188 WILD SPORTS OF THE HIGHLANDS. [CHAP. xxm. 



nearly perpendicular rocks are clothed with the birch and the 

 ladylike bird-cherry, the holly and bright-berried mountain-ash 

 growing out of every niche and cleft, and clinging by their 

 serpent-like roots to the bare face of the rock ; while in the 

 dark, damp recesses of the stone grow several most lovely 

 varieties of pale-green ferns and other plants. In the more 

 sunny places you meet with the wild strawberry and purple fox- 

 glove, the latter shooting up in graceful pyramids of flower. 

 C Between Logie and Sluie are some of the highest rocks on the 

 \ river, and from several hundred feet above it you can look 

 ( straight down into the deep pools and foaming eddies below you. 

 "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 six- 

 teen 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 be- 

 tween 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 are numerous and inclined to run up the 

 river, the old man catches a considerable number; though the 

 capture of every fish is only attained by a struggle of life and 

 death between man and salmon, for the least slip would send the 

 former into the river, whence he could never come out alive. 

 I never see him catch one without feeling fully convinced that 



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