OF SUTHERLAND AND CAITHNESS. 
27 
road to Dornoch, artificially raised above the sea-level ; hence its 
name, the "Mound." The mound was erected to keep the sea 
from the low-lying grounds immediately inland, and sluices are 
placed at the mouth of the river to allow the surplus water to run 
off at low tide. The low-lying ground is covered with alders and 
long grass, and is the best place in the county for wild-fowl, as 
they have the estuar^^ of the Little Ferry, — the only place of the 
kind entirely in the county, — to resort to when disturbed inland, 
and vice versa. 
Lochs are not nearly so numerous in the east as in the west of 
the county, but still there are some magnificent sheets of water. 
Perhaps Loch N'aver and Loch Brora bear off the palm for beauty, 
as their banks, and the slopes of the hills adjoining, are partially 
covered with trees ; and, on the latter at least, bird-life is abundant. 
At the head of Loch Brora is a marsh where we have seen as many 
as thirty widgeon d;'akes together, and this in the breeding- 
season. 
The lochs in the centre of the district, desolate though they at 
first appear, have a wild beauty of their own. Badenloch, Loch- 
na-Clar, and Loch Eimisdale or Loch-na-Cuen, lie close together, 
the two first in fact running into one another, being only partly 
separated by a narrow spit of sand, which terminates in a heathery 
hillock. On this spit of sand, in former times, was situated a 
manufactory of flint arrows and spear-heads ; and flakes of flint 
and chert are yet to be seen, together with the remains of ancient 
fires ; in the long heather that fringes this hillock the reed-bunt- 
ing places its nest for want of a better site, and round the 
gravelly and sandy shores of the loch the ringed plover lays her 
eggs. 
This chain of lochs is the gathering-ground for the renmant of 
wild-geese that remain to breed in the district, but these birds are 
decreasing yearly from some unknown cause, as they are now 
never shot, as used to be the case in former years, when as many 
as seventy, young and old, were sometimes killed in a single day. 
Other lochs worthy of note are, Locli-an-Euair and Liam-na- 
chlaven, in the northern part of Kildonan parish, Loch Choire, 
