CHAPTER X. 



HINTS ANENT HIRING MOOES. 



No true sportsman can be considered to have thoroughly 

 fulfilled his mission until he has enjoyed a season's 

 grouse-shooting on the moors and climbed the moun- 

 tains steep in order to bring down the ptarmigan on 

 the Highlands of Scotland. 



Partridge and pheasant shooting are certainly most 

 enjoyable diversions, but they want the wild scenery, 

 the large tracts of moorland, the difficult walking 

 over the heather-clad hills, to make them rank with 

 such sport as shooting grouse and ptarmigan, and, more 

 than this, the bracing air which enables the sportsman 

 to accomplish an immense amount of work over a 

 difficult country without fatigue ; a fact which was 

 clearly established in my case when shooting over 

 Rhidorach, the property of Colonel Farquharson of 

 Invercauld, during last season. When I accepted the 

 invitation I had little idea of the work I should be 

 called upon to perform. Never having visited the 

 Highlands of Scotland before, I was ignorant of the 

 fact that the " shooting " over which I was to perform 

 was to a great extent upon the Grampian Hills, my 

 first view of which, when my attention was directed 



