in a thunder of foam and ruin. In ordinary cases, after two days of rain, the stream will rise twenty or thirty feet -it has risen nearly ten fathoms in its rocky gulf; and once upon this occasion it mounted fifteen feet in a quarter of an hour. When the dawn broke, it appeared sweeping through the trees, which the evening before hung fifty feet above its brinka black roaring tempest loaded with ruins and debris, from which were seen to rise at times the white skeletons of trees peeled of their bark, beams and couples of houses-a cart-a door-a cradle, hurrying and tilting through the foam and spray, like the scattered floatsome' of a wreck.

"It may be judged how far it was convenient in winter to hunt a forest separated by such a boundary, of which the nearest certain passage was by a bridge two miles to the west, with frequently the view of hunting three miles to the east. Often we have gone out in a clear sapphire morning, when there was scarce a ripple on the pools, and the water on the ford was not over our 'glunachan,' and when we returned at evening, and approached through the dark veil of pines which descended to the river, have heard a roar as if the world was rolling together down the black trough before us, and as we came out on the bank, found a furious tempest of water, tumbling, and plunging, and leaping, over stock and rock twenty feet upon the clatach, where we had left it whimpering among the pebbles in the morning; while, in the far, deep, birch-embowered channel, where the stream was then so still and placid that you could only guess its course by the bright glistening eye which here and there blinked between the trees and stones, now it came yelling, and skirling, and clamouring down the rocks and falls, as if all the air was full of gibbering, babbling, laughing demons, who were muttering, and yammering, and prophesying, and hooting, at what you were going to do, if you attempted to cross.'

We pray you at your leisure to read on, and you will presently see what peril our authors underwent at the fearful fords of the Findhorn. Once or twice in our life we have been in similar jeopardy, and we can testify with unction to the singular sensations which beset a man in the midst of a roaring river, when the rapids are shooting away below, and the boulder-stones rolling beneath his feet. We pass over some perilous instances of adventure, which at

VOL. LXIV.-NO. CCCXCIII.

length became so frequent as to lead to the construction of the hut.

"Such continually and unexpectedly were the ferries of the Findhorn, and many such escapes we had, in daylight and in darkness. Twice I have been swamped, often nearly upset, and more than once carried off my legs in the fords; and I say it with humility, and always under the mercy of heaven-that I owed rescue either to actual swimming, or to the confidence inspired by that power when struggling with the strong and terrible enemy."

"This continual exposure to battle and disappointment, however, became at length too vexatious an abridgment of sport and certainty; and as I wouldand often-have made my bed under a fir tree rather than go round by the bridge of Daltullich, I resolved upon another alternative-to build in the forest a bothan an t-sealgair,' or 'hunter's hut,' where we might lodge for the night when it was impossible to cross the

water.

"There is a high and beautiful craig at the crook of the river near the Little Eas," -a precipice eighty feet in height, and then like a vast stone helmet crowned with a feathery plume of wood, which nodded over its brow. From its top you might drop a bullet into the pool below, but on the south side there is an accessible woody bank, down which, by planting your heels firmly in the soil and among the roots of the trees, there is a descent to a deep but smooth and sandy ford. Upon the summit of the rock there is, or there was-my blessing upon it !a thick and beautiful bird-cherry, which hung over the craig, and whose pendant branches, taking root on the edge of the steep, shot up again like the banana, and formed a natural arbour and close trellis along the margin of the precipice. Behind its little gallery, there is a mighty holly, under which the snow rarely lays in winter, or the rain drops in summer. Beneath the shelter of this tree, and within the bank at its foot, I dug a little cell, large enough to hold two beds, a bench, a hearth, a table, and a 'kistie.' The sides were lined with deals well caulked with moss, and the roof was constructed in the same manner, but covered with a tarpauling,which, lying in the slope of the surrounding bank, carried off any water which might descend from thaw or rain, and, when the autumn trees shook off their leaves, could not be distinguished from the adjoining bank. Its door was on the brink of the craig, veiled by the thick bird-cherries on the edge of the

