Produced by Brendan OConnor, JoAnn Greenwood, Jonathan
Ingram and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
generously made available by The Internet Library of Early
Journals.)
BLACKWOOD'S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
No. CCCLXXII. OCTOBER, 1846. VOL. LX.
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: A few obvious misprints have been corrected, but in
general the originally erratic spelling, punctuation and typesetting
conventions have been retained. Accents in foreign language poetry are
inconsistent in the original, and have not been standardized. Hyphenated
or nonhyphenated and accented or unaccented versions of same words
retained as in original when occurring evenly, or consistently by
individual author or speaker. Otherwise changed to most frequent use.
P. 417, Dumas & C{ie.}, "ie." appears as superscript in original.
CONTENTS.
WILD SPORTS AND NATURAL HISTORY OF THE HIGHLANDS, 389
LETTERS AND IMPRESSIONS FROM PARIS, 411
VISIT TO THE VLADIKA OF MONTENEGRO, 428
ELINOR TRAVIS. CHAPTER THE LAST, 444
HOCHELAGA, 464
LETTERS ON ENGLISH HEXAMETERS. LETTER III., 477
THE DANCE. FROM SCHILLER, 480
A NEW SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY, 481
POEMS. BY ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT, 488
THE CONDE'S DAUGHTER, 496
EDINBURGH:
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, 45, GEORGE STREET;
AND 37, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON.
_To whom all Communications (post paid) must be addressed._
SOLD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM.
PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND HUGHES, EDINBURGH.
BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
No. CCCLXXII. OCTOBER, 1846. VOL. LX.
WILD SPORTS AND NATURAL HISTORY OF THE HIGHLANDS.[1]
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 _ferA| naturA|_ 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 _ferA| naturA|_, 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 _ferA| naturA|_, 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.