nary operations, I may add that they found as much favour at table as they did in the creel.

Now this sport reads pleasantly, you will admit; but I should mislead if I allowed you to suppose that you will always be equally successful on Loch Watten. In no lake that I know are the trout more capricious; rising freely on days that you would deem unfavourable for angling, and making no sign on other days which you fondly believe are especially favourable for trout fishing. Conceiving on such occasions that the want of sport arose from our not having hit upon the right flies, we, one day when the trout would not rise to our flies, equipped an otter, trimming the line with such a variety of dainty lures of all sizes, shapes, and colours that we felt sure if the trout were disposed to coquette with one there was choice enough. But though our otter went far into the lake, sweeping many hundred yards of water, we only caught half a dozen fish, and these were lean and doubtless hungry trout hard up for a dinner.

Loch Watten is six miles from Brawl. It is of course disappointing to go so far and not get fish. But if fish fail, fowl may not. The lake is a favourite resort of wild ducks; and in August you will see great numbers of flappers near the shores. Considerable tact is required to get within shot of them; but the gillies will put you up to certain dodges, and if you are lucky to get

a right and left shot you may bag your three brace of delicious birds. Many other aquatic fowl frequent Loch Watten; and indeed it is astonishing how rich is the ornithology of treeless Caithness. The new Statistical Account of Scotland enumerates 177 varieties of birds found in this county, and principally in the parish of Wick. Some are very uncommon. Among the most rare are the red-throated diver and the purple heron. The number and variety of gulls is astonishing. All day long troops of these graceful birds wheeled over us while we were fishing in Loch Watten. Some, and particularly the beautiful ivory gull, seemed like circles of silver as they hung suspended in the ether watching our operations. Heartless must be the man who, for mere wantonness, shoots one of these trusting, beautiful birds. No sight is more pitiful than to see one drop wounded on the water. In a moment the maimed bird is surrounded by its more fortunate companions, which wheel round and round uttering cries of sorrow, and apparently mourning the fate of their hapless mate.

CHAP. X.

The Country round Brawl.-Excursion to Strathmore.- The Pleasures of preparing for a Day's Fishing.-Dirlot.-A Lodge in the Wilderness.- Loch More. - Disappointment in Salmon Fishing.-Great Success of the Otter.-Hospitality at Strathmore.

WILD as is the country around Brawl, yet you must plunge deeper into the moorland to know what Caithness is. For near Halkirk holms and meadows intervene between moors and mosses; a sharp contest is going on between savage nature and cultivation, and you can see at a glance that the latter is triumphing, for man is reclaiming the land and making it subservient to his uses. For here are no sheep farms, deer forests are distant; and until the rent of shootings greatly increases, which, by the way, is extremely probable, the landowners find it more profitable to let the land be cultivated than to allow it to be the breeding-ground of grouse.

Twelve miles south-west of Brawl stands a house in the wild moorland. Not a dwelling of any description is within sight; the nearest habitation is upwards of

H

four miles distant. This house is the lodge of the Strathmore shootings. A couple of miles beyond it is Loch More, the head water lake of the river Thurso. The lake is fed by the Altan-na-Cat, or Cat's brook, which rises eight miles to the south-west, in Sutherland. The Brawl shootings extend to within a couple of miles of Strathmore, and we had the right of fishing Loch More. Salmon ascend to this lake; and, according to the gillies, there were monsters in it as cunning as ancient foxes, and not unlike those animals in colour, long sojourn in the peat-stained waters having the effect of changing the salmon's skin from the silver hue that it possesses when fresh from the sea to a dull red.

To try and capture one of these fish was voted an agreeable change; for, as may be supposed, our experience of the Thurso salmon did not make us very sanguine of success. So one fine morning-alas! too fine for good fishing prospects - one of our party and myself set off early for Loch More, taking with us an equipment of rods and fishing tackle amply sufficient to set up a shop. This is generally the case in all fishing expeditions, the number of flies bearing a sad disproportion to the number of captured salmon or trout. But is it not one of the great pleasures-prospective at least-of fishing, to know that you are provided with a perfect assortment of flies? And have

you not found, dear brother of the angle, that the preparation for a day's fishing has been often as pleasant as the fishing itself? The delight of turning over with your friend the well-stuffed fishing-book, dwelling with raptured eye on the gorgeous salmon-fly, or the delicate trout-lures, so artistically tied that you feel certain no fish will detect, until too late for their freedom, the curious sauce piquante that the artificial ephemera carry in their tails. True, your anticipations are but rarely realised, and you have caught more imaginary fish in the course of your fish-talk than during your longest day's angling but such is life - hoping ever; and happy is the man who goes on hoping to the end, despite adverse influences.

The road to Strathmore runs nearly parallel to the river Thurso, passing across vast moorlands over which the eye stretches to the south as far as the Paps of Caithness, that seem like pyramids on the horizon. About eight miles from Brawl, the moorland is pierced by the limestone. This assumes craggy forms, and near the hamlet of Dirlot a lofty pinnacle still bears the crumbling ruins of a castle, according to tradition once the stronghold of a daring freebooter of the name of Sutherland, a near relation, it is said, of the ancestors of the Sutherlands of Dunrobin. Tradition further asserts that the river formerly flowed round three sides of the freebooter's castle, though it now washes only