24 



TOUR IN SUTHERLAND. CH. II. 



higher districts, they are not seen so often as 

 might be expected, excepting by an eye that is 

 accustomed to them. 



Having rested our horse and drank tea (the only 

 meal we could get) at the ferry-house, we man- 

 aged to persuade the landlord, who was also ferry- 

 man, to leave the hot whisky and water which he 

 was drinking with some acquaintance of his own 

 at that hour, twelve a.m., and ferry us across. 



We entered into conversation with a shepherd on 

 the north side of the ferry, who told us of a nest of 

 the " Eagle Fisher," as he called it, on an island in 

 a loch not very far from the road ; so we appointed 

 the man to meet us the following morning at a 

 certain place, and drove on to Scowrie, through a 

 succession of the most wild and rocky passes, along 

 which the road is carried with a skill that does 

 infinite credit to the engineer who formed it. Occa- 

 sionally the scene is varied by glimpses of the sea, 

 studded, as it there is, with islands. The country 

 continues still of the same aspect ; consisting of the 

 most confused and disorderly chaos of broken and 

 rugged rocks, but with rank heather and warm shel- 

 tered corners and nooks, with little clumps of birch- 

 trees already in full leaf. Many, too, of the innum- 

 erable deep-looking lochs by the roadside have 

 islands covered with birch and rank heather — the 



