CH. VI. RHICONNICH. 87 



From Durness to Rhiconnich is about fourteen 

 miles of hilly road, passing through the same 

 description of rocky country, abounding in wild 

 cats, martens, and other animals o? prey. There is 

 a loch about two miles from Durness, where I was 

 told that char are very plentiful. All the lochs 

 abound in excellent trout. 



We reached Rhiconnich, a tolerable inn, but 

 certainly not so well kept as many others in Suther- 

 landshire, at eleven o'clock, and immediately started 

 for a lake some two or three miles off, where the 

 osprey was said to build. The way to it was far 

 too rocky and steep to take the boat, so we only 

 took my swimming belt, as Dunbar offered to swim 

 out to the nest, if not too far from the shore. We 

 had a very rough walk of the longest two miles that 

 I ever met with. Our route was over a continuous 

 range of rocky ground — so broken that we seldom 

 found a flat place to put our feet on. We did not 

 find the right lake immediately, but at last saw 

 from a height a larger piece of water than any 

 we had hitherto passed, and at some two hundred 

 yards from the shore there was the conical-shaped 

 rock, which the osprey always seems to choose for 

 her nesting place. 



On examining the rock with the glass we im- 

 mediately saw the nest, and the white head of the 



