12 ANGLING & ART IN SCOTLAND 



rally managed, I fear, to beat me in numbers ; 

 but my fish, I maintained, were of a larger size. 

 Towards the end of that tour, however, I also 

 succumbed to the charms of fly-fishing, never again 

 to take to the worm except as a last resource. 



It was on a Sunday, when we had been staying 

 for over a week at that very clean and delightful 

 inn, the Lochinvar Hotel at Dairy, kept at that 

 time by the late Mrs. Sutton and her daughter — 

 than whom none knew better the just appreciation 

 of a growing boy's appetite — that we formed the 

 intention of exploring the unknown and adven- 

 turous land which lay to the westward. 



East from Dairy, the country gradually mounts 

 upward in many slopes of grassy moorland, here 

 and there sparsely covered with heather ; occasional 

 lochs nestle in the hollows ; while the scenery 

 presents little grandeur beyond the magnificence 

 of expanse over which the eye can travel from 

 these undulating uplands, culminating in the dis- 

 tance in folding lines, piled one above the other, 

 of blue mountain. But to the westward the out- 

 look is more imposing. Across the wooded and 

 fertile valley of the Ken, the moorlands, thickly 

 heather-clad, rise abruptly to a highland plateau 



