Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 60, No. 372, October 1846

Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 60, No. 372, October 1846
Various

Various

Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 60, No. 372, October 1846

WILD SPORTS AND NATURAL HISTORY OF THE HIGHLANDS.[1 - Wild Sports and Natural History of the Highlands. From the Journals of Charles St John, Esq. Murray. London: 1846.]

This year we have been a defaulter on the Moors. Not that our eye has become more dim, our aim less sure, or our understanding weaker than of yore; but we are no longer subject to the same keen and burning impulses which used periodically to beset us towards the beginning of our departed Augusts, inflaming our destructive organs, and driving us to the heather, as the stag is said to be driven by instinct to the shores of the sea. Somehow or other, we now take things much more coolly. We no longer haunt the shop of Dickson – that most excellent and unassuming of gunmakers – for weeks before the shooting-season, discussing the comparative excellences of cartridge and plain shot, or refitting our battered apparatus with the last ingenuities of Sykes. Our talk is not of pointers or of setters; neither do we think it incumbent upon us to perambulate Princes Street in a shooting-jacket, or with the dissonance of hobnailed shoes. We can even look upon the northern steamers, surcharged with all manner of ammunition, crammed from stem to stern with Cockney tourists and sportsmen, carriages and cars, hampers, havresacks, and hair trunks, steering their way from our noble frith towards the Highlands, without the slightest wish to become one of that gay and gallant crew. Incredible as it may appear, we actually wrote an article upon the twelfth of August last; nor was the calm, even tenor of our thoughts for a moment interrupted by the imaginary whirr of the gor-cock. For the life of us, we cannot recollect what sort of a day it was. To be sure, we were early up and at work – that is, as early as we ever are, somewhere about ten: we wrote on steadily until dinner-time, with no more intermission than was necessary for the discussion of a couple of glasses of Madeira. After a slight and salubrious meal, we again tackled to the foolscap, and by nine o'clock dismissed the printer's devil to his den with a quarter of a ream of manuscript. We then strolled up to our club, where, for the first time, we were reminded of the nature of the anniversary, by the savour of roasted grouse. So, with a kind of melancholy sigh for the impairment of our blunted energies, we sat down to supper, and leisurely explored the pungent pepper about the backbone of the bird of the mountain.

But empty streets, hot sun, and dust like that of the Sahara, are combined nuisances too formidable for the most tranquil or indolent nature. It is not good for any one to be the last man left in town. You become an object of suspicion to the porters – that is, the more superannuated portion of them, for the rest are all gone to carry bags upon the moors – who, seeing you continue from day to day sidling along the deserted streets, begin to entertain strange doubts as to the real probity of your character, or, at all events, as to your absolute sanity. If you are a lawyer, and remain in town throughout August and September, your own conscience will tell you at once that you are nothing short of an arrant sneak. Are there not ten other months in the year throughout which you may cobble condescendences, without emulating the endurance of Chibert, and confining yourself in an oven, to the manifest endangerment of your liver, for the few paltry guineas which may occasionally come tumbling in? Will any agent of sense consider you a better counsel, or a more estimable plodder, because you affect an exaggerated passion for Morrison's Decisions, and refuse to be divorced even for a week from your dalliance with Shaw and Dunlop? Is that unfortunate Lord Ordinary on the Bills to be harassed day and night, deprived of his morning drive, and deranged in his digestive organs, on account of your unhallowed lust for fees? Is your unhappy clerk, whose wife and children have long since been dismissed to cheap bathing-quarters on the coast of Fife, where at this moment they are bobbing up and down among the tangled rocks, skirling as the waves come in, or hunting for diminutive crabs and cavies in the sea-worn pools – is that most oppressed and martyred of all mankind to be kept, by your relentless fiat, or rather wicked obstinacy, from participating in the same sanatory amusements with Bill, and Harry, and Phemie, and the rest of his curly-headed weans? Think you that the complaints of Mrs Screever will not be heard and registered against you in heaven, as, mateless and disconsolate, she cheapens haddocks in the market, or plucks sea-pinks along the cliffs of hoary Anstruther or of Crail? Shame upon you! Recollect, for the sake of others, if not for your own, that you call yourself a gentleman and a Christian. Shut up your house from top to bottom – fee the policeman to watch it – wafer a ticket on the window, directing all parcels to be sent to the grocer with whom you have deposited the key – give poor Girzy a holiday to visit her friends at Carnwath – and be off yourself, as fast as you can, wherever your impulses may lead you, either to the Highlands with rod and gun, or, if you are no sportsman, to Largs, or Ardrossan, or Dunoon, pleasant places all, where you may saunter along the shore undisturbed from morn until dewy eve, hire a boat at a shilling the hour, and purvey your own whitings; or haply, if you are in good luck, take a prominent part in the proceedings of a regatta, and make nautical speeches after dinner to the intense amusement of your audience.

But you say you are a physician. Well, then, cannot you leave your patients to die in peace? It is six months since you were called in to attend that old lady, who has a large jointure and a predisposition to jaundice. You have visited her regularly once a day – sometimes twice – prescribed for her a whole pharmacopeia of drugs – blistered her, bled her, leeched her – curtailed her of wholesome diet, forbidden cordial waters, and denounced the needful cinnamon. Dare you lay your hand on your heart and say that you think her better? Not you. Why not, then, give the poor old woman, who is not only harmless, but an excellent subscriber to several Tract societies, one chance more of a slightly protracted existence? Restore to her her natural food and adventitious comforts. Send her away to Cheltenham or Harrowgate, or some such other vale of Avoca, where, at all events, she may get fresh air, clean lodgings, and lots of mineral water. So shall you escape the pangs of an awakened conscience, and your deathbed be haunted by the thoughts of at least one homicide the less.

