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A KAID ON SUTHEKLAND. 



THERE are yet some blue spots in the darkening horizon of old 

 Scotia's fishing sport, and the county of Sutherland still holds 

 its own in the variety of its angling capabilities. By the 

 permission and kind assistance of the late Duke of Sutherland, 

 I enjoyed the luxury of exploring these romantic wilds, and 

 found the excitement of success in good keeping with the 

 scenes which so often afford it. 



I was fresh from an English school when I first saw Suther- 

 land ; but what changes have these intervening years wrought 

 on this remote and primitive land ! So far as I remember 

 there were then no white-faced sheep, and the moors and 

 mountains were grazed by the old-fashioned black-faces, inter- 

 spersed with groups of " black cattle," the picturesque hirsel 

 of the glens. 



The savage precipices had tenfold interest as the constant 

 haunts of golden eagles or peregrine falcons, while most of the 

 sea-cliffs or lonely mountain-tarns were associated with eyries 

 of the erne or the osprey. 



The rank and luxuriant heather had not then been con- 

 sumed to accommodate the vast flocks of Cheviots ; the grouse 

 were regularly distributed and healthy ; while old deer with 

 noble heads were far more common than in these modern days 

 of cost and preservation, when numbers are made to atone for 

 lack of size and high bearing. 



