156 THE SALMON RIVERS OF SCOTLAND 



tortuous rapids, where, in autumn, salmon may be seen leaping and 

 plunging as they make their ascent. 



On the slopes lower down the junipers grow in great profusion, 

 and silver birches add their graceful translucent shapes, and here 

 and there forest trees of several kinds lend variety to the defile. 

 Before Eelugas is reached, the river enters the county of Elgin, where 

 the combination of effects has impressed many a one. Mr. Charles 

 St. John, who knew the river well and had the keenest possible 

 appreciation of its beauty, writes of this section. 1 " Hemmed in by 

 the same kind of birch-grown banks and precipitous rocks, every 

 angle of the Findhorn river presents a new view and new beauty. 

 ... At Logie the view of the course of the river, and the distance 

 seen far up the glen till it is gradually lost in a succession of purple 

 mountains, is worth a halt of some time to enjoy." All through 

 this long defile the type of view is distinctly scenic, the steep banks 

 close in and frame the picture, the eye is caught by the moving 

 light on the river, and led away to a beautiful vista. Between 

 Logie and Sluie the rocks are perhaps at their highest, and one may 

 look down from a height of several hundred feet into the black 

 whirling eddies. "At a particular gorge, where the river rushes 

 through a passage of very few feet in width, you will invariably see 

 an old salmon-fisher perched on a point of rock, with his eye intent 

 on the rushing cataract below him, and armed with a staff of some 

 sixteen feet in length ending in a sharp hook, with which he strikes 

 the salmon as they stop for a moment to rest in some eddy of the 

 boiling torrent before taking their final leap up the fall. Watch for 

 a few moments, and you will see the old man make a peculiar plunge 

 and jerk with his long clip into the rushing water, and then hoisting 

 it into the air, he displays a struggling salmon impaled on the end 

 of the staff, glancing like a piece of silver as it endeavours to escape. 

 Perhaps it tumbles off the hook, and, dropping into the water, floats 

 wounded away, to fall a prey to the otter or fox in some shallow 

 below. If, however, the fish is securely hooked, there ensues a 

 struggle between it and the old man, who, by a twist of his stick, 

 turns himself and the fish towards the dry rock, and having shaken 

 the salmon off the hook, and despatched it with a blow from a short 

 cudgel which he keeps for the purpose, covers it carefully up with 

 wet grass, and lowering the peak of his cap over his eyes, resumes 

 his somewhat ticklish seat on the rock to wait for the next fish. 

 On some days when the water is of the right height, and the fish 



1 Wild Sports of the Highlands, p. 210. 



