1 84 WILD SPORTS OF THE HIGHLANDS chap. 



yellowish sand, without a blade of vegetation of any description, 

 and constantly shifting and changing their shape and appearance 

 on the recurrence of continued dry winds. Looking from the 

 hills more inland, this range of sand, in the evening sun, has 

 the appearance of a golden boundary line to the beautiful 

 picture of the firth. With the magnificent rocks of Cromarty, 

 and the snow-capped mountains of Ross-shire and Sutherland 

 in tha distance, I know no more striking picture than the coup 

 d'mil of this landscape, with the smiling plains and groves of 

 Morayshire as a foreground. 



In other parts of these sandhills are tracts covered with a 

 dry and rough kind of bent, the long roots of which, stretching 

 along the surface of the sand, and throwing out innumerable 

 fibres and holders, serve in some measure to prevent the drifting 

 of the sand. It is a matter of surprise how this bent can find 

 enough sustenance and moisture in the sand, which is always 

 moving and always dry. At the extremity, opposite Findhorn, 

 is a peninsula, with a solitary farm-house, and a tolerably-sized 

 arable farm, with tracts of broom and furze around it. The 

 furze-bushes are all eaten by the rabbits into peculiar shapes, 

 as the old yew and box trees in a Dutch garden are cut into 

 figures to humour the quaint fancies of their heavy -sterned 

 proprietors. The rabbits ought, by the bye, to be well clothed, 

 as they nibble the furze into regular cushions and ottomans, on 

 which they sit and look out in the fine summer evenings, with- 

 out fear or dread of the sharpness of the thorns, which in this 

 arid district appear to me sharper and more penetrating than 

 anywhere else. 



Westwards, towards Nairn, the sandhills are interrupted by 

 an extent of broken hillocks, covered with the deepest heather 

 that I ever met with, which conceals innumerable pits and holes,^ 

 many of the latter not above a foot in diameter, three or four 

 feet deep, and so completely concealed by the growth of moss 

 and heather as to form the most perfect traps for the unwary 

 passer-by. I never could find out what these holes were 

 originally made for, as they evidently are not the work of 



thousands of acres beneath this deep, ever-shifting sand desert " (Miss C. F. Gordon 

 Gumming, In the Hebrides, pp. 134, 292 : Chatto and Windus, London, 1883). 



Many specimens, chiefly of prehistoric objects in stone and bronze, have been collected 

 upon Culbyn Sands, and may be seen in the Antiquarian Museum, Edinburgh. 



^ In the heathery hill-side under Ben More, and over Loch Assynt in Sutherland, 

 similar curious holes and pits are to be found. 



