34 AN ANGLER'S RAMBLES 



eagles, male and female, crossed within shot, and a red deer 

 came down to the water's edge and stood unconcernedly within 

 a hundred yards of us. 



On the 21st, I scrambled up the face of the celebrated lime- 

 stone-rock, and wended my way towards Muloch Corrie, over a 

 tract of ground, the most striking feature of which consisted of a 

 vast range of cone-shaped pits, nine or ten feet in depth, and 

 about the same in diameter. Their purpose I leave to the con- 

 jecture of the antiquarian ; but taking them into combination 

 with other singular features in the same locality, they appeared 

 to me to have been used at one time as human abodes or retreats ; 

 possibly they formed the encampment of an army, or large hunt- 

 ing-party. Before reaching the Grillarroo loch I encountered a 

 fall of snow (the heights of Cannisbe were in white array through- 

 out the forenoon), the air became piercingly cold, and I resigned 

 internally all expectations of capturing a specimen of the gizzard 

 trout. I succeeded, however, in basketing as many as nine a 

 sufficient number to enable me, on a careful examination of their 

 alleged peculiarities, to form my own opinion respecting them. 



On descending by the course of the Trailigill river, which 

 connects Muloch Corrie with Loch Assynt, I caught about two 

 dozen trout, several of which were singularly marked. Of these, 

 three or four exceeded a pound in weight. (See Angling Com- 

 panion, p. 20.) From Innisindamph I proceeded next day, per 

 mail-gig, to Scourie. The drive is a delightful one ; it compre- 

 hends a stretch of scenery unsurpassed by anything of the sort 

 which can be viewed from a carriage-road in Scotland. Descend- 

 ing the heights, five or six miles from our starting-point, the eye 

 becomes arrested by Cunaig, not the dorsal ridge you see at Loch 

 Inver, but its Titan front a huge frowning precipice, scarred 

 with water-courses, and, in the very centre of its forehead, dis- 

 closing a hollow recess, or orbless eyehole, directed towards the 

 Atlantic, which, at no great distance, is stretched before you in 