What we say to one we say to all. Stockbroker! you are a good fellow in the main, and you never meant to ruin your clients. It was not your fault that they went so largely into Glenmutchkins, and made such unfortunate attempts to bear the Biggleswade Junction. But why should you continue to tempt the poor devils at this flat season of the year, and with a glutted market, into any further purchases of scrip? You know very well, that until November, at the earliest, there is not the most distant prospect of a rise, and you have already pocketed, believe us, a remarkably handsome commission. Do not be in too great a hurry to kill the goose with the golden eggs. A rest for a month or so will make them all the keener for speculation afterwards, and nurse their appetite for premiums. We foresee a stirring winter, if you will but take things quietly in the interim. Assemble your brethren together – shut up the Exchange by common consent during the dog-days – convert your lists into wadding, and let Mammon have a momentary respite. – Writer to the Signet! is it fair to be penning letters, each of which costs your employer three and fourpence, when they are certain to remain unanswered? Do not do it. This is capital time for taking infeftments, and those instruments of sasine may well suffice to plump out the interior of a game-bag. No better witnesses in the world than a shepherd and an illicit distiller; and sweet will be your crowning caulker as you take instruments of earth and stone, peat and divot, and the like, in the hands of Angus and Donald, by the side of the spring, far up in the solitary mountain. Therefore, again we say, be off as speedily as you can to the moors, and leave the Deserted City to sun and dust, and the vigilance of a perspiring Town Council.

Example, they say, is better than precept – we might demur to the doctrine, but we are not in a disputatious humour. For we too are bound, though late, to the land of grouse – indeed we have already accomplished the greater part of our journey, and are writing this article in a pleasant burgh of the west, separated only by an arm of the sea, across which the bright-sailed yachts are skimming, from a long range of heathery hills, whereon we hope, if it pleases fortune, to do some execution on the morrow. Our three pointers, Orleans, Tours, and Bordeaux – so named after the speculation that enabled us to purchase them – are basking in the sun on the little green beneath our window; whilst Scrip, our terrier and constant companion, is perched upon the sill, barking with all his might at a peripatetic miscreant of a minstrel, who for the last half hour has been grinding Gentle Zitella to shreds in his barrel organ. We have tried in vain to move him with coppers dexterously shied so as to hit him if possible on the head, but the nuisance will not abate. We must follow the example of the Covenanters, and put an end to him at the expenditure of a silver shot. "There, our good fellow, is a shilling for you – have the kindness to move on a few doors further; there are some sick folks in this house. At the end of the row you will find a family remarkably addicted to music – the house with the green blinds – you understand us? Thank you!" And in a few moments we hear his infernal instrument, now not unpleasantly remote, doling out the popular air of the Glasgow Chappie, for the edification of the intolerable Gorbalier who poisoned our passage down the Clyde by constituting himself our Cicerone, and explaining the method by which one might discriminate the Railway boats from those of the Castle Company, by the peculiar ochreing of their funnels.

Did we intend to remain here much longer, we should be compelled in self-defence to clear the neighbourhood. This is not so impracticable as at first sight may appear. We have made acquaintance with a very pleasant fellow of a Bauldy – quite a genius in his way – who has a natural talent for the French horn. To him an old key-bugle would be an inestimable treasure, and we doubt not that with a few instructions he would become such a proficient as to serenade the suburb day and night. Nor would our conscience reproach us for having made one human creature supremely happy, even at the cost of the emigration of a few dozen others. But fortunately we have no need to recur to any such experiment. To-morrow we shall enact the part of Macgregor with our foot upon our native heather; and for one evening, wherever the locality, we could not find a more apt or pleasant companion than Mr Charles St John, whose sporting journals are at last published in the Home and Colonial Library.

We make this preliminary statement the more readily, because for divers reasons we had hardly expected to find the work so truly excellent of its kind; and had there been any shortcomings, assuredly we should have been foul of St John. In the first place, we entertained, and do still entertain, the opinion that very few English sportsmen are capable of writing a work which shall treat not only of the Wild Sports, but of the Natural History of the Highlands. They belong to a migratory class, and seldom exchange the comforts of their clubs for the inconveniences of northern rustication, at least before the month of June. Now and then, indeed, you may meet with some of them, whose passion for angling amounts to a mania, by the side of the Tweed or the Shin, long before the mavis has hatched her young. But these are usually elderly grey-coated men, whose whole faculties are bent upon hackles – the patriarchs of a far nobler school than that of Walton – magnificent throwers of the fly – salmonicides of the first water – yet in our humble estimation not very conversant with any other subject under heaven. Their sporting error – rather let us call it misfortune – is that they do not generalise. By the middle of September their occupation for the year is over. Shortly afterwards they assemble, like swallows about to leave our shores, on the banks of the Tweed, which river is permitted by the mercy of the British Parliament to remain open for a short time longer. There they angle on, kill their penultimate and ultimate fish; and finally, at the approach of winter, retreat to warmer quarters, and recapitulate the campaigns of the summer over port of the most generous vintage. These are clearly not the men to indite the Wild Sports and Natural History of the North.

