AND ANGLING SONGS. 6 1 



suffered, in common with the whole range of waters belonging to 

 that district in communication with the Moray Firth. 



I do not know how things are managed now, but there was 

 certainly, at the period when I visited it, little encouragement 

 for the angler to take up his quarters for any length of time at 

 Fort Augustus. This was owing not so much to the unreason- 

 able exclusiveness frequently maintained in the Highlands by 

 the proprietors of fishings, but to the exorbitance of the charges 

 which the traveller was subjected to, in exchange for indifferent 

 cheer and shabby accommodation. Indeed, as to the exclusive 

 principle, it was less acted on, in these days, in that locality, 

 than in any other. Lochs Oich, Garry, Ness, and the smaller 

 lakes in their vicinity, so far as trout-fishing was concerned, 

 were certainly not interdicted to the angling public, and an 

 occasional cast over the salmon-holds of the Lochy, Garry, and 

 Moriston rivers, might have been obtained on mere and uncere- 

 monious application. The system of overcharge, however, at 

 the principal inns, was even then in operation, and evinced 

 itself, as it appeared to me, in a very aggravated, not to say 

 brutal form and measure, at Fort Augustus. For a miserable 

 tea dinner, in which ham and eggs took the leading part, a glass 

 of toddy, the use of an uncarpeted apartment, termed a dormi- 

 tory, the bed so called being devoid of linen or curtains, and, as 

 the Yankee would term it, ' a starvation breakfast,' I was 

 charged by a ruffianly landlord, whom there was no reasoning 

 with, 14s. 6d. a sum that, even at the West End of London, 

 would have secured me, in the matter of these items alone, an 

 approach to luxury. It is to be hoped that a moderate and 

 equitable system of charge has been introduced into that quarter, 

 and that the ample extent of angling ground there presenting 

 itself, is not allowed to lie unused, simply from want of com- 

 fortable and fair-priced ' up-putting,' as we Scotsmen would 

 term it. 



