ti4 WILD SPORTS Of THE. HIGHLANDS chap. 



this purpose, sometimes keeping the course of the streams, but 

 occasionally going across the country. I have seen their tracks 

 in places at a very great distance from water, where they evi- 

 dently had been merely passing down to the sea. 



When on the coast, they frequent the caves and broken 

 masses of rock. The otters that live wholly on the coast grow 

 very large. It is easy to turn them out of their holes with 

 terriers, as long as you remain quiet and unobserved by the 

 otter yourself If he once has found out that you are waiting 

 to receive him at the mouth .of his hole, he will fight to the last 

 rather than leave it. I have been told that they bolt more 

 readily to a white-coloured dog than to any other. All 

 courageous dogs who have been once entered at otters, hunt 

 them with more eagerness and animosity than they do any 

 other kind of vermin. 



The otters here are very fond of searching the shallow pools 

 of the sea at the mouth of the river for flounders, and I often 

 find their tracks, where they have evidently been so employed. 

 If surprised by the daylight appearing too soon to admit of 

 their returning to their usual haunts, they will lie up in any 

 broken bank, furze bush, or other place of concealment. 



At some of the falls of the Findhorn, where the river runs 

 so rapidly that they cannot stem it, they have to leave the water 

 to go across the ground ; and in these places they have regularly- 

 beaten tracks. I was rather amused at an old woman living 

 at Sluie, on the Findhorn, -who, complaining of the hardness of 

 the present times, when "a puir body couldna get a drop 

 smuggled whisky, or shot a rae without his lortiship's sportsman 

 finding it out," added to her list of grievances that even the 

 otters were nearly all gone, " puir beasties." " Well, but what 

 good could the otters do you ? " I asked her. " Good, your 

 honour ? why scarcely a morn came but they left a bonny grilse 

 on the scarp down yonder, and the vennison was none the waur 

 of the bit the puir beasts eat themselves." The people here call 

 every eatable animal, fish, flesh, or fowl, venison, or as they pro- 

 nounce it, " vennison." For instance they tell you that the snipes 

 are " good vennison," or that the trout are not good " vennison " 

 in the winter. 



It seems that a few years ago, before the otters had been 

 so much destroyed, the people on particular parts of the river 



