IV.

May 1880.

C.

WE had shaken off the dust of the south. We had bidden "goodbye," for a time at least, to the toil of London life. Once again Inverness, with all its charms of association, had welcomed us with its ever refreshing memories of happy days when railways were yet unknown. We had tubbed, -breakfasted on those succulent salmon-steaks, rolls and butter, unequalled in our minds. We had not forgotten to "visit MacDougall's;" neither had we omitted the yet more important duty of looking in at Snowie's and Macleay's for fresh tackle. As the afternoon train for the Skye line moved slowly out, it was heavily laden with a large contingent of the Rossshire militia returning to the west coast, we sank back in the comfortable front coupé, which the Highland Railway Directors so thoughtfully provide for the enthusiastic travelling public, with that ineffable sense of rest, comfort, and tranquillity that pervades the minds of well- conditioned men, who, bound for a short spell of leave which they believe they have fully earned, have made all possible preparations for its thorough enjoyment.

Donuil, our head-keeper, had thoughtfully sent us a telegram, done into English, from Stornoway: "She is full, and there will be grand sport." be grand sport." If he had written a bookful he could not have said more to send our spirits up to effervescing-point. We anxiously watched the "carry" as we hastened round the Beauly Firth. The clouds were moving to the north, with that look in their ever-varying and beautiful masses which told us, not unused to read their signs, that there was no fear, for the present at all events, of that bête noire to the angler, an easterly wind. With the feelings of boys, young and old, who handle their guns on the eve of "the Twelfth," their hunting-crops at the end of October, we had kept out our fly-books, and tenderly handled the innocent-looking means by which we hoped to wile the handsomest fish there is into our panniers, one of which occupied the farther side of the carriage, full to the brim with all that Morel, combined with experience and anticipation of hunger and thirst, could suggest. When the Hampshire basket-maker was told to make a pair, each to hold twelve salmon of 15 lb. weight, he

stared, as well he might; yet they both were more than filled one day by one rod alone.

As we slowly climbed the steep ascent, and looked up Strathpeffer and down upon Leod Castle, we felt as does the lover of the art when, settling in his stall at Covent Garden, he knows that Patti is the heroine of the evening. Scraping, as it were, through the rocky gateway which seems to bar the entrance to the west, and which reminds one how Dame Nature deigns at times to copy her own handiwork-for this, on an infinitely smaller scale of course, is not unlike the Bolan Pass-we seem to glide with easier respiration along the banks of Garve. Lochluichart, Achanalt, Auchnashellach, where wealth and taste combine with nature-are they not names to call up visions of scenery not easily surpassed in Bonnie Scotland? As we sweep along the shores of the sea-loch Carron, we catch from the receding tide the bracing, powerful ozonic odours of the fresh sea-weed, and simultaneously we confess to hunger we had not known for months. Anxiously we looked to seaward, as the rays of the setting sun poured out their wealth of gold on weatherbeaten mountain-tops, the heathered sides, the wooded glens, and whitesailed fishing-boats darting here and there on the crisply - curling wavelets; for the sun was sinking fast, and we knew that if we were to escape the loss of a day, we must get out into the Minch before night fell, as the entrance into Strome is most tortuous and dangerous. Yes; there was the little yacht-like Glencoe, which the everobliging station-master of Inverness had assured us would wait for our train until the last possible

moment.

Bundling our traps on board, we rushed to the telegraph - office to

announce our departure for the outer world. Can you conceive anything more apparently hopeless than the attempt to penetrate four hundred hungry men, filling, brimming over, and clustering round a "shop" some ten feet square, which held their hopes of food for fourand-twenty hours? At the farther corner of this den lies the telegraphic battery; yet, thanks to the innate courtesy of these kindly Highlanders, who, in all their apparent rough and eager jostling, never lost their tempers or uttered an unseemly word, we quickly wrote our messages, and were, most thankfully, back again in fresher air before the warning sounds of the steamer's second bell had bid us hasten. As we steamed away, the falling shades on the glass-like waters, the still glowing tops of the higher hills of Ross behind us, the dark-rising masses of the mountain-ranges out in Skye, combined to form such pictures that even the steward's welcome summons was for a time unnoticed. Have you ever been so hungry that the prospect of going foodless to bed made the little heart you had left sink into your boots? We found that it was quite by accident there was anything to eat on board. But, ye gods, how good that was! Such herrings !-not thirty minutes gone since they had said farewell to all their kin smoking hot-as fresh; deftly opened down the back; laid by an artist's hand upon the gridiron, with a dash of oatmeal, black and red pepper, and a pinch of salt,—their like is not yet known in the land of the Sassenach. Top those with chops, which look like cutlets, of small West Highland mutton, and we think that even the announcement that there was no milk for tea could be received with equanimity. Our Russian experience had taught us that a squeeze of lemon is no mean

substitute; and as we sat in the glass-encased saloon, and watched the phosphorescent waves between us and the rising shores of Raasay, we felt that our trip had indeed begun to run in pleasant lines.

