DEER-STALKING IN THE HIGHLANDS. 



(For a Description of the Deer, see Volume L. page 327.) 



OF this most exciting of all British sports, we have here a 

 scarcely less exciting account, by one who has evidently en- 

 joyed it with all his heart and soul. He luxuriates in the mere 

 remembrance with the gusto of a true lover, whilst his elo- 

 quence aims at no higher object than to enable others to par- 

 ticipate in his gratifications. Of any of those sports which 

 involve pain or anguish to the animal creation, we profess to 

 be no admirers ; but in this there is so much mental skill and 

 physical fortitude required, the scene is so full of inspiring and 

 elevating in fi uences, with its crags, mountains, and precipices, 

 its cataracts, and its burns, its storms, its mists, and its "golden 

 exhalations of the dawn ;" there is, in short, so riotous a sense 

 of life, such a delicious feeling of enjoyment obtained in the 

 pursuit, that we in " populous cities pent " cannot at least but 

 unfeignedly envy the deer-stalker the happiness of a day in 

 the Highlands. We proceed to give a specimen of the sport. 



It is just day-break ; the stalker leaps from his bed, takes a 

 single glance at the sky, to see the course of the wind, and 

 hurries on his apparel. Breakfast awaits him a Scotch break- 

 fast, fit preparative for the exertions of the day. Tea and 

 coffee, venison pastry, mutton chops and broiled grouse, eggs, 

 rolls, dry toast, and household bread are set forth in sufficient 

 profusion to satisfy the sharpest as well as the most epicurean 

 appetites. Breakfast over, he is prepared for a start. His at- 

 tendants, one holding a couple of hounds in a leash tugging 

 with impatience to be off, are quite ready, and they all move 

 on at a good pace through the light falling mist. Ben Dairg 

 (or the red hill,) is their immediate object. They ascend its 

 rugged sides with the firm steps of men accustomed to the toil, 

 until they reach the point immediately under the huge mass 

 of granite which forms the summit of the mountain, and where 



