THE RED DEER 
at 7.30 p.m. Wherefore the meanest intelligence can grasp the fact that 
a man must needs hustle and be fit to slay the monarch of Dalness. I 
did not object to the long walk up Glen Etive and down Glencoe to reach 
my beat “in the good old Highland way,” but I felt somewhat aggrieved 
that I was not allowed to rise at 4 a.m. and make my way to the far corries 
at leisure so as to have plenty of time to spy and find a good beast when 
I got there. The laws of the Medes, Persians and Stuarts were, however, 
unalterable, so the stalker is hustled along the river road up Glen Etive 
to get the wind right in the Glencoe Mountains in the next valley. It was 
a long way, and we accomplished it by 1.15. As we marched along X., 
the stalker, entertained me with stories of the forest, and impressed me 
with the fact that the stags of Dalness were always of colossal size, and 
quite unlike those inferior animals across the river. But the tales and 
the stags swelled to such vast proportions ere we at last reached the 
second stalker’s hut in Glencoe, that I felt convinced that if they had 
any substantiation in fact, the great Megaceros and his kindred must again 
have come to life, and were even then domiciled in Dalness Forest. 
Amongst all this pother of nonsense I gleaned the news that another 
“big stag,” as good as that shot by Hugh Cholmeley, was still on the 
ground. Its abode was the high peaks on the Paps of Glencoe, from which 
it generally descended to the hinds on Larig Ashton in October, so that 
we had some chance of seeing it on that very day, since no one had been 
near the big corrie for a week, and the season for its appearance was 
now due. 
The main valley and peaks of Glencoe, with all their past associations, 
have been too often described to need a repetition. It is enough to say that 
there is not a wilder glen in all the north, or one that lends itself more 
aptly to the sad tales that enwrap its history. The mountains themselves 
rise so abruptly from the main glen that in most places it is so steep 
that a stag must not be shot, or it will roll to destruction below. But what 
stag ground it is. Nowhere in the north have I ever seen such amazing 
grass — soft and sweet, like the best English park — and the whole rugged 
hill sides at the top and bottom are broken in dozens of beautiful little 
“ pockets,” such as deer love at all times, both for feeding and lying 
“at watch.” I believe that the best of the deer have now left Dalness and 
passed away to the newly cleared grounds, but in 1897 Dalness may be 
said to have been at its best, and certainly contained, at this date, as fine 
a lot of deer as could be found anywhere in Scotland. Despite the stalker’s 
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