With a steady, even beat, the Glencoe cleft her way; and ere we well had slept, we found ourselves running up the landlocked bay of Stornoway. Filled with herringboats of various builds and rigs, from the carvel craft of Banff to the clinker lugger of the west, there were on board them as many types of hardy seamen. The dark, flashing eyed, impetuous Celt of Hebridean origin loves not the more phlegmatic, less attractive eastern Scot-and he shows it, too, at times; but that is only when the devil, in the shape of poisonous fire-water, subverts his native courteous, peaceful instincts.

It was cold, the coldest hour of all, that just before the dawn. But tired, sleepy, shivering, as we stood upon the quay, we determined to face at once the twenty-mile drive across the Lews, rather than endure the horrors of a bed in worse than

doubtful quarters. That drive! We had tasted the delights of a telega for a four days' scamper over the Steppes; but we had not known such agonies of sleep as those which mocked us with blissful rest, as when we toiled along that weary, dreary road to Garrynahine, behind the wretched pony that was harnessed to a double dog - cart, in which a pair of spanking hunters might well have earned their summer oats. Five mortal hours were taken from the day ere our eyes were gladdened by the distant whitened walls of Roag Lodge. With what joy we slipped between the daisy-smelling sheets, and kissed the fresh, white pillows! and in another minute slept as do indeed

the weary-but only for two hours. The General was inexorable. Breakfasting at eleven, at noon we started for the lower waters. To each of us were attached two gillies. - men who had lived their lives with fish, until they knew their every phase of

mind or habit.

One of them, Donuil Dubh, had been some years a trapper for the Hudson's Bay Company; and as his intelligent dark face lit up while he told us tales of the "great lone land," he read us a practical lesson on the possibility and benefit of travelling with a small purse and a large mind. His pay had only been one shilling a-day, which seemed munificent in comparison with the then local rate of sixpence. "Ah!" he said; "in those days, when there were so many mouths for the little meal we had, it would have been a mercy if there had been a war like the long one, when men went by the hundred and few came back." Now, out of a population in the Lews of little more than 25,000, there are nearly 1000 in the Naval Reserve, 500 in the Militia, and 100 are well-drilled Artillery Volunteers; besides, a certain number yearly join the regular services. If the right chord be touched, they are men who will follow the flag, and be proud to die for it.

As we made for the head of the river, our faces were turned towards the south, and the hills of Harris rose before us in striking contrast to the dwarfed contour of the Lews country. Peaks and buttresses, sharp outlines and rugged crests, throwing themselves against the fleece - covered sky to the height of nearly three thousand feet, they proudly asserted themselves in all the beauty of their form and colouring, tinted by the varied hues of heather, grass, and lichen-covered rocks, until, as our

rapid steps brought us to a long sheet of water, whose Scandinavian name betrays its ancient source, we were fain to halt and gaze upon the beauty of the scene, so little like what we had been taught to think could be looked for in the Lews. True it is that the grandeur of the landscape belongs to the southern part, Harris; but her northern sister, like many a dangerous siren, gains in attractiveness the more your accustomed eye wanders over her features, and finds with each grow ing hour that there is a fresh and not less potent charm than in the last. At least we found it so; and when we left the Lews, we looked long and wistfully in her face, and felt that, without doubt, she need not fear the closest scrutiny, if it last but long enough.

Bor

And then we fished Lang Val -Scandinavian to the letter, and full of salmon to the smallest bay, thanks to the absence of a net from spawning-bed to sea. dered on the south by the Harris hills, to the north it empties itself by a series of smaller lochs and short streams into the arm of the sea from which its wealth of salmon comes. To each rod is assigned a certain well-defined and most liberal extent of loch and stream; the latter fished from the bank,-the former by fair casting from a Norwegian skiff, light, and easily handled in the strongest breeze-and it can blow great guns on those stretches of water-by the two expert gillies, who, as they say themselves, enjoy the sport almost as much as you.