The other section of English sportsmen come later and depart a little earlier. They are the renters of moors, crack sportsmen in every sense of the word, who resort to Ross-shire as regularly as they afterwards emigrate to Melton. Now, as to their slaughtering powers, we entertain not the shadow of a doubt. Steady shots and deadly are they from their youth upwards – trained, it may be, upon level ground, but still unerring in their aim. If not so wiry-sinewed, and sound of wind as the Caledonian, their pluck is undeniable, and their perseverance praiseworthy in the extreme. Show them the birds, and they will bring them to bag – give them a fair chance at a red-deer, and the odds are that next minute he shall be rolling in blood upon the heather. But this, let it be observed, is after all a mere matter of tooling. To be a good shot is only one branch of the finished sportsman's accomplishment, and it enters not at all into the conformation of the naturalist. We would not give a brace of widgeons for the best description ever written of a week's sport in the Highlands, or indeed any where else, provided it contained nothing more than an account of the killed and wounded, some facetious anecdotes regarding the lives of the gillies, and a narrative of the manner in which the author encountered and overcame a hart. Even the adventures of a night in a still will hardly make the book go down. We want an eye accustomed to look to other things beyond the sight of a gun-barrel – we want to know more about the quarry than the mere fact that it was flushed, fired at, and killed. Death can come but once to the black-cock as to the warrior, but are their lives to be accounted as nothing? Ponto we allow to be a beautiful brute – a little too thin-skinned, perhaps, for the moors, and apt, in case of mist, to lapse into a state of ague – yet, notwithstanding, punctual at his points, and cheap at twenty guineas of the current money of the realm. Howbeit we care not for his biography. To us it is matter of the smallest moment from what breed he is descended, by whose gamekeeper he was broken, neither are we covetous as to statistics of the number of his brothers and sisters uterine. It is of course gratifying to know that our southern acquaintance approves of the sport he has met with in a particular district; and that on the twelfth, not only the bags but the ponies were exuberantly loaded with a superfluity of fud and feather. Such intelligence would have been listened to most benignly had it been accompanied by a box of game duly addressed to us at Ambrose's – as it is, we accept the fact without any spasm of extraordinary pleasure.

There are, we allow, some sporting tours from which we have derived both profit and gratification; but the locality of these is usually remote and unexplored. We like to hear of salmon-fishing in the Naamsen, and of forty and fifty pounders captured in its brimful rapids – of bear-skalls in Sweden, buffalo-hunting in the prairies, or the chase of the majestic lion in Caffreland or Morocco. Such narratives have the charm of novelty; and if, now and then, they border a little upon the marvellous or miraculous, we do our best to summon up faith sufficient to bolt them all. We by no means objected to Monsieur Violet's account of the estampades in California, or of the snapping turtles in the cane-brakes of the Red River. He was, at all events, graphic in his descriptions; and the zoology to which he introduced us, if not genuine, was of a gigantic and original kind. In fact, no sort of voyage or travel is readable unless it be strewn thickly with incident and adventure, and these of a startling character. Nobody cares now-a-days about meteorological observations, or dates, or distances, or names of places; we have been tired with these things from the days of Dampier downwards. Nor need any navigator hope to draw the public attention to his facts unless he possesses besides a deal of the talent of the novelist. If incident does not lie in his path, he must go out of his way to seek it – if even then it should not appear, there is an absolute necessity for inventing it. What a book of travels in Central Africa could we not write, if any one would be kind enough to furnish us with a mere outline of the route, and the authentic soundings of the Niger!

Scotland, however, is tolerably well known to the educated people of the sister country, and her productions have ceased to be a marvel. Grouse are common as howtowdies in the London market; and even red-deer venison, if asked for, may be had for a price. There is no great mystery in the staple commodity of our sports. Something, it is true, may still be said with effect regarding deer-stalking – a branch of the art venatory which few have the opportunity to study, and of those few a small fraction only can attain to a high degree. Grouse are to be found on every hill, black-game in almost every correi; few are the woods, at the present day, unhaunted by the roe; but the red-deer – the stag of ten – he of the branches and the tines – is, in most parts of the country save in the great forests, a casual and a wandering visitor; and many a summer's day you may clamber over cairn and crag, inspect every scaur and glen, and sweep the horizon around with your telescope, without discovering the waving of an antler, or the impress of a transitory footprint. But this subject is soon exhausted. Scrope has done ample justice to it, and left but a small field untrodden to any literary successor. The Penny Magazine, if we mistake not, disposed several years ago of otter-hunting, and the chase of the fox as practised in the rocky regions; and finally, Colquhoun – he of the Moor and the Loch – with more practical knowledge and acute observation than any of his predecessors, reduced Highland sporting to a science, and became the Encyclopedist of the feræ naturæ of the hills. With these authorities already before us, it was not unnatural that we should have entertained doubts as to the capabilities of any new writer, not native nor to the custom born.

Neither did the puff preliminary, which heralded the appearance of this volume, prepossess us strongly in its favour. What mattered it to the sensible reader whether or no "the attention of the public has already been called to this journal by the Quarterly Review of December 1845?" The book was not published, had not an existence, until seven or eight months after that article – a reasonably indifferent one, by the way – was penned; and yet we are asked to take that sort of pre-Adamite notice as a verdict in its favour! Now, we object altogether to this species of side-winded commendation, this reviewing, or noticing, or extracting from manuscripts before publication, more especially in the pages of a great and influential Review. It is always injudicious, because it looks like the work of a coterie. In the present case it was doubly unwise, because this volume really required no adventitious aid whatever, and certainly no artifice, to recommend it to the public favour.

Whilst, however, we consider it our duty to say thus much, let it not be supposed that we are detracting from the merits of the extracts contained in that article of the Quarterly. On the contrary, they impressed us at the time with a high idea of the graphic power of the writer, and presented an agreeable contrast to the general prolixity of the paper. It is even possible that we are inclined to underrate the efforts of the critic on account of his having forestalled us by printing The Muckle Hart of Benmore– a chapter which we should otherwise have certainly enshrined within the columns of Maga. – At all events it is now full time that we should address ourselves more seriously to the contents of the volume.

Mr St John, we are delighted to observe, is not a sportsman belonging to either class which we have above attempted to describe. He is not the man whose exploits will be selected to swell the lists of slaughtered game in the pages of the provincial newspapers; for he has the eye and the heart of a naturalist, and, as he tells us himself, after a pleasant description of the wild animals which he has succeeded in domesticating – "though naturally all men are carnivorous, and, therefore, animals of prey, and inclined by nature to hunt and destroy other creatures, and, although I share in this our natural instinct to a great extent, I have far more pleasure in seeing these different animals enjoying themselves about me, and in observing their different habits, than I have in hunting down and destroying them."

