THE FINDHORN 163 



On the slopes lower down the junipers grow in great 

 profusion, and silver birches add their graceful translucent 

 shapes, and here and there forest trees of several kinds lend 

 variety to the defile. Before Relugas is reached, the river 

 enters the county of Elgin, where the combination of effects 

 has impressed many a one. Mr. Charles St. John, who knew 

 the river well and had the keenest possible appreciation of its 

 beauty, writes of this section * : " Hemmed in by the same 

 kind of birch-grown banks and precipitous rocks, every angle 

 of the Findhorn river presents a new view and new beauty. 

 ... At Logie the view of the course of the river, and the 

 distance seen far up the glen till it is gradually lost in a 

 succession of purple mountains, is worth a halt of some time 

 to enjoy." All through this long defile the type of view is 

 distinctly scenic, the steep banks close in and frame the picture, 

 the eye is caught by the moving light on the river, and led 

 away to a beautiful vista. Between Logie and Sluie the rocks 

 are perhaps at their highest, and one may look down from a 

 height of several hundred feet into the black whirling eddies. 

 " At a particular gorge, where the river rushes through a 

 passage of very few feet in width, you will invariably see an 

 old salmon-fisher perched on a point of rock, with his eye intent 

 on the rushing cataract below him, and armed with a staff of 

 some 16 feet in length ending in a sharp hook, with which he 

 strikes the salmon as they stop for a moment to rest in some 

 eddy of the boiling torrent before taking their final leap up the 

 fall. Watch for a few moments, and you will see the old man 

 make a peculiar plunge and jerk with his long clip into the 

 rushing water, and then hoisting it into the air, he displays a 

 struggling salmon impaled on the end of the staff, glancing 

 like a piece of silver as it endeavours to escape. Perhaps it 

 tumbles off the hook, and, dropping into the water, floats 

 wounded away, to fall a prey to the otter or fox in some shallow 

 below. If, however, the fish is securely hooked, there ensues 

 a struggle between it and the old man, who, by a twist of his 

 stick, turns himself and the fish towards the dry rock, and 

 having shaken the salmon off the hook, and despatched it with 

 a blow from a short cudgel which he keeps for the purpose, 

 covers it carefully up with wet grass, and lowering the peak of 

 1 Wild Sports of the Highlands, p. 210. 