Quickly the rod is put together by the lissom-fingered Donuil, who, as he hands it back, remarks that its eighteen feet of seasoned stuff makes just the thing that's wanted. Much against our prejudices, he is allowed to have his way and put on a "bob," "a silver squire," a

smaller fly than the "butcher," which goes upon the tail. Quickly, silently, as if of a boat's crew bent on cutting out a prize from under a battery, the gillies bring the skiff to, just below the stream as it enters the loch; and, with a Gaelic benediction from them both, out flies the line across the stream, and we fish upwards. "Ah!" is the united expression of keen delight

as with a rush a fresh-run salmon flashes his silver side well out of the water ere he sinks with the deceptive morsel. A click of the reel, a whirr as the line goes out, and we know that a good fish is fast. In an instant the rod is bent as he gets the butt and the linetaut, as it may safely be-cuts the hissing water like a knife as he rushes down the loch, and takes out forty yards of line. Turning like a flash, he comes back yet faster, hard at us; and ere the line can well be reeled again, he springs three feet straight into the air. For a second the horrid thought arises that he has played a wellknown trick, and won the game of life once more; but as he sinks and rushes off, our hearts beat freely again as the tell-tale wheel pays out his needs. It was a strategic movement worthy of success; but, as in other warfare, failing, it involved a quicker probability of defeat-for while the tackle held, we felt that now the chances were

against him. But a fresh, strong salmon of his weight is not to be trifled with; and it was only after several determined rushes and saltatory efforts, which made us tremble for his capture, that he began to tire, and foot by foot he and the boat were cautiously brought together. At last, with a sigh of mingled pleasure, relief, and regret, our first salmon of the Lews was in the meshes of Donuil's landing-net; but not one

second too soon, for as he took the hook away, it fell in two. "17 lb. if he is an ounce," is the verdict, proved by the scales at the Lodge. Small in head, thick in girth, the very pink of condition, his glistening scales gave off such hues of purple, grey, black, green, and silver, that he well deserved John M'Iver's hearty compliment-"A verry bonnie fesh." A "John Scott" was now tried, and with equal luck. "This is indeed the happy fishing-ground of one's youthful dreams," we think, as the afternoon rolls on with varying but most sporting success, resulting in a total of seven splendid fish-the four remaining days of that week yielding five-and-forty more to the single rod.

Sunday was a day of welcome rest to all, and in the afternoon we floated quietly with the tide to pay a visit to the far-famed Druidical remains near Callernish - perhaps the most perfect in our Islands. It was impossible to look at them in their gaunt grim shapes, erecting their solemn and impressive heads with an air of impenetrable silence, and yet repress the futile wish that they could speak and tell some of the dread tales they might unfold; or to control the shudder with which one looked down into the pit, round which the circle runs, and thought of all the human blood poured out, and crying still aloud in the expressive name of the adjacent mound, from which the sorrowing relatives had gazed in piteous, hopeless, helpless grief, "the hill of mourning." From this point, in many directions, are seen other Druidical stones, but none of such imposing appearance or size as these, some of which are said to weigh from eight to ten tons, and stand from 15 to 20 feet out of the ground.

Leave, to be enjoyed, should never be quaffed to the dregs; and on the return, we found ourselves with some hours to spare at Stornoway. This time our drive was at a normal hour, and we scanned the country from the road with a wakeful and more lenient eye, as the morning breeze, hailing straight from Iceland, swept across the heather, and tempered with its crisp freshness to a delightful warmth the ardent sun-rays, which were fast filling with hope the hearts of the peasant farmers, who, by means of giant beds, like those on which asparagus is grown, manage to raise good crops of oats, barley, and potatoes, in spite of almost constant wet. Topping the last hill, some four miles from the end of our journey, we pulled up to take a last fond look of the lochcovered, brown-visaged land we had so quickly learned to love; and then, turning to the east, we drank in, with the silence that comes with feeling deeply, the wondrous beauty of the scene before us. The foreground, grey massive rocks, low tumbling hills of heather, and glistening sheets of water; in the middle distance the Minch, studded with fair islands and flecked with countless herring-boats; while far beyond rose the fantastic shapes and imposing purple masses of Suilbheinn, Ben Mohr, Ben Hee, and others, with here and there a gleaming patch or ridge of snow.

Driving on, at length we pass the model farm and entrance-gates of the late owner of the island, whose wise and kindly liberal expenditure saved much misery, in the famine some thirty years ago, and brought him well-deserved honour. We saw, too, what he had done to foster the growth of trees; but the stunted, weather-beaten aspect of the outer ones shows how hard the struggle