8o 
British Deer and their Horns 
the mountain, black clouds, which had been gathering ominously in the west, burst upon 
us in a perfect deluge of rain, and with the depressing experiences of previous days fresh 
in mind, we should have sunk in despair but for the assurance of Grant that it was probably 
a passing shower, which would be over by the time we reached the summit. So on we 
went, soaked to the skin, but cheered in spirit by a discourse on Highland pipe music, in 
the history of which, as well as the practice, Grant is equally at home. Grant, let me 
say, is one of the elites of his craft, a man of cultivated mind and relined feelings—in a word, 
one of “Nature’s gentlemen,” of whom, happily, there are many specimens to be found 
in the stalking fraternity,—and with the advantage of 6 feet 3 inches in height, and a frame 
in proportion, he is in every way fitted for the work he loves to pursue. A jovial man 
“as a feather is wafted downward from an eagle in her flight” 
too is Grant, with a sense of humour altogether at variance with Sydney Smith’s playful 
remark that “ it requires a surgical operation to get a joke into a Scotchman’s head ” ; so 
a more pleasant companion on a hill-side could hardly be found. 
He was right about the weather. No sooner had we reached the summit than the rain 
ceased, and beneath our feet lay open to view what might well be called a Sportsman’s Paradise. 
Standing on the deer-pass above the two corries of Larig Dochart and Altahourn, we had a 
magnificent view of the latter—the largest and probably the best corrie in the forest of the 
Black Mount,—and as we saw it, with the sun stealing across the immense slopes upwards 
over line after line of ridges, whose serrated forms were finally lost to sight in the mists of 
Glencoe, it presented as fine a subject for a picture as I have ever seen. 
Landseer seems to have thought so too, for upon a memorable occasion he turned away 
the wrath of his fellow-sportsmen by committing it to canvas. There was a big drive going 