Most devoutly do we wish that there were many more sportsmen of the same stamp! For ourselves, we confess to an organ of destructiveness not of the minimum degree. We never pass a pool, and hear the sullen plunge of the salmon, without a bitter imprecation upon our evil destiny if we chance to have forgotten our rod; and a covey rising around us, when unarmed, is a plea for suicide. But this feeling, as Mr St John very properly expresses it, is mere natural instinct – part of our original Adam, which it is utterly impossible to subdue. But give us rod or gun. Let us rise and strike some three or four fresh-run fish, at intervals of half-an-hour – let us play, land, and deposit them on the bank, in all the glory of their glittering scales, and it is a hundred to one if we shall be tempted to try another cast, although the cruives are open, the water in rarest trim, and several hours must elapse ere the advent of the cock-a-leekie. In like manner, we prefer a moor where the game is sparse and wild, to one from which the birds are rising at every twenty yards; nor care we ever to slaughter more than may suffice for our own wants and those of our immediate friends. And why should we? There is something not only despicable, but, in our opinion, absolutely brutal, in the accounts which we sometimes read of wholesale massacres committed on the moors, in sheer wanton lust for blood. Fancy a great hulking Saxon, attended by some half-dozen gamekeepers, with a larger retinue of gillies, sallying forth at early morning upon ground where the grouse are lying as thick and tame as chickens in a poultry-yard – loosing four or five dogs at a time, each of which has found his bird or his covey before he has been freed two minutes from the couples – marching up in succession to each stationary quadruped – kicking up the unfortunate pouts, scarce half-grown, from the heather before his feet – banging right and left into the middle of them, and – for the butcher shoots well – bringing down one, and sometimes two, at each discharge. The red-whiskered keeper behind him, who narrowly escaped transportation, a few years ago, for a bloody and ferocious assault, hands him another gun, ready-loaded; and so on he goes, for hour after hour, depopulating God's creatures, of every species, without mercy, until his shoulder is blue with the recoil, and his brow black as Cain's, with the stain of the powder left, as he wipes away the sweat with his stiff and discoloured hand. At evening, the pyramid is counted, and lo, there are two hundred brace!

Is this sporting, or is it murder? Not the first certainly, unless the term can be appropriately applied to the hideous work of the shambles. Indeed, between knocking down stots or grouse in this wholesale manner, we can see very little distinction; except that, in the one case, there is more exertion of the muscles, and in the other a clearer atmosphere to nerve the operator to his task. Murder is a strong term, so we shall not venture to apply it; but cruelty is a word which we may use without compunction; and from that charge, at least, it is impossible for the glutton of the moors to go free.

Great humanity and utter absence of wantonness in the prosecution of his sport, is a most pleasing characteristic of Mr St John. He well understands the meaning of Wordsworth's noble maxim, —

"Never to blend our pleasure or our pride
With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels;"

and can act upon it without cant, without cruelty, and, above all, without hypocrisy. And truly, when we consider where he has been located for the last few years, in a district which offers a greater variety of game to the sportsman than any other in Great Britain, his moderation becomes matter of legitimate praise. Here is his own description of the locality wherein he has pitched his tent: —

"I have lived for several years in the northern counties of Scotland, and during the last four or five in the province of Moray, a part of the country peculiarly adapted for collecting facts in Natural History, and for becoming intimate with the habits of many of our British wild birds and quadrupeds. Having been in the habit of keeping an irregular kind of journal, and of making notes of any incidents which have fallen under my observation connected with the zoology of the country, I have now endeavoured, by dint of cutting and pruning those rough sketches, to put them into a shape calculated to amuse, and perhaps, in some slight degree, to instruct some of my fellow-lovers of Nature. From my earliest childhood I have been more addicted to the investigation of the habits and manners of every kind of living animal than to any more useful avocation, and have in consequence made myself tolerably well acquainted with the domestic economy of most of our British feræ naturæ, from the field-mouse and wheatear, which I stalked and trapped in the plains and downs of Wiltshire during my boyhood, to the red-deer and eagle, whose territory I have invaded in later years on the mountains of Scotland. My present abode in Morayshire is surrounded by as great a variety of beautiful scenery as can be found in any district in Britain; and no part of the country can produce a greater variety of objects of interest either to the naturalist or to the lover of the picturesque. The rapid and glorious Findhorn, the very perfection of a Highland river, here passes through one of the most fertile plains in Scotland, or indeed in the world; and though a few miles higher up it rages through the wildest and most rugged rocks, and through the romantic and shaded glens of the forests of Darnaway and Altyre, the stream, as if exhausted, empties itself peaceably and quietly into the Bay of Findhorn – a salt-water loch of some four or five miles in length, entirely shut out by different points of land from the storms which are so frequent in the Moray Frith, of which it forms a kind of creek. At low-water this bay becomes an extent of wet sand, with the river Findhorn and one or two smaller streams winding through it, till they meet in the deeper part of the basin near the town of Findhorn, where there is always a considerable depth of water, and a harbour for shipping.

"From its sheltered situation and the quantity of food left on the sands at low-water, the Bay of Findhorn is always a great resort of wild-fowl of all kinds, from the swan to the teal, and also of innumerable waders of every species; while occasionally a seal ventures into the mouth of the river in pursuit of salmon. The bay is separated from the main water of the Frith by that most extraordinary and peculiar range of country called the Sandhills of Moray – a long, low range of hills formed of the purest sand, with scarcely any herbage, excepting here and there patches of bent or broom, which are inhabited by hares, rabbits, and foxes. At the extreme point of this range is a farm of forty or fifty acres of arable land, where the tenant endeavours to grow a scanty crop of grain and turnips, in spite of the rabbits and the drifting sands. From the inland side of the bay stretch the fertile plains of Moray, extending from the Findhorn to near Elgin in a continuous flat of the richest soil, and comprising districts of the very best partridge-shooting that can be found in Scotland, while the streams and swamps that intersect it afford a constant supply of wild-fowl. As we advance inland we are sheltered by the wide-extending woods of Altyre, abounding with roe and game; and beyond these woods again is a very extensive range of a most excellent grouse-shooting country, reaching for many miles over a succession of moderately-sized hills which reach as far as the Spey.

