The light of an almost full moon was struggling with the first faint
glimmer of dawn one morning late in February as I sprang out of bed and
looked through my window. I could see a few fleecy clouds racing across
that luminary; and away in the north-east lay a dark bank, speaking of
the direction taken by the storm which I had heard at intervals during
the night; but otherwise the sky was clear and gave promise of at least
a few hours' respite from the almost ceaseless rain of the previous two
months. Such being the case, I lost no time in dressing and in calling
my companion; and before another day had fairly begun, we were passing
through the fresh clear air on our way to the hill, accompanied by two
couple of fox-hounds, while an irrepressible terrier who would not
be denied found its way to its owner's heels before we had gone many
hundred yards.
Foxes in the Highlands are held in very different estimation from
the same animal farther south. Death, meted out with all weapons and
under all circumstances, