A RAID ON SUTHERLAND. 453 



keeper's wife completely overcome, he asked what part of the 

 discourse had touched her feelings. " It's the baands, sir 

 it's the baands ; I haena seen them sin' I was a lassie." 

 Publish it not in the North tell it not to " the Men " ! l 



The morning broke out fine and clear after a thick mist. 

 " The Men," amidst admiring groups, were solemnly stalking 

 to their homes in the distant straths or mountain-sides ; and 

 we, guided by Eoss, wearing his merry face and a shooting- 

 coat of portentous pouches, were wending our way to the 

 lochs. The landlord at Altnaharrow had obligingly sent over 

 a small coble, but the lochs were at their lowest, consequently 

 very difficult to troll. There is only one state I consider 

 worse viz., when too large. You may then succeed with 

 fly-trout and very small feroxes, but until the loch falls in 

 considerably, the only ones worth hooking seem glued to the 

 bottom. 



Lochs Slam, Craggie, and Layghal are all connected by a 

 pretty large moor-burn, so the salmo-ferox inhabits the three. 

 It is very seldom any are taken in Loch Slam, and only now 

 and then in Loch Craggie ; while Loch Layghal, from its 

 greater size, is their chosen home. Loch Slam, however, has 

 the first run of the salmon after a flood of the Borgie, and for 

 a day or two there is a fine chance of hooking one, but they 

 soon find the burn flowing out of Loch Craggie, when they all 

 penetrate into that loch. Unless, therefore, you are so for- 

 tunate as to hit on the shoal on their first rush up the river 

 into the loch from the sea, you may not stir a fish. I had 

 once the good hap to light on these fresh-run salmon, and rose 



1 In the summer of 1879, when revisiting Sutherland, I made the acquaintance 

 of a " Man " of the straitest sect of " the Men " a very Pharisee of the Pharisees. 

 His appreciation of character, however, in some respects would hardly coincide 

 with his other narrow-minded views. For instance, in speaking of a certain 

 highly born dame of a past generation, he remarked, " Och, she was a godly 

 leddy, the Countess ; three-an' -twenty pints o' Glenlivat she gave to the gillies 

 whan she cam' here, an' they were that pleased, they unyoked her horses an' 

 drave the coach themsels ! " Some of us perhaps might have preferred some 

 other proof of the good Countess's piety. 



