CLEAR WATERS 



can appreciate. There is not a tourist in the whole 

 country, not a human being on the whole wide waste 

 but a stray shepherd. The curlews call, the drubbing 

 pewits make unceasing clamour, the grouse cluck, the 

 burns murmur, and the black-faced sheep bleat, and 

 in August for miles and miles the hills are aglow with 

 the purple flare of their thick coat of heather. A line 

 of butts here and there upon a ridge outlined against 

 the sky are a modern innovation and a rather inhar- 

 monious note upon the wild. But the stock of grouse 

 has, I believe, doubled and trebled since I first knew 

 the country when burning was but irregularly prac- 

 tised and a small company of guns followed their dogs 

 through such a tangle of heather as nature laid before 

 them. Little strips of the Whiteadder, from its source 

 to its mouth, usually in the policies (anglice private 

 grounds or park), are kept as private water. And even 

 the Lowland Scottish angling public, that has views 

 fundamentally different from its English equivalent 

 on these matters, regards such sanctuaries without 

 disfavour. The same spider flies, with slight variation, 

 are used on the Whiteadder as were in vogue forty 

 years ago and were so much associated with Stewart's 

 then redoubtable name. Red hackles, black hackles 

 with orange body, snipe hackle with purple body, 

 and two or three other spider varieties probably ac- 

 count for a majority of all the fish killed in the river 

 and its tributaries. 



Scotsmen are strong conservatives in the matter of 

 fishing as they are in so many other things not im- 

 mediately connected with a general election. And 

 indeed, as to that, any Scottish tory will tell you that 

 364 



