210 DAYS OF DEER-STALKING. 



his hands. The darkness became deeper as the animal tore 

 and strained forward, through the skirts of a birch wood, 

 and both repeatedly fell together. 



Breaking forth again into the open moor, he found his 

 weight was beginning to tell on the energy of the stag, so 

 that he had power to swing him from side to side, till at 

 length, just as they were re-entering the wood, this deter- 

 mined bull-dog of a fellow fairly laid him on his broadside, 

 and with such force, that the crash seemed to stun him. 



Stripped almost naked as the man was, his shirt and kilt 

 torn to tatters, and his hose and brogues nearly gone, he 

 still contrived, by means of his garters and shot belt, to 

 secure the deer, by binding his hind leg to a birch tree. 

 Having accomplished this with great difficulty, he returned 

 for his gun, and thus at length secured his victim. 



If that vast tract of land in the extreme north, designated 

 as " Lord Reay's Country," has produced some wild and 

 ferocious characters, it has likewise tempered its romantic 

 district by giving birth to a man of no ordinary celebrity. 

 Rob Doun, or brown Robert, was born in the heart of it, at 

 Durness, in the year 1714 ; and although a distinguished 

 bard in his time, would probably have sunk into oblivion 

 had he not fortunately been rescued from it by a publication 

 of his Poems, and an Essay, prefixed to them, by the Rev. 

 Dr. Mackay, minister of Laggan. Rob could neither write 

 nor read ; nor was he much of a philosopher : there were no 

 academic groves in the wild land of his fathers. " But the 

 habits of oral recitation were in vigour all about him," and 

 being, by nature, endowed with a rich fancy, and a retentive 

 memory, his mind was stored with romantic legends and 

 superstitions, which, perhaps, abound more in that district 

 than in any other part of Scotland. 



The following account of this northern bard I have 

 extracted from the Edinburgh Review, for July, 1831, with 

 some variation, however, for the sake of compression : 



" His witty sayings, his satires, his elegies, and, above all,, 

 his love songs, had begun to make him famous not only in 

 his native glen, but wherever the herdsmen of a thousand 

 hills could carry a stanza or an anecdote. Donald Lord 

 Reay, a true-hearted chief, resident constantly amidst his 



