CHAPTER IV 



IN SCOTCH DEER-FORESTS 



MY first experience of stalking the red -deer of 

 Scotland was enjoyed in Sutherland in 1879. We 

 had taken the shooting of Ribigill, a forest of some 

 30,000 acres in extent, that ran from the Kyle of 

 Tongue for about fifteen miles inland and along the 

 shores of Loch Loyal. In the centre of the ground 

 Ben Loyal reared its lofty head for 3,000 feet above 

 the North Sea, clothed as to its northern face with 

 a dense birch-wood, in which red-deer loved to 

 harbour. To reach the shooting-lodge at Tongue 

 on the northern coast involved a drive of forty miles 

 in an open coach from Lairg on the Highland Railway. 

 But to the sportsman the destination was well worth 

 the distance and the journey. The bracing northern 

 air ; the wild, undulating moorland ; the lofty sides 

 of Ben Loyal carved into rocky braes and glens, and 

 clad here and there with thick bracken and birch ; the 

 fair expanse of Loch Loyal and two small rivers ; 

 and the rocky, pigeon-haunted coast fringed with 

 woods and heath all combined to supply to the 

 stalker, the grouse-shooter, and the fisherman, as 

 attractive, and, to our youthful imagination, as ideal, 

 a field for their respective operations as could well be 

 desired. 



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