"On the west of the Findhorn is a country beautifully dotted with woods, principally of oak and birch, and intersected by a dark, winding burn, full of fine trout, and the constant haunt of the otter. Between this part of the country and the sea-coast is a continuation of the Sandhills, interspersed with lakes, swamps, and tracts of fir-wood and heather. On the whole, I do not know so varied or interesting a district in Great Britain, or one so well adapted to the amusement and instruction of a naturalist or sportsman. In the space of a morning's walk you may be either in the most fertile or the most barren spot of the country. In my own garden every kind of wall-fruit ripens to perfection, and yet at the distance of only two hours' walk you may either be in the midst of heather and grouse, or in the sandy deserts beyond the bay, where one wonders how even the rabbits can find their living.

"I hope that my readers will be indulgent enough to make allowances for the unfinished style of these sketches, and the copious use of the first person singular, which I have found it impossible to avoid whilst describing the adventures which I have met with in this wild country, either when toiling up the rocky heights of our most lofty mountains, or cruising in a boat along the shores, where rocks and caves give a chance of finding sea-fowl and otters; at one time wandering over the desert sand-hills of Moray, where, on windy days, the light particles of drifting sand, driven like snow along the surface of the ground, are perpetually changing the outline and appearance of the district; at another, among the swamps, in pursuit of wild-ducks, or attacking fish in the rivers, or the grouse on the heather.

"For a naturalist, whether he be a scientific dissector and preserver of birds, or simply a lover and observer of the habits and customs of the different feræ naturæ, large and small, this district is a very desirable location, as there are very few birds or quadrupeds to be found in any part of Great Britain who do not visit us during the course of the year, or, at any rate, are to be met with in a few hours' drive. The bays and rivers attract all the migratory water-fowl, while the hills, woods, and corn-lands afford shelter and food to all the native wild birds and beasts. The vicinity, too, of the coast to the wild western countries of Europe is the cause of our being often visited by birds which are not strictly natives, nor regular visitors, but are driven by continued east winds from the fastnesses of the Swedish and Norwegian forests and mountains.

"To the collector of stuffed birds this county affords a greater variety of specimens than any other district in the kingdom; whilst the excellence of the climate and the variety of scenery make it inferior to none as a residence for the unoccupied person or the sportsman.

"Having thus described that part of the globe which at present is my resting-place, I may as well add a few lines to enable my reader to become acquainted with myself, and that part of my belongings which will come into question in my descriptions of sporting, &c. To begin with myself, I am one of the unproductive class of the genus homo, who, having passed a few years amidst the active turmoil of cities, and in places where people do most delight to congregate, have at last settled down to live a busy kind of idle life. Communing much with the wild birds and beasts of our country, a hardy constitution and much leisure have enabled me to visit them in their own haunts, and to follow my sporting propensities without fear of the penalties which are apt to follow a careless exposure of one's-self to cold and heat, at all hours of night and day. Though by habit and repute a being strongly endowed with the organ of destructiveness, I take equal delight in collecting round me all living animals, and watching their habits and instincts; my abode is, in short, a miniature menagerie. My dogs learn to respect the persons of domesticated wild animals of all kinds, and my pointers live in amity with tame partridges and pheasants; my retrievers lounge about amidst my wild-fowl, and my terriers and beagles strike up friendship with the animals of different kinds, whose capture they have assisted in, and with whose relatives they are ready to wage war to the death. A common and well-kept truce exists with one and all. My boys, who are of the most bird-nesting age (eight and nine years old), instead of disturbing the numberless birds who breed in the garden and shrubberies, in full confidence of protection and immunity from all danger of gun or snare, strike up an acquaintance with every family of chaffinches or blackbirds who breed in the place, visiting every nest, and watching over the eggs and young with a most parental care."

Why, this is the very Eden of a sportsman! Flesh, fowl, and fish of every description in abundance, and such endless variety, that no month of the year can pass over without affording its quota of fair and legitimate recreation. But to a man of Mr St John's accomplishment and observant habits, the mere prey is a matter of far less moment than the insight which such a locality affords, into the habits and instincts of the creatures which either permanently inhabit or casually visit our shores. His journal is far more than a sportsman's book. It contains shrewd and minute observations on the whole of our northern fauna – the results of many a lonely but happy day spent in the woods, the glens, the sand-tracts, by river and on sea. His range is wider than that which has been taken either by White of Selborne, or by Waterton; and we are certain that he will hold it to be no mean compliment when we say, that in our unbiased opinion, he is not surpassed by either of them in fidelity, and in point of picturesqueness of description, is even the superior of both. The truth is, that Mr St John would have made a first-rate trapper. We should not have the slightest objections to lose ourselves in his company for several weeks in the prairies of North America; being satisfied that we should return with a better cargo of beaver-skins and peltry than ever fell to the lot of two adventurers in the service of the Company of Hudson's Bay.

It is totally impossible to follow our author through any thing like his range of subjects, extending from the hart to the seal and otter, from the eagle and wild swan to the ouzel. One or two specimens we shall give, in order that you, our dear and sporting reader, may judge whether these encomiums of ours are exaggerated or misplaced. We are, so say our enemies, but little given to laudation, and far too ready when occasion offers, and sometimes when it does not, to clutch hastily at the knout. You, who know us better, and whom indeed we have partially trained up in the wicked ways of criticism, must long ago have been aware, that if we err at all, it is upon the safer side. But be that as it may, you will not, we are sure, refuse to join with us in admiring the beauty of the following description; – it is of the heronry on the Findhorn – a river of peculiar beauty, even in this land of lake, of mountain, and of flood.

