REMINISCENCES OF THE LEWS. 157 



wild Harris hills ; but it has its own peculiar 

 charm. You find a stag on ground as flat as 

 a pancake, wet, soft, and intersected with 

 burns, in a place you would say a rat could not 

 approach unseen. Then you spread yourself 

 out like a frog, and wriggle yourself into some 

 burn, through which you progress — depth vary- 

 ing from the ankle to the hip, sometimes the 

 neck. At times your burn takes a turn almost 

 underground, and you have to swarm over the 

 green moss bank, below which you hear the 

 water gurgling under you; and sometimes squash 

 goes the bank, squelch you go into the burnie 

 on your stomach, and are half smothered with 

 water, moss, and black mud. You must keep 

 your rifle dry, never mind yourself. Then, 

 after some pleasant half-hour's play of this 

 sort, on emerging from your burn, looking and 

 feeling like a wet nigger, you find a step further 

 will put you in sight of the friend you are so 

 anxious about. There is nothing for it but 

 reclining pleasantly on your stomach in a splash 

 of water, supporting your chin on a sedgy 

 tussock. Lie in this pleasant, recumbent posi- 

 tion, with a keen north-wester blowing over 

 you in squalls, enlivened ever and anon by 

 those pleasant hailstorms that I'll back the 

 Lews against the world for, that hit so hard 



