148 COUNTRY ESSAYS. 



turesque than such a cottage can be imagined, nothing more 

 suitable to the genius loci, with its thin column of blue " peat 

 reek " ascending against the purple slope of the hill. There are 

 other institutions and customs of the Scotch equally fair at a 

 distance. Wearily do we plunge through the heather which 

 rises almost up to the middle in some sheltered corries, and at 

 length discern a colley far in front. Soon a second appears, 

 and then their owner, a thin, spare man, clad in jacket and 

 homespun trousers and wearing a huge " Tarn o'Shanter " 

 bonnet. Nothing loth, both of us "foregather," turning to 

 have a look at Assynt spread far below, and the huge tops of 

 Canisp and Suilven peering over nearer mountains beyond. 

 We admire his colleys, a sure way to win the shepherd's heart, 

 and are told how they sleep with the children and have the re- 

 mains of their porridge, and are in every respect treated with 

 consideration as being valuable allies. What would a shepherd's 

 life be worth on a wild December afternoon, when the east wind 

 carries the sleet straight into his face, had he not Donald and 

 Wallace ? They are eminently " douce " dogs, too, and every 

 Sabbath accompany their master to kirk in a very different 

 frame of mind to their ordinary alert and frolicsome mood. Is 

 this an hereditary result of the long Gaelic sermons to which 

 their progenitors listened ? All the shepherds and gillies here 

 are allowed by the Duke to fish for trout a kindly as well as 

 3. politic measure, the only restrictions being that they are not 

 to fish a stream before a gentleman if he is seen advancing 

 down it, nor are they permitted to fish within sight of a high- 

 road. The privilege is greatly valued, as may be supposed, 

 and is the means of many a salmon being spared on the breed- 

 ing-beds and many a callow brood of grouse being rescued 

 from Wallace's maw. We part with mutual good wishes and 

 stumble upon the Gillaroo Loch, exactly where we had settled 

 it ought to be, thanks to the compass. Its shores are shallow, 

 .and the centre is a good deal choked with weeds, but, by leap- 



