318 THE DEER FORESTS OF SCOTLAND. 



on to Glencoul) was the very pleasantest way of 

 reaching a forest beat that it has ever been my 

 lot to experience. At the end of the day the 

 return home in the dusk, with the after-glow of the 

 sunset showing the black outline of the hills against 

 the pale sky, while the throb of the screw, the hiss 

 of the water surging white from the stern, the dim 

 ghostly forms of a couple of dead stags lying on 

 the deck, and the weird call of the various sea-divers 

 startled by the yacht, all tended to send one home 

 in a peculiarly happy, contented frame of mind. 

 On the eastern boundaries of these two beats is the 

 hill of Ben Leod, which is 3,579 ft. in height, but over 

 the whole ground there are other hills reaching to 

 nearly 3,000 ft., and more than twenty of them are 

 over 2,000 ft. In the bitterly severe winters of 1894 

 and 1895 Loch More, which had never before been 

 known to freeze, was coated with four inches of ice, 

 while on Loch Stack in some places it reached fifteen 

 inches in thickness. 



The Stack forest the Duke sub-let for season 1895 