G

precipice; and the entrance to the little path, which ascended from either side upon the brow of the rock, was concealed by a screen of birch and hazel, beneath which the banks were covered with primroses, wood-anemones, and forget-me-not. Bowers of honeysuckle and wild-roses twined among the lower trees; and even in the tall pines above, the rose sometimes climbed to the very top, where all its blossoms, clustering to the sun, hung in white tassels out of the dark-blue foliage. There the thrush and the blackbird sang at morning and evening, and the owl cried at night, and the buck belled upon the Torr. Blessed, wild, free, joyous dwelling, which we shall never again!"

see

A lovely place indeed must that have been in the pleasant days of summer! We do not wonder at the fondness with which the Stuarts speak of that lodge in the wilderness, reared as it was in the midst of the most beautiful and romantic scenery which exists within the compass of the seas of Britain, or, for aught we know, elsewhere. Years have rolled by since we last set foot upon the banks of Findhorn; but never shall we forget the glories of that deep ravine, or the noble woods of Altyre, still possessed by the descendants of the princely Comyns. Did we not expect to be summoned out within half an hour to contribute to the safety of the realm by breaking the head of a Chartist, we should ourselves launch out into description, and try conclusions with Horatio M'Culloch. But, after all, it would be a work of supererogation. Mr St John has already illustrated most charmingly that abode of the faithful; and he will not be displeased to see that, even in painting, he has met with formidable rivals. Rarely, indeed, have we met with any thing so perfect as the following sketch:

"Near Slui on the Findhorn there is a range of precipices and wooded steeps crowned with pine, and washed by a clear and rippling stream of the river, through which there is an excellent ford, very well known to the roe, for escaping to the woods of Slui when pressed by the hounds. This reach is called the Ledanreich, from a remarkable craig, a sheer naked even wall of sandstone, lying in horizontal strata eighty or ninety feet high: At the eastern extremity of this rock there is a great division, partly separated from the

main curtain by a deep woody slope, which dips into the precipice with little more inclination from the perpendicular than to admit of careful footing. In the face of the divided craig, the decomposition of the softer stone between the courses of the strata has wasted it away into narrow galleries, which, passing behind the tall pillars of the pines growing from the rifts and ledges, extend along the face of the precipice, veiled by a deep tapestry of ivy, which spreads over the mighty wall of rock, and hangs from shelf to shelf over the covered ways. Beyond the craigs, the bank of the forest, an abrupt steep, covered with oak and copsewood, slopes down to the river, its brow darkened with a deep-blue cloud of pines, and its descent carpeted with moss, primroses, and pyrolas, here and there hollowed into quaint

cuachs,' ,' filled with hazels, thorns, and giant pines. Along this woody scarp, and through its thick copse, the roe had made narrow galleries, which communicated with the ivy corridors on the face of the craig, to which there were corresponding ways upon the opposite side. In that fortress of the rock, for shelter from the sun and flies, and seclusion from the stir of the world during the day in the heat of summer, the red-deer and roe made their secret haunt, concealed behind the deep dim veil of leaves, unseen and unsuspected in the cool hollows of the cliff. The prying eye might search the craig from below, and the beaters or the woodmen might whistle, and whoop, and shout above, but nothing appeared or moved except the gray falcon, which rose channering out of the rifts. Above the craig the wooded bank was so abrupt, that to the front view any who passed quickly over the brow there was no indication of a slope, and was immediately out of sight. At each descent beyond the extremities of the whole range of rocks there was a common roe's run and pass, which was supposed to be deadly sure' if the deer took the path, since the precipice below was believed to be an infallible barrier against any intermediate escape. Often, however, when pressed upon the terrace above, the deer neither went through the passes nor turned against the beaters, but vanished as if by magic-nobody could tell where; and it was the common opinion of the drivers and fishermen, that, when forced near the river, they threw themselves over the craigs for spite,'-a belief often confirmed by old Davie Simpson, who declared that he had often found their bodies beneath the rocks, and in the Cluach, the Clerk's Pool, and the Furling Hole.' He did not, however, relate what wounds they had, and the truth was,

