come in. These old men,with their long single- 

 barrelled gun, kill many a deer and grouse, though not in a 

 wholesale manner,hunting more from ancient habit and for 

 their own use than for the market. I have met some quaint 

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