To Mountain Tarn 



happier circumstances, for the tourist. Highland 

 cattle do sometimes leave their native wilds to 

 visit Srnithfield Market. With his legs under 

 his own mahogany, and his napkin duly spread 

 over his waistcoat, man would be master of the 

 situation. 



In the Highlands are other ungulates than 

 the cattle. Sooner or later, in its windings among 

 the hills, the glen would eddy into some stern cul- 

 de-sac, misnamed a forest. The deer pent in there 

 are no longer simple-horned, but antlered. Less 

 formidable than picturesque, the appeal of the 

 head is aesthetic. Little tines or branchlets to 

 the number, it may be, of a score, shoot out here 

 and there. In woodland animals, these might 

 serve for concealment, the tines being lost amid 

 the tracery of the trees. That they are weapons 

 of offence is witnessed by the deadly combats 

 among the stags, while the hinds stand by with 

 the cruelty of gentleness. Moods there are in 

 which the approach of man is made at his own 

 risk. 



Morning and evening, when the shadows fall 

 eastward or westward, they come from the high 

 grounds, to feed on the long and juicy grasses by 

 the ash-strip or the burn. Had the fresh or tired 

 tourist turned in that way, he might have seen 

 no cause for alarm. Deer are, in the main, shy, 

 and when disturbed drift away like shadows. A 

 fleeting vision and they are lost, and the glen is 



63 



