98 SALMON AND TROUT. 



tor pike on Loch Lochy I saw the duck — an overgrown ' flapper ' 

 — swimming not thirty yards from the boat. The idea occurred 

 to me to try and cast over him, and after a few attempts 

 I had the pleasure of seeing the bait settle gracefully across 

 his neck. A * gentle stroak,' as Nobbes calls it, and the next 

 moment he dived, and, 'playing' like a veritable fish, never came 

 to the top again till I had him at the side of the boat and 

 passed the landing net under him. An hour afterwards he was 

 roasting before a drift-wood fire on a spit of arbutus ; and 

 washed down with a glass of genuine ' Long John ' he made a 

 most excellent lunch. ' These to his memory ! ' . . . 



It is wonderful what an appetite the air of a Highland 

 Loch gives — a thing most excellent when one has the where- 

 withal to satisfy it ; but I often think it must be ' hard lines ' 

 on the Gaelic tramps and gip:<ies — if there are any so far 

 north of the country of ' Meg Merrilies ' (Galloway). I once 

 had myself the experience of a supperless tramp with a friend in 

 these 'high latitudes,' and the recollection has by no means 

 that 'enchantment' which 'distance' — we had covered some 

 thirty miles of ground more or less — ought proverbially to lend. 

 When it is getting dark and a man has distinctly lost his 

 way in a country where there are no roads, and no visible 

 population, it is the wisest plan to yield as gracefully as may be 

 to the ' inevitable ;' and if he cannot, like Mark Tapley, be 'jolly 

 under circumstances,' at least to do the best he can for his 

 bodily comfort, without waiting till he has taken the last mile 

 out of himself, and left his physique too much exhausted to 

 contend on fair terms with damp grass and night dews. 



Acting on this view, we utilised our ' last mile ' in ' pro- 

 specting ' — and eventually made ourselves a fairly comfortable 

 shakedown of heather under the shelter of an overhanging 

 rock — sub tegviine fern-i. But now we began to feel the air- 

 effect upon our appetites, and to remember that we had been 

 on the go since breakfast and had eaten nothing. We were in 

 fact starving ! A raw turnip would have been a godsend, and 



