40 AN ANGLER'S RAMBLES 



river, which, along the foot of the scaur, discovered, barely dis- 

 tinguishable in its rising waters, a ledge of rock, along which, 

 nearly waist-high, I managed to wade, and at length gain footing 

 on a piece of sward subtending the lower end of the bank. By 

 this time the recruited fish was again on the spin, and putting 

 forth his full strength and speed ; but I had now the master- 

 hand of him, and after giving due indulgence to his vagaries, 

 brought him safely, a goodly eighteen-pounder, to shore. The 

 Naver was now flooding fast, and being thoroughly soaked 

 through from head to foot, I took down my rod, with the inten- 

 tion of giving the river another and fairer trial before quitting that 

 part of Sutherlandshire. This, however, owing to the continu- 

 ing rains and consequent floods, I had no opportunity of doing. 



At Mrs. Sidney's I was shown two fine specimens of the wild 

 cat (Felis catus), killed by her son on the banks of the Naver a 

 day or two before. In colour, they were a light grey (not so 

 strongly marked or striped, however, as I have observed in the 

 usual stuffed specimens), and in point of size, they bore a rela- 

 tion to the Felis domesticus, such as of itself, irrespective of other 

 characteristics, was sufficient to support their claims to being 

 ferce. On the 31st August I fished, along with a friend of Mr. 

 Horsburgh's, an old schoolfellow, on the Borgie, Lochs Slam 

 and Craggie ; old Robert Ross, the gamekeeper, and his sons, 

 managing the boat. Owing to high winds and rain, the lochs 

 were in a very turbid state, and precluded all chance of falling 

 in with aferox. Our success with the fly also was very limited ; 

 but I was amused greatly, and my credulity put to the proof, by 

 what fell from the lips of old Ross, touching a gathering of the 

 feroces of Loch Loyal, witnessed by him some years ago, in one 

 of the creeks or bays we rowed past. The whole surface of the 

 inlet in question, covering an area of three or four acres, was 

 described by him to have been alive and swattering with the 

 fin-tops and tail -points of immense trout, assembled, as he 