"I observe that the herons in the heronry on the Findhorn are now busily employed in sitting on their eggs – the heron being one of the first birds to commence breeding in this country. A more curious and interesting sight than the Findhorn heronry I do not know: from the top of the high rocks on the east side of the river you look down into every nest – the herons breeding on the opposite side of the river, which is here very narrow. The cliffs and rocks are studded with splendid pines and larch, and fringed with all the more lowly but not less beautiful underwood which abounds in this country. Conspicuous amongst these are the bird-cherry and mountain-ash, the holly, and the wild rose; while the golden blossoms of furze and broom enliven every crevice and corner in the rock. Opposite to you is a wood of larch and oak, on the latter of which trees are crowded a vast number of the nests of the heron. The foliage and small branches of the oaks that they breed on seem entirely destroyed, leaving nothing but the naked arms and branches of the trees on which the nests are placed. The same nests, slightly repaired, are used year after year. Looking down at them from the high banks of the Altyre side of the river, you can see directly into their nests, and can become acquainted with the whole of their domestic economy. You can plainly see the green eggs, and also the young herons, who fearlessly, and conscious of the security they are left in, are constantly passing backwards and forwards, and alighting on the topmost branches of the larch or oak trees; whilst the still younger birds sit bolt upright in the nest, snapping their beaks together with a curious sound. Occasionally a grave-looking heron is seen balancing himself by some incomprehensible feat of gymnastics on the very topmost twig of a larch-tree, where he swings about in an unsteady manner, quite unbecoming so sage-looking a bird. Occasionally a thievish jackdaw dashes out from the cliffs opposite the heronry, and flies straight into some unguarded nest, seizes one of the large green eggs, and flies back to his own side of the river, the rightful owner of the eggs pursuing the active little robber with loud cries and the most awkward attempts at catching him.

"The heron is a noble and picturesque-looking bird, as she sails quietly through the air with outstretched wings and slow flight; but nothing is more ridiculous and undignified than her appearance as she vainly chases the jackdaw or hooded crow who is carrying off her egg, and darting rapidly round the angles and corners of the rocks. Now and then every heron raises its head and looks on the alert as the peregrine falcon, with rapid and direct flight, passes their crowded dominion; but intent on his own nest, built on the rock some little way further on, the hawk takes no notice of his long-legged neighbours, who soon settle down again into their attitudes of rest. The kestrel-hawk frequents the same part of the river, and lives in amity with the wood-pigeons that breed in every cluster of ivy which clings to the rocks. Even that bold and fearless enemy of all the pigeon race, the sparrowhawk, frequently has her nest within a few yards of the wood-pigeon; and you see these birds (at all other seasons such deadly enemies) passing each other in their way to and fro from their respective nests in perfect peace and amity. It has seemed to me that the sparrowhawk and wood-pigeon during the breeding season frequently enter into a mutual compact against the crows and jackdaws, who are constantly on the look-out for the eggs of all other birds. The hawk appears to depend on the vigilance of the wood-pigeon to warn him of the approach of these marauders; and then the brave little warrior sallies out, and is not satisfied till he has driven the crow to a safe distance from the nests of himself and his more peaceable ally. At least in no other way can I account for these two birds so very frequently breeding not only in the same range of rock, but within two or three yards of each other."

Now for the wild swan. You will observe that it is now well on in October, and that the weather is peculiarly cold. There is snow already lying on the tops of the nearer hills – the further mountains have assumed a coat of white, which, with additions, will last them until the beginning of next summer; and those long black streaks which rise upwards, and appear to us at this distance so narrow, are, in reality, the great ravines in which two months ago we were cautiously stalking the deer. The bay is now crowded with every kind of aquatic fowl. Day after day strange visitants have been arriving from the north; and at nightfall, you may hear them quacking and screaming and gabbling for many miles along the shore. Every moonlight night the woodcock and snipe are dropping into the thickets, panting and exhausted by their flight from rugged Norway, a voyage during which they can find no resting-place for the sole of their foot. In stormy weather the light-houses are beset with flocks of birds, who, their reckoning lost, are attracted by the blaze of the beacon, dash wildly towards it, as to some place of refuge, and perish from the violence of the shock. As yet, however, all is calm; and lo, in the moonlight, a great flight of birds stooping down towards the bay! – noiselessly at first, but presently, as they begin to sweep lower, trumpeting and calling to each other; and then, with a mighty rustling of their pinions, and a dash as of a vessel launched into the waters, the white wild-swans settle down into the centre of the glittering bay! To your tents, ye sportsmen! for ball and cartridge; and now circumvent them if you can.

"My old garde-chasse insisted on my starting early this morning, nolens volens, to certain lochs six or seven miles off, in order, as he termed it, to take our 'satisfaction' of the swans. I must say that it was a matter of very small satisfaction to me, the tramping off in a sleety, rainy morning, through a most forlorn and hopeless-looking country, for the chance, and that a bad one, of killing a wild swan or two. However, after a weary walk, we arrived at these desolate-looking lochs: they consist of three pieces of water, the largest about three miles in length and one in width; the other two, which communicate with the largest, are much smaller and narrower, indeed scarcely two gunshots in width; for miles around them, the country is flat, and intersected with a mixture of swamp and sandy hillocks. In one direction the sea is only half a mile from the lochs, and in calm winter weather the wild-fowl pass the daytime on the salt water, coming inland in the evenings to feed. As soon as we were within sight of the lochs we saw the swans on one of the smaller pieces of water, some standing high and dry on the grassy islands, trimming their feathers after their long journey, and others feeding on the grass and weeds at the bottom of the loch, which in some parts was shallow enough to allow of their pulling up the plants which they feed on as they swam about; while numbers of wild-ducks of different kinds, particularly widgeons, swarmed round them and often snatched the pieces of grass from the swans as soon as they had brought them to the surface, to the great annoyance of the noble birds, who endeavoured in vain to drive away these more active little depredators, who seemed determined to profit by their labours. Our next step was to drive the swans away from the loch they were on; it seemed a curious way of getting a shot, but as the old man seemed confident of the success of his plan, I very submissively acted according to his orders. As soon as we moved them, they all made straight for the sea. 'This won't do,' was my remark, 'Yes, it will, though; they'll no stop there long to-day with this great wind, but will all be back before the clock chaps two.' 'Faith, I should like to see any building that could contain a clock, and where we might take shelter,' was my inward cogitation. The old man, however, having delivered this prophecy, set to work making a small ambuscade by the edge of the loch which the birds had just left, and pointed it out to me as my place of refuge from one o'clock to the hour when the birds would arrive.

