72 SHOOTING AND SALMON FISHING 



most practised bogtrotter could hardly walk it for the first few 

 times without a guide. Every dangerous hole in it is, however, 

 well known to the two keepers, and when placing himself in 

 the hands of old Tullum or his son, the visitor can "go forth," 

 as they put it, fearlessly. The former is a man of extra- 

 ordinary broad build and of herculean strength, who in his 

 younger days was a most redoubtable wrestler. 



Our home bags of snipe are, however, quite put into the 

 shade by some of the foreign ones ; and in the early parts of 

 this year, 1891, my friend, Mr. Frank Lawson, wrote me from 

 Cairo, as follows :— 



"We (Captain Stewart, Gordon Highlanders, and myself) 

 killed and picked up 1,170 snipe in twelve days' shooting. We 

 had one extraordinary good day of 217 birds, of which I per- 

 sonally accounted for 134. The next best days were two of 

 114, and in the three best consecutive days we got 431 snipe." 



Permission was once given us to shoot wildfowl on the 

 water— it could almost be called lake — separating the Island 

 of Easdale from the mainland, and lying some ten miles below 

 Oban. The north end of the island is so close to the Argyll- 

 shire shore that they are not thirty yards apart, and are brought 

 into communication by a single span bridge. Below this the 

 two shores, each receding from the other, formed a splendid 

 bay, the edges of which on the Easdale side were fringed with 

 reeds, and a favourite haunt of widgeon when the autumn 

 migration began. Just across the bridge was a small inn, but 

 the one room it possessed was so stuffy, and the little bunk let 

 into the wall was so short, so hard, and so full of visitors ; the 

 sheets were so damp, and when thrown overboard the blankets 

 were so scratchy ; the chops were so tough, and the ham and 

 eggs so dirty, that it was voted preferable to make early starts 

 from Oban and drive there and back. 



On the present occasion, one day in the last week of 

 November, some thirty years ago, having heard a great flight 

 of widgeon had come in, I had driven down accompanied only 



