DEEK-STALKING AND COURSING 



stalking in the Highlands. He had a pair of corduroy breeches, 

 and I beUeve he never took them off for a fortnight.' 



The Prince Consort's opinion of the sport, as expressed in a 

 letter to Charles, Prince Leiningen, in 1848, is familiar to every 

 one :— 



' Without doubt it is one of the most fatiguing, but it is also 

 one of the most interesting pursuits. There is not a tree or a 

 bush behind which you can hide yourself . . . one has therefore 

 to be constantly on the alert in order to circumvent them : 

 and to keep under the hill out of their wind, crawling on hands 

 and knees and dressed entirely in grey.' ^ 



The Prince was an enthusiastic and successful stalker, and 

 his devotion to it speedily gained for the sport the foremost 

 place it deserves. 



This is from St. John's Wild Sports of the Highlands (1846) : 



' . . . On we went, taking a careful survey of the ground 

 here and there. At a loch whose Gaelic name I do not re- 

 member, we saw a vast number of wild ducks, and at the 

 further extremity of it a hind and calf feeding. We waited 

 here for some time, and I amused myself in watching the two 

 deer as they fed, unconscious of our neighbourhood, and from 

 time to time drank at the burn which supplied the loch. We 

 then passed over a long dreary tract of brown and broken 

 ground, till we came to the picturesque-looking place where 

 we expected to find the deer — a high conical hill, rising out of 

 rather fiat ground, which gave it an appearance of being of a 

 greater height than it really was. We took a most careful 

 survey of the slope, on which Donald expected to see the deer. 

 Below was an extensive piece of heather with a burn running 

 through it in an endless variety of windings, and fringed with 

 green rushes and grass, which formed a strong contrast to the 

 dark-coloured moor through which it made its way, till it 

 emptied itself into a long narrow loch, beyond which rose Bar 

 Cleebrich and some more of the highest mountains in Scotland. 



' In vain we looked and looked, and Donald at last shut up 



* Leaves from the Journal oj our Life in the Highlands. 



2f 225 



