INTRODUCTION. 3 



tence, not a few fine aristocratic young Englishmen, who with- 

 out this rugged attraction would have been confined to the 

 hunting-field, stubbles, and turnips, are initiated into the more 

 hardening and fatiguing sports of the deer-forests and the 

 grouse-moors. These are the young fellows to endure priva- 

 tions and suffer hardship ; they have done it before for amuse- 

 ment, and can do it again for duty. 



Highland touring was in vogue long before the furore for its 

 wild sports began, and to the " Lord of the buried past " we 

 owe the interest first excited in the northern wilds. A Scotch 

 tour, however, was in former days an expensive and often 

 very uncomfortable luxury. Most of our southern neighbours 

 were quite content with one trial, feeling satisfied that they 

 had seen enough of the uncultivated region and its savages to 

 last them all their lives. But when the country was opened 

 up by steamboats and railways, and the natural consequences 

 of better inns and conveyances followed above all, when good 

 shootings at very moderate prices were in the market no 

 wonder that even the cream of England's aristocracy looked 

 forward to their autumn sojourn in the North as the most 

 charming portion of the whole year. 



Forty years ago there were no Scotch sporting books, and 

 the few English ones were merely works of instruction and 

 dry detail. Now, however, the Scotch books on mountain, 

 forest, and river sport occupy no mean place in our national 

 literature. How much these books stimulated the demand 

 for Scotch shootings it would be difficult to say ; at all events, 

 wild shooting rose prodigiously in the market after their pub- 

 lication. Forty years ago capital small ranges were to be had 

 for 150 to 180. The rapidity with which these rose to 

 thrice that amount was most disheartening to keen grouse- 

 shooters of moderate incomes. The competition for the first- 

 class beats was even greater, and I have been told by agents 

 that the claimants bid each other up to such a figure that 

 they were sometimes ashamed to take the highest offer. 



