24 FORAYS AMONG SALMON AND DEER. 



CHAPTER II. 



To the Forest. The Fox Hunter. Stag Sighted. Tactics. Roebuck 

 Missed. Success. Thunder-storm. Cohr an Dhu. Herd of 

 Deer. Disappointment. Our First Stag. 



I HAD long looked forward to deer-stalking as the acme 

 of British sport ; and though in this our first essay we 

 did not meet with the success we had anticipated, for 

 skill is not to he acquired in a day yet we gained an 

 insight such as nothing but experience can give, and 

 the pleasure of the sport itself was heightened by 

 the character of the scenery. To stand on some hill's 

 ban-en brow, with nothing of human cultivation visible, 

 nothing but the boundless heavens above, mountain 

 looming beyond mountain in one direction, and the 

 broad expanse of the Atlantic sleeping far beneath in 

 the other, with no vegetation but the heather, the bil- 

 berry, and the juniper straggling up the mountain-sides^ 

 until all becomes bare rock, blasted and shattered by 

 the storms of ages, what more calculated to impress 

 one with one's own littleness, and the majesty and gran- 

 deur of that Being who was the Maker of the everlast- 

 ing hills, and who stilleth the raging of the seas ? 



On Monday we set off (Walter and I), attended by 

 two gillies (Sandy and Donald), driving, as far as the 

 road lay in our direction, in a dog-cart, which gave us 

 a lift of some five miles. A short pull up a steep " brae "" 

 brought us to the cottage of a dignitary yclept " the 

 fox-hunter" a most useful though nondescript char- 

 acter on a Highland farm whose occupation of keep- 

 ing down the number of vermin (such as martens, foxes,, 

 otters, eagles, et id genus omnc) is agreeably varied, 

 when occasion requires an extra hand, by the duties of 



