LOCH FISHING. 95 



for these larger fish is very uncertain work, as they 

 are of course fewer in number than the small fry, and 

 also more dainty, and their haunts more difficult of 

 access. This difficulty of course is enhanced if the 

 angler is compelled, from want of a boat, to content 

 himself with casting from the shore. 



Finding therefore that we were not likely to make 

 much of it to-day, we put up our tackle and started for 

 home; Donald leading us by a route which we had not 

 yet traversed, in order to show us a curious waterfall 

 on the hill-side. A mountain torrent shooting over a 

 precipice, spreading like a sheet down its glassy 

 surface, and again contracting to a narrow neck at the 

 bottom, dashes into a deep black chasm in the moor, 

 and disappears underground, emerging again into light 

 at a distance of about three hundred yards. 

 As we stood looking up towards the fall itself, we 

 could distinctly hear the rush of the waters, as they 

 dashed along their unseen channel, beneath the rocky 

 spot on which we were standing, though they must 

 have been several feet below us. Before reaching 

 home we passed by the base of a very high and wild- 

 looking crag, which rose perpendicularly to the height 

 of several hundred feet ; its face seamed with huge 

 cracks, and studded here and there with the hardy 

 mountain ash, or occasionally a wild holly. In a niche 

 near the summit of a kind of projecting buttress was 

 the nest of a raven. At one time the eyrie of a pair of 

 eagles, it had been abandoned by its former kingly 

 inhabitants on the approach of civilisation, and tor 

 many years had been tenanted by the less noble raven. 

 Though apparently inaccessible to humanity, Donald 

 told me that he had once climbed his way to it, an 

 experiment however which he did not seem disposed 

 to repeat. 