"In the mean time we moved about in order to keep ourselves warm, as a more wintry day never disgraced the month of October. In less than half an hour we heard the signal cries of the swans, and soon saw them in a long undulating line fly over the low sand-hills which divided the sea from the largest loch, where they alighted. My commander for the time being, then explained to me, that the water in this loch was every where too deep for the swans to reach the bottom even with their long necks, in order to pull up the weeds on which they fed, and that at their feeding-time, that is about two o'clock, they would, without doubt, fly over to the smaller lochs, and probably to the same one from which we had originally disturbed them. I was accordingly placed in my ambuscade, leaving the keeper at some distance, to help me as opportunity offered – a cold comfortless time of it we (i. e. my retriever and myself) had. About two o'clock, however, I heard the swans rise from the upper loch, and in a few moments they all passed high over my head, and after taking a short survey of our loch (luckily without seeing me), they alighted at the end of it furthest from the place where I was ensconced, and quite out of shot, and they seemed more inclined to move away from me than come towards me. It was very curious to watch these wild birds as they swam about, quite unconscious of danger, and looking like so many domestic fowls. Now came the able generalship of my keeper, who seeing that they were inclined to feed at the other end of the loch, began to drive them towards me, at the same time taking great care not to alarm them enough to make them take flight. This he did by appearing at a long distance off, and moving about without approaching the birds, but as if he was pulling grass or engaged in some other piece of labour. When the birds first saw him, they all collected in a cluster, and giving a general low cry of alarm, appeared ready to take flight; this was the ticklish moment, but soon, outwitted by his manœuvres, they dispersed again, and busied themselves in feeding. I observed that frequently all their heads were under the water at once, excepting one – but invariably one bird kept his head and neck perfectly erect, and carefully watched on every side to prevent their being taken by surprise; when he wanted to feed, he touched any passer-by, who immediately relieved him in his guard, and he in his turn called on some other swan to take his place as sentinel.

"After watching some little time, and closely watching the birds in all their graceful movements, sometimes having a swan within half a shot of me, but never getting two or three together, I thought of some of my assistant's instruction which he had given me en route in the morning, and I imitated, as well as I could, the bark of a dog: immediately all the swans collected in a body, and looked round to see where the sound came from. I was not above forty yards from them, so, gently raising myself on my elbow, I pulled the trigger, aiming at a forest of necks. To my dismay, the gun did not go off, the wet or something else having spoilt the cap. The birds were slow in rising, so without pulling the other trigger, I put on another cap, and standing up, fired right and left at two of the largest swans as they rose from the loch. The cartridge told well on one, who fell dead into the water; the other flew off after the rest of the flock, but presently turned back, and after making two or three graceful sweeps over the body of his companion, fell headlong, perfectly dead, almost upon her body. The rest of the birds, after flying a short distance away, also returned, and flew for a minute or two in a confused flock over the two dead swans, uttering their bugle-like and harmonious cries; but finding that they were not joined by their companions, presently fell into their usual single rank, and went undulating off towards the sea, where I heard them for a long time trumpeting and calling.

"Handsome as he is, the wild swan is certainly not so graceful on the water as a tame one. He has not the same proud and elegant arch of the neck, nor does he put up his wings while swimming, like two snow-white sails. On the land a wild swan when winged makes such good way, that if he gets much start it requires good running, to overtake him."

Confound that Regatta! What on earth had we to do on board that yacht, racing against the Meteor, unconquered winger of the western seas? Two days ago we could have sworn that no possible temptation could divorce us from our unfinished article; and yet here we are with unsullied pen, under imminent danger of bartering our reputation and plighted faith to Ebony, for some undescribable nautical evolutions, a sack race, and the skeleton of a ball! After all, it must be confessed that we never spent two more pleasant days. Bright eyes, grouse-pie, and the joyousness of happy youth, were all combined together; and if, with a fair breeze and a sunny sky, there can be fun in a smack or a steamer, how is it possible with such company to be dull on board of the prettiest craft that ever cleaved her way, like a wild swan, up the windings of a Highland loch? But we must make up for lost time. As we live, there are Donald and Ian with the boat at the rocks! and we now remember with a shudder that we trysted them for this morning to convey us across to the Moors! Here is a pretty business! Let us see – the month is rapidly on the wane – we have hardly, in sporting phrase, broken the back of this the leading article. Shall we give up the moors, and celebrate this day as another Eve of St John? There is a light mist lying on the opposite hill, but in an hour or two it will be drawn up like a curtain by the sunbeams, and then every bush of heather will be sparkling with dewdrops, far brighter than a carcanet of diamonds. What a fine elasticity and freshness there is in the morning air! A hundred to one the grouse will sit like stones. Donald, my man, are there many birds on the hill? Plenty, did you say, and a fair sprinkling of black-cock? This breeze will carry us over in fifty minutes – will it? That settles the question. Off with your caulker, and take down the dogs to the boat. We shall be with you in the snapping of a copper-cap.

This article, if finished at all, must be written with the keelavine pen on the backs of old letters – whereof, thank heaven! we have scores unanswered – by fits and snatches, as we repose from our labours on the greensward; so we shall even take up our gun, and trust for inspiration to the noble scenery around us. Is every thing in? Well, then, push off, and for a time let us get rid of care.

