82 EEMINISOENCES OF THE LEWS. 



the foresting Aline and Harris so diminished 

 their migration that it all but ceased. Diensten 

 Hill — where, as I said, I built my bothy — 

 commanded one of the finest, if not the finest, 

 view in the country. The whole line of Park, 

 Lewis, and Harris, and the Uig Hills, lay like 

 a panorama before it, and of a fine day it was 

 truly such a view as was seldom looked at ; but 

 it had its disadvantages. This same hill, when 

 it was not fine — which it is not always in the 

 Hebrides — was about the windiest spot in that 

 very windy country. Diensten bothy did not 

 originally cost a great deal, but its repairs did. 

 In roofs and windows I hardly know what it 

 did not cost. They were perpetually blowing 

 ofi* or in. On one particular occasion I had 

 just considerably enlarged the bothy, and newly 

 thatched it from end to end; when, as we 

 were all located there for the opening of the 

 grouse campaign in the Diensten district, it 

 began to blow a little after daybreak. My 

 then keeper, John Munro, came to me, advising 

 the party to get up, as he thought the bothy 

 was going. The thatch certainly was, and he 

 had been three times blown ofi" the top of the 

 bothy into his garden trying to secure it. I 

 got up to see what was going on, as the others 

 were too lazy ; and lo ! there was the roof 