that those which disappeared at the brow of the Ledanreich dashed down the sudden dip of the bank between the precipices, and, turning through the ivy corridors, went out through the copse galleries upon the other side, and either descended to the water or skirted below the pass, and went back into the forest. Those which were found dead were such as had been mortally wounded at some in-wood pass, and, unable to take, or cross the water, had died on the beach, or been carried down by the river. In the same mysterious passages which gave concealment and escape to the stags and bucks, the does were used to lay with their kids, and from thence at morning and evening they brought them out to pluck the tender grass upon the green banks beyond. Often from the brow above, or from behind the ivy screen, we have watched their 'red garment stealing through the boughs, followed by their little pair drawing their slender legs daintily through the wet dew, and turning their large velvet ears to catch every passing sound upon the breeze as it brought the hum of the water, or the crow of the distant cock-now trotting before, now lingering behind their dam, now nestling together, now starting off as the gale suddenly rustled the leaves behind them then listening and re-uniting in a timorous plump, pricking their ears, and bobbing their little black noses in the wind,-then, as the doe dropped on her knees in the moss, and laid her side on the warm spot where the morning sun glanced in through the branches, they gambolled about her, leaping over her back, and running round in little circles, uttering that soft, wild, plaintive cry like the treble note of an accordion, till, weary of their sport, they lay down at her side, and slept while she watched as only a mother can. vel it was that they loved that safe and

No mar

fair retreat, with all its songs and flowers, its plenty and repose. All around was sweet, and beautiful, and abundant, such as the poetical imagination of the painter can rarely compose, and never, unless like Salvator he has lived in the wilderness with its free denizens. Upon the summit above the craig there was a broad and verdant terrace surrounded by ivied pines and feathering birches, and upon a little green glade in the midst grew two of the most beautiful objects ever produced by art or nature. These were a pair of twin thorns exactly similar in size, age, and form, and standing about three yards from each other: their stems as straight as shafts, and their round and even heads like vast bushes of wild thyme, but each so overgrown with ivy and woodbine, that

their slender trunks appeared like fretted columns, over which the thorny foliage served as a trellis to suspend the heavy plumes of the ivy and the golden tassels of the woodbine. Many a ladye's bower' we have seen, and many a rich and costly plant reared by the care of man, but none so beautiful as those lonely sisters of the forest, planted by His hand in His great garden, where none beheld but those for whom He made it lovely-the ravens of the rock, the deer who couched under its shade by night, and the birds who sang their matins and their even-song out of its sweet boughs."

If we go on quoting at this rate, we shall never reach the hill, and as yet we have not started from the hut. To say the truth, we are in no hurry, and neither, we suspect, upon many occasions were the Stuarts, indomitable huntsmen as they are. What though at night the river swept with the sound of thunder below, making the solid rock vibrate to its deep foundation,-what though the wind swept mightily down the ravine, swaying the trees like saplings, and threatening to tear them away,-what though the windows of heaven were open, and the deluge came down, and the bark of the hill-fox sounded sharp above the roaring of the water and the wood,-yet within that little bothy that rests upon the face of the craig, the wearied huntsmen slept peacefully; and in the morning, says one of them,-"I was awakened as usual by the whistle of the robin in the bird-cherry, and the sharp note of the blue bonnet sharpening his little saw on the top of the holly. I went out to the narrow terre-plain over the craig. The wind was gone, and the sun smiling on the still leaves and dewy grass-the flood torrent of the river dancing and laughing in its light, and the calm bright air breathing with the sweet perfume of the damp plants, and all the freshness and fragrance of the forest wilderness." We back it against the forest of Ardennes!

