PART XV. 

 AD VENTURES AND INCIDENTS. 



OUR HUNTING-LODGE AND NEIGHBORS. 



1. The scene of the following description is in the Scot- 

 tish Highlands, where the writer and his brother passed sev- 

 eral years in the enjoyment of the scenery and wild sports 

 of the region. Their temporary quarters were fixed at a 

 little hamlet, and to reach the deer-forests they were obliged 

 to cross the Findhorn River, a small stream in the very 

 heart of the Highlands. Here follows the story : 



2. The Findhorn, however, which was so calm and 

 bright and sunny when the otters floated down its current 

 in a still summer's morning, was a fierce and terrible enemy 

 in its auger ; and, for a great part of the year, the dread 

 of its uncertainty and danger was a formidable cause for the 

 preservation of that profound solitude of the forest which 

 so long made it the sanctuary of deer, roe, and every kind 

 of wild game. The rapidity with which the river comes 

 down, the impassable height to which it rises in an incred- 

 ibly short time, its incertitude and fury, would render it an 

 object of care to bold forders and boatmen ; but with the 

 peasants, unaccustomed, like the Highlanders, to wrestle 

 with a mountain-torrent, and, excepting in rare instances, 

 unable to swim, it inspires a dread almost amounting to 

 awe. Pent within a channel of rocks from fifty to a hun- 



