CHAPTEK XXII. 



THE EIVEES HOPE, DIONAED, KINLOCH, AND POLLA. 



ANGLING SEASON : Hope, 12th January to 10th September. 

 Dionard, llth February to 31st October. 



NETTING SEASON : Hope and Dionard, llth February to 26th August. 



The rivers Polla and Dionard or Grudie are the property of Mr. W. Ewing Gilmour of 

 Rosehall. The river Hope separates the properties of Mr. Gilmour and the Duke of 

 Sutherland. 



EIVER HOPE. 



WHILE the Naver and Borgie have lochs from which they flow at a 

 considerable distance from the sea, the Hope suffers from having its 

 loch quite close to the sea. Loch Hope, a sheet of water 6 miles 

 long and a very beautiful sheet of water, too is, at its northern 

 end, within a mile and a half of the sea at the entrance to Loch 

 Eireboll. This mile and a half of water is the river Hope. The 

 loch is only 12 feet above sea-level, so that, as in the case of Loch 

 Maree in Eoss-shire, if the great erosion of the land, which occurred 

 at the end, say, of the glacial period, had been carried a little 

 further, Loch Hope would have been a sea loch, and the valley of 

 the river a kyle. 



Above Loch Hope the stream of Strath More, as it is called, in 

 contradistinction to the stream of the small strath, which is the 

 Polla, flows a distance of 1 1 J miles from Loch-na-Dealachd, a narrow, 

 little, sinuous loch below Ben Hee, and close to the highest source 

 of the Naver. This loch is 805 feet up, and the stream which flows 

 from it makes a very rapid descent, since about a mile below the 

 stalking lodge of Gobernuisgach, where other streams join from right 

 and left, the level appears to be less than 100 feet a drop of fully 

 700 feet in 4 miles. The river becomes flat and sluggish before the loch 

 is reached, and all the spawning ground of the district may be said 

 to be in the 5 miles of water between the junctions of the head 