What sort of fishing have they had at the salmon-nets, Ian? Very bad, for they're sair fashed wi' the sealghs. In that case it may be advisable to drop a ball into our dexter barrel, in case one of these oleaginous depredators should show his head above water. We have not had a tussle with a phoca since, some ten years ago, we surprised one basking on the sands of the bay of Cromarty. No, Donald, we did not kill him. We and a dear friend, now in New Zealand, who was with us, were armed with no better weapon than our fishing-rods, and the sealgh, after standing two or three thumps with tolerable philosophy, fairly turned upon us, and exhibited such tusks that we were glad to let him make his way without further molestation to the water. The seal is indeed a greedy fellow, and ten times worse than his fresh-water cousin the otter, who, it seems, is considered by the poor people in the north country as rather a benefactor than otherwise. The latter is a dainty epicure – a gourmand who despises to take more than one steak from the sappy shoulder of the salmon; and he has usually the benevolence to leave the fish, little the worse for his company, on some scarp or ledge of rock, where it can be picked up and converted into savoury kipper. He is, moreover, a sly and timid creature, without the impudence of the seal, who will think nothing of swimming into the nets, and actually taking out the salmon before the eyes of the fishermen. Strong must be the twine that would hold an entangled seal. An aquatic Samson, he snaps the meshes like thread, and laughs at the discomfiture of the tacksman, who is dancing like a demoniac on the shore; and no wonder, for nets are expensive, and the rent in that one is wide enough to admit a bullock.

Mr St John – a capital sportsman, Donald – has had many an adventure with the seals; and I shall read you what he says about them, in a clever little book which he has published – What the deuce! We surely have not been ass enough to forget the volume! No – here it is at the bottom of our pocket, concealed and covered by the powder-flask: —

"Sometimes at high-water, and when the river is swollen, a seal comes in pursuit of salmon into the Findhorn, notwithstanding the smallness of the stream and its rapidity. I was one day, in November, looking for wild-ducks near the river, when I was called to by a man who was at work near the water, and who told me that some 'muckle beast' was playing most extraordinary tricks in the river. He could not tell me what beast it was, but only that it was something 'no that canny.' After waiting a short time, the riddle was solved by the appearance of a good-sized seal, into whose head I instantly sent a cartridge, having no balls with me. The seal immediately plunged and splashed about in the water at a most furious rate, and then began swimming round and round in a circle, upon which I gave him the other barrel, also loaded with one of Eley's cartridges, which quite settled the business, and he floated rapidly away down the stream. I sent my retriever after him, but the dog, being very young and not come to his full strength, was baffled by the weight of the animal and the strength of the current, and could not land him; indeed, he was very near getting drowned himself, in consequence of his attempts to bring in the seal, who was still struggling. I called the dog away, and the seal immediately sank. The next day I found him dead on the shore of the bay, with (as the man who skinned him expressed himself) 'twenty-three pellets of large hail in his craig.'

"Another day, in the month of July, when shooting rabbits on the sand-hills, a messenger came from the fishermen at the stake-nets, asking me to come in that direction, as the 'muckle sealgh' was swimming about, waiting for the fish to be caught in the nets, in order to commence his devastation.

"I accordingly went to them, and having taken my observations of the locality and the most feasible points of attack, I got the men to row me out to the end of the stake-net, where there was a kind of platform of netting, on which I stretched myself, with a bullet in one barrel and a cartridge in the other. I then directed the men to row the boat away, as if they had left the nets. They had scarcely gone three hundred yards from the place when I saw the seal, who had been floating, apparently unconcerned, at some distance, swim quietly and fearlessly up to the net. I had made a kind of breastwork of old netting before me, which quite concealed me on the side from which he came. He approached the net, and began examining it leisurely and carefully to see if any fish were in it; sometimes he was under and sometimes above the water. I was much struck by his activity while underneath, where I could most plainly see him, particularly as he twice dived almost below my station, and the water was clear and smooth as glass.

"I could not get a good shot at him for some time; at last, however, he put up his head at about fifteen or twenty yards' distance from me; and while he was intent on watching the boat, which was hovering about waiting to see the result of my plan of attack, I fired at him, sending the ball through his brain. He instantly sank without a struggle, and a perfect torrent of blood came up, making the water red for some feet round the spot where he lay stretched out at the bottom. The men immediately rowed up, and taking me into the boat, we managed to bring him up with a boat-hook to the surface of the water, and then, as he was too heavy to lift into the boat (his weight being 378 lbs.) we put a rope round his flippers, and towed him ashore. A seal of this size is worth some money, as, independently of the value of his skin, the blubber (which lies under the skin, like that of a whale) produces a large quantity of excellent oil. This seal had been for several years the dread of the fishermen at the stake-nets, and the head man at the place was profuse in his thanks for the destruction of a beast upon whom he had expended a most amazing quantity of lead. He assured me that L.100 would not repay the damage the animal had done. Scarcely any two seals are exactly of the same colour or marked quite alike; and seals, frequenting a particular part of the coast, become easily known and distinguished from each other."

But what is Scrip youffing at from the bow? A seal? No, it is a shoal of porpoises. There they go with their great black fins above the water in pursuit of the herring, which ought to be very plenty on this coast. Yonder, where the gulls are screaming and diving, with here and there a solan goose and a cormorant in the midst of the flock, must be a patch of the smaller fry. The water is absolutely boiling as the quick-eyed creatures dart down upon their prey; and though, on an ordinary day, you will hardly see a single seagull in this part of the loch, for the shores are neither steep nor rocky, yet there they are in myriads, attracted to the spot by that unerring and inexplicable instinct which seems to guide all wild animals to their booty, and that from distances where neither sight nor scent could possibly avail them. This peculiarity has not escaped the observant eye of our author.

"How curiously quick is the instinct of birds in finding out their food. Where peas or other favourite grain is sown, wood pigeons and tame pigeons immediately congregate. It is not easy to ascertain from whence the former come, but the house pigeons have often been known to arrive in numbers on a new sown field the very morning after the grain is laid down, although no pigeon-house, from which they could come, exists within several miles of the place.

"Put down a handful or two of unthrashed oat-straw in almost any situation near the sea-coast, where there are wild-ducks, and they are sure to find it out the first or second night after it has been left there.