122 THE DEER FORESTS OF SCOTLAND. 



weather. This fine tract of country quite won all 

 the sporting instinct and nature of that charming 

 writer, the late Mr. St. John, who in his beautiful 

 book, "The Wild Sports of the Highlands," devotes 

 a whole chapter — " The River Findhorn " — to what is 

 now Coignafearn forest, and he ends it by saying : " I 

 wonder Mackintosh does not turn this into a deer 

 forest, for which it is specially adapted." This was 

 written about the year 1850, but it was not until 

 1883 that Mr. St. John's suggestion was carried out. 

 Situated in the Monadhliah mountains, the forest is 

 a splendid stretch of wild ground full of springs, 

 burns, tarns, grassy corries, while no less than three 

 good-sized rivers rise in and flow through it, viz., the 

 Croclach, the Eskin and the Dalveg, the three 

 eventually forming the Findhorn, of which this forest 

 is the watershed. Coignafearn is at present rented 

 by Mr. J. Bradly Firth, where a previous tenant, 

 Mr. Holland Corbett, once killed three thousand 

 brace of grouse entirely over dogs. It is high ground, 

 the house itself being 1,100 ft. above sea level, while 