Every true hunter is humane. What! you say-do you call it humane to persecute the unfortunate stag, the monarch of the wilds, to the death? -to drive rifle-bullets into the target of the harmless roe? to murder otters by the dozen, and to slaughter seals

by the score? Indubitably we do. Let us reason a little upon this. Yesterday, you recollect that you dined upon very juvenile veal, smothered in a mess of dingy vegetable matter which we apprehend to have been sorrel, after the beastly fashion of the Gauls. Posterior to that, you devoured the larger moiety of a duckling. This morning we saw you, with our own eyes, regaling yourself at the club, between the intervals of muffin, with what assuredly were cutlets of lamb. After all this, can you have the face to stand up and defend your own humanity? For how many days had the sun dawned upon that luckless calf, the mangled fragments of which upon your platter rather resembled the rags of a kid-glove, than food meet for the stomach of a Christian? How long had the feeble quackle of Draco been heard round the row of peas near which he unsuspiciously perambulated, little dreaming how much the pods thereof were mixed up with his future destiny? How many races were run upon the meadow by that perished daughter of the sheep? Three infantine lives cut off simply for your sole gormandising! This is but a slight case. Set you down to a rook-pie, and you will engulf a dozen unfortunates before you bury your visage in the pewter. Pay for you at Blackwall, and the whitebait will disappear by the thousand. It is in vain that you attempt to shift the atrocity of your inordinate appetite from your own shoulders to those of the grazier, the butcher, the poulterer, or the fisherman. Cobden, or Joe Hume, or any other of the political economists belonging to the tribe who would starve the workman in order that they may guzzle themselves, will tell you that invariably the demand regulates the supply. You, therefore, are the responsible party: the young have fallen into your Scylla-the immature of days have been swept into the vortex of your Charybdis! Moreover, if you were a sportsman-which you are not -our minds would be grievously troubled for the future safety of the singing-birds. Welford, the friend of Bright, as we all remember, proposed a grand crusade throughout Britain against the feathered tribe; and you

are not at all unlikely to join in a general St Bartholomew of the sparrows. Do you venture to retort upon us? Do you think we take life unnecessarily, or that we are base enough to use our weapons until the quarry has reached its prime? No calf or fawn ever fell by the hand of the genuine hunter-no cheeper or pout ever sullied the interior of the sportsman's bag. Not until the better part of his life has been run,-till his muscles are hard as iron, his slot deep, and his branches towering on the beam,-not until he has lived and loved, do we strike down, as if with lightning and painless death, the great hart in the middle of the wilderness. But to all innocent things-to the harmless indwellers of the forest and moor, the true hunter is a guardian and a friend. The strong man is ever brave, and none but the strong can pass to where the herds of the mountain dwell.

One more scene at the Hut, and we shall illustrate this subject further.

66 "But though our bothie was far from resembling the Peri Paribanon's cell, or the rock-palace where the old kaiser keeps his court in the bowels of the Unterberg-we loved it, not only for its bucks and stags, and all its greenwood cheer, but for the love of nature by which it was surrounded. Beyond its 6 vert and venison,' there was a world of life and interest for those who had the eye to mark and the heart to read its book. On every side we had companions; from the passenger which came from Norway, to the little native guest-the robin which roosted in the holly-bush above us. "The robin?'-you smile and say. Yes, there was but one. He lived in the bush, as we bours too long not to be very well aclived in the bothie, and we were his neighquainted. His species, as well as all the small tribes, conformable to the minuteness of their range and habits, are very local, and may be found all the year in, or near, the same place; and those who feed them will rarely wait many minutes for their appearance. There were many robins which lived about the bothie, and all were continually in its vicinity, and very tame; but none so gentle and grateful as our little neighbour in the holly. They would, however, enter the hut, sit the floor, and, when I went out, follow on the bed or the table, and hop about me to the brae. They liked very much to see me turn up the soil, which always provided them with a little feast; ac

