A Delightful Afternoon. 2 1 1 



bird, white-breasted, short-tailed, and with a happy 

 faculty for mingling business and pleasure, or so it 

 seems to me. He comes here to drink perhaps, but 

 he does more before he leaves. He will perch on a 

 stone and sit quite still for a while ; then he will dive, 

 and, speedily coming up again, will return to the stone 

 and perhaps drop a few notes of very sweet and cheer- 

 ful music, all his own, and liquid as the streams he 

 haunts. There is a kind of legend that he can walk 

 in water at the bottom, seeking his food, but I have not 

 been fortunate enough to observe it so long under 

 water as to suggest this, which, however, I can well 

 believe. The Duke of Argyll has told how the young 

 dippers will take to the water on being frightened, and 

 will at once show the same diving power as their elders. 



The stream has innumerable lesser tributaries, too 

 tiny rain-courses, or little more, some of them, pouring 

 themselves through rough rocky channels, to join and 

 to enlarge the streamlet as it goes, and making all the 

 music they may ere they pass and are lost. 



We remember one delightful afternoon spent near to 

 where a little stream of this kind bickers and sings on 

 its way to join the Tummel most delightful and most 

 varied of streams, sweetest mixture of idyllic and of 

 cunningly dangerous among all the rivers that we 

 know. " Tummel Falls indeed are tricksy, Tummel 

 Falls are rare, "but do not attempt, as some have done, 

 to slide, and glide, and get behind that white curtain, 

 half of cloudy mist, and half of more prosaic element, 

 as you may regret it. You may slip, plunge, and 

 be carried away ; or, if not quite that, receive such 

 a douche that you are not likely to forget it, or ever 

 after fail to speak with due respect, not to say enthu- 

 siasm, of bonnie Tummel. 



