GEOUSE. 127 



reports were merged in one, and he rolled over very dead 

 into the dry basin of a little streamlet. 



" I think you shot him," said my companion, dubiously 

 lifting the heavy beast with some effort ; but, remembering 

 that we each carried our own game, I modestly tried to 

 persuade him that it was his victim. But that would not 

 do, so we forthwith built a hollow cairn of stones on a con- 

 spicuous ledge, and consigned our game to it until we could 

 send a keeper up for them. 



By this time we had worked our way to the crest of the 

 range, and a fair prospect of hill and dale lay below us, 

 a chequered plain of land and water as far as the eye could 

 reach lochs without end or number, so numerous they 

 seemed, and at our feet the noble reaches of one made famous 

 for ever by a touch of the magic wand of the great "Wizard 

 of the North," " Loch Katrine's mirror blue." 



" Let's try the locklet for teal," said the energetic gun at 

 my elbow, for ever disturbing me when my attention is 

 absorbed in the sublime ; so we turned down a grassy slope 

 on the plateau top, and, crossing some bare peat bogs, where 

 the water, brown and dark, stood in the holes and ditches 

 left by the subsidence of the surface, we walked in silence 

 for half a mile, till a rugged hillock rose before us, and 

 behind it lay an oft-visited mountain tarn, marking the 

 water-shed. This spot was in general a sure find at this 

 hour of the morning for teal or duck. We divided our force 

 so as to take the enemy in front and rear. 



Who is there that has seen one of these wild, unknown, 

 unnamed sheets of water can forget the weird spot ? More 

 lonely places it would be hard to find upon the face of 

 the earth. The hot sands of the desert, the dense, gloomy 

 depth of a tropical jungle, never conveyed to my mind 

 half the sense of loneliness that one of these little lakes 

 does. All around their borders the gaunt, uncanny rushes 

 wave and tremble as though at their roots lay some worse 

 secret than that of the Asiatic king; and heavy, sodden 



