APPENDIX. 305 



Loch Brora is a marsh where we have seen as many as 

 thirty widgeon drakes together, and this in the breeding 

 season. 



The lochs in the centre of the district, desolate though 

 they at first appear, have a wild beauty of their own. 

 Badenloch, Loch-na-Clar, and Loch Biniisdale or Loch-na- 

 Cuien, lie close together, the two first in fact running into 

 one another, being only partly separated by a narrow spit 

 of sand, which terminates in a heathery hillock. On this 

 spit of sand, in former times, was situated a manufactory 

 of flint arrows and spear-heads ; and flakes of flint and 

 churt are yet to be seen, together with the remains of 

 ancient fires ; in the long heather that fringes this hillock 

 the reed-bunting places its nest for want of a better sub- 

 stitute, and round the gravelly and sandy shores of the 

 loch the ringed plover lays her eggs. 



This chain of lochs is the gathering ground for the 

 remnant of wild-geese that remain to breed in the dis- 

 trict, but these birds are decreasing yearly from some 

 unknown cause, as they are now never shot, as used to be 

 the case in former years, when as many as seventy, young 

 and old, were sometimes killed in a single day. 



Other lochs worthy of note are, Loch-an-Ruair and 

 Liam-na chlaven, in the northern part of Kildonan parish, 

 Loch Choire, in the southern part of Farr parish, and 

 Loch Migdale, in the parish of Creich, this latter remark- 

 able as being the only loch possessing pike in the county. 



"Western and Northern Portions. 



Mountains. 



The great divide or backbone of Sutherland stretches 

 northward from near the southern boundary, in the south- 

 west of the county, to the limits in the north, of the Beay 

 Forest, and then turns eastward by Ben Hope and the head- 

 waters of the rivers running northwards to the Pentland 

 Firth, terminating about the centre of the Caithness 

 March. 



VOL. II. X 