cordingly, they were never absent at the planting of a shrub or a flower; and when I brought home, in my shooting-bag, a tuft of primroses, pyrolas, or lilies of the valley, they were always in attendance to see them put into the bank. For watching my occupation, they preferred something more elevated than the ground, but not so high as the branches of the trees, which were too far from the earth to give them a clear sight of what I turned up; for their accommodation, therefore, I made little crosses and crotchets, and, when I was planting, set them up beside me, moving them as I proceeded from place to place. Each was immediately occupied by an attentive observer; and, whenever an insect or a worm was discovered, one of the nearest darted down and caught it, even from between my fingers, and disappeared for a few moments under the rock or behind the great holly, to enjoy his success undisturbed. At his disappearance his place was immediately occupied by another, but at the return of the first it was amiably resigned by his successor. The blue-bonnets were almost as numerous as the robins, but they never arrived at the same intimacy and confidence. They never entered the bothie in my presence, and even when I fed them they would not approach as long as I remained outside the door; but as soon as I went in they descended four or five together, chattering and fluttering about the entrance, peeping in at the little window, and stretching their necks as far as they could, to see where I was, and if all was right. Then they would begin their breakfast on what I had left for them, talking a great deal about it, but occasionally ogling the door, in a manner from which I concluded that there was but small esteem or gratitude in their conversation.- -Far different was the friendship of our little neighbour in the holly. In the morning he used to come down and perch on the arm of the bird-cherry, which stretched over the precipice before the door, waiting for its opening and the preparation of the breakfast, which he always shared; and when we were seated he would venture over the sill, and gather the crumbs about the table at our feet. Often when the first blood-red streaks of the autumn morning shone like lurid fire through the little window, we were awakened by his sad and solitary whistle, as he sat on his usual branch, his jet-black eye cast towards the door, impatient for our appearance. Many of his little cousins there were in the wood, with whom we were also well acquainted, and between us happened many an incident, which increased our interest and familiarity.

I remember a day, one of those deep still blue days so solemn in the forest; the ground was covered with a foot of snow, and all the trees were hanging like gigantic ostrich feathers; but all the world was blue,-the sky was a sleeping mass of those heavy indigo clouds which forebode a feeding storm,'-not a tempest, but a fall of snow; for, in Scotland, snow is called 'storm,' however light and still it falls thus, in tracking the deer, we say he has brushed the storm from the heather;' and a 'feeding storm' is when the clouds are continually feeding the earth with its velvet pall.-The reflection of those deep-blue clouds cast a delicate tint of the same colour over the whitened world. I was standing with my back against a huge pine-one of the old remnant of the great forest of Moray, which had, no doubt, heard the bell toll for the first Stuart earl.-I counted the rings in a smaller tree which once stood in the same hollow;-I shunned its wreck as I would have avoided a corpse which I could not bury, and always, when I passed near it, averted my face; but one day running to cut off a buck, and just heading him, I dropped on my knee to receive him as he came out from a mass of junipers, and when reloading, I found that I had knelt by the stump of my old friend. I counted two hundred and sixty-four rings in his wood !-how many earls had he seen?-Well, I was leaning against his elder brother, as I suppose by the size. I had been there for a long time, waiting to hear the dogs bring back a buck from-I don't know now from where. As I had been through all the swamps, and stripes, and wet hollows on that side of the forest, and waded through two and three feet of snow-wreaths, my kilt and hose, and, as it seemed, my flesh was saturated to the bones with 'snaw-bree,' and I began to beat, first one foot, and then the other, to quicken the blood, which was warm enough in my trunk.-I had scarce commenced this exercise, when I . heard a little 'tic!' close to my ear, and the soft low voice of a bird-a sound, neither a whistle nor a chirp, but which I knew very well before I turned and saw the robin, who sat on a dry branch within a yard of my cheek. I guessed what had brought him: he was very cold, his ruffled back humped as round as a ball, and his tail drooping almost perpendicular with his legs, as if it was a little brown peg to lean on, like that on which the travelling Tyrolean merchant rests his pack. He looked at me with his large black eye; then, with a flirt of his tail and a bow with his head, indicated that, if I had no objection, he should like to descend to the place which