INTRODUCTION 5 



the independence, pride, and tradition, which make a 

 Highlander naturally antagonistic to that manual labour 

 which is a necessary accompaniment of a gamekeeper's 

 duties, still remain to a marked extent, especially 

 amongst the keepers of the Western Highlands and 

 Islands. Let one of these latter have a gun or rod in 

 his hand, or let him be spying out your deer in the 

 forest or tracking your birds on the moor, and there is 

 no man in the world to compare with him ; but put him 

 to drain your water-soaked ground, repair or rebuild 

 your butts, or to do any of the innumerable prosaic 

 duties inseparable from a gamekeeper's responsibilities, 

 and he is not to be compared either with the Yorkshire 

 or Norfolk keeper, nor with the man from the Lothians. 



The pride and exigencies of race, which have con- 

 fined the Highlander's instincts to hunting and fighting, 

 also assert themselves in a marked way in his relations 

 to his master. If the latter is "the laird," one of a 

 line of fifty Campbells, a hundred Mackintoshes, or a 

 thousand Grants, then the Highlander is a much more 

 satisfactory workman than if his master is a " Sas- 

 senach," or comes of a branch of whom he still virtually 

 regards as an alien people. In the former case he is 

 one of a family, in the latter he has an instinctive feel- 

 ing of resentment in being reduced to a position of 

 mere servitude. He is slow to come into touch with 

 modern social conditions. 



But though these reflections may be allowable, it is 

 dangerous to generalise more, and while admitting the 



