12 TO THE FOKEST. 



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 be acquired in a day 

 yet we gained an insight such as nothing but expe- 

 rience can give, and the pleasure of the sport itself was 

 heightened by the character of the scenery. To stand 

 on some hill's barren 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 bilberry, 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 little- 

 ness and the majesty and grandeur of that Being who 

 was the Maker of the everlasting 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 



