30 LEAVES FKOM A GAME BOOK. 



breeze coming from the very best airt. After a pleasant 

 ride of some ten miles, we found the Knoydart peninsula 

 had been crossed, and that we were making a descent 

 on to the side of Loch Houm, which, some two thousand 

 feet below us, looked like a serpentine streak of freshly- 

 cleaned silver. Across the loch Ben Screel reared his 

 three thousand feet of stony height almost sheer from 

 the water-side. This is perhaps the stoniest hill in all 

 Scotland, for, excepting a few stunted birch-trees fringing 

 the base, there is from sea to summit neither heather 

 nor grass to break the grey monotone of millions and 

 millions of stones of every shape and size. A thin 

 streak of smoke was coming from the lonely cottage of the 

 forester living at the head of Loch Hourn, the only sign 

 of life in this wild and desolate-looking country. On 

 arriving here, after being welcomed with a cup of milk, 

 we stabled our ponies while listening — although feeling 

 quite "out of it" — to a long Gaelic confab between our 

 escorts, when it dawned on us that our second stalker 

 could not raise more English than the first one. A fairly 

 good track ran by the seaside to the head of the loch, a 



