282 Notes on Sport and Travel i 



moist eye and quivering lip, to turn and turn again 

 as the bread-winners disappear round the point, — 

 may give you a hint for a picture worth the painting. 

 When the Highlanders lived far up in the inland 

 straths they never dreamed of the riches of the sea ; 

 and you might as well have endeavoured to persuade 

 a starving cock-robin that he had nothing to do but 

 to dive into a salmon-pool to procure an abundance 

 of food, as induce any one of them to take to the 

 salt water. Now the case is altered ; living by the 

 sea they have become accustomed to it, and stretch 

 away to the eastward for herrings manfully. Pity it 

 is that they cannot be induced to take to the deep- 

 sea fishing on their own coast, so well protected by 

 the great breakwater of Harris and Lewis. 



The only fishing I have seen on the West coast 

 is that mentioned by an old pamphleteer of i597. 

 as obtaining in his own time in the opposite island : 

 * People of all sorts and ages sit on the rocks thereof 

 (Harris) with hooke and lyne, taking innumerable 

 quantity of all kinds of fishes.' And so they do 

 now in Assynt, and quaint are the figures one sees 

 perched on the projecting rocks fishing for their 

 supper. 



Most frequently it is an old woman with her 

 knees drawn up to her chin, with her voluminous 

 mutch flapping about in the wind, fishing for coal- 

 fish with a short rod and half-a-dozen flies, made 

 of a white duck's feather, which she does not deign 

 to withdraw from the water till each hook has its 



