INTERIOR OF A SHOOTING CABIN. 69 



" blowing a comfortable cloud/' went to bed and slept ; but a 

 man must exercise and carouse with a grouse-shooter, to 

 conceive the deep and delicious repose which attends the 

 sportsman's pillow. 



This morning we were early astir. There was a mutual 

 admission of slight headache, but coffee and fresh air will 

 soon remove it. Having finished breakfast, and, in spite of 

 Sir Humphry's denunciations, fortified ourselves against damp 

 feet with a glass of Mareschino, we left the cabin for the 

 moors. 



Never was there a wilder spot than the dell in which we 

 have taken up our shooting quarters. It is a herdsman's 

 hovel, to which my kinsman has added an apartment for his 

 accommodation in the grouse season. This is our banquet- 

 room and dormitory ; a press in the corner contains our 

 various drinkables, and upon a host of pegs, stuck into the 

 interstices of the masonry, hang guns and belts, and all the 

 unmentionable apparatus of a sportsman. The cabin itself 

 is appropriated to culinary purposes, and to the accommoda- 

 tion of our dogs and personal attendants. The quadrupeds 

 are quartered in the farther extremity of the house, and, 

 after their fatigue, luxuriate gloriously upon a fresh bed of 

 sun-dried fern. 



In a calliogli* beside the fire, the keeper and old John, 

 who officiates as cook, are deposited at night, while the 

 otter-hunter and piper canton themselves in the opposite den. 

 A detachment of boys, or irregulars, who have followed the 

 master to the mountains, bivouac somewhere in the vicinity of 

 the cabin. In a sod- walled sheeling erected against a huge 

 rock, the herdsman and his family have taken up their 

 temporary residence, while we occupy the hut ; but its limited 

 dimensions would be quite unequal to shelter a moiety of our 

 extensive train. But while a mountain sheep hangs from 



" Callioghs" are recesses built in the side walls of an Irish cabin, 

 convenient to the hearth, arid sufficiently large to contain a bed. Some 

 of them are quite open to the fire ; while others are partially screened 

 from view by a rude matting of bent or straw. 



If you enter a peasant's hovel on a wet day, and inquire for the owner 

 of the house, a strapping boy will generally roll out of one of these 

 dark cribs, yawn, stretch his arms, scratch his head, and bid "your 

 honour" welcome, and then inform you that he " was just strichin' on 

 the bed." 



