250 SUMMER 



cushat coos, and the roe glides through the secret covert? 

 Or shall we away up by Kinloch-Etive, and Melnatorran, 

 and Mealgayre, into the solitude of streams, that from all 

 their lofty sources down to the far-distant Loch have never 

 yet brooked, nor will they ever brook, the bondage of 

 bridges, save of some huge stone flung across some chasm, 

 or trunk of a tree none but trunks of trees there, and all 

 dead for centuries that had sunk down where it grew, and 

 spanned the flood that eddies round it with a louder music ? 

 Wild region ! yet not barren ; for there are cattle on a 

 thousand hills that, wild as the very red-deer, toss their 



'THE STONY REGIONS THAT THE PTARMIGAN LOVE ' 



heads as they snuff the feet of rarest stranger, and 

 form round him in a half-alarmed and half-threatening 

 crescent. . . . 



'. . . All these are splendid schemes but what say 

 you, Hamish, to one less ambitious, and better adapted to 

 Old Kit? Let us beat all the best bits down by Armaddy 

 the Forge, Glenco, and Inveraw. We may do that well in 

 some six or seven hours and then let us try that famous 

 salmon-cast nearest the mansion (you have the rods ?) and 

 if time permit, an hour's trolling in Loch Awe, below the pass 

 of the Brander, for one of these giants that have immortal- 

 ised the name of a Maule, a Goldie, and a Wilson.' How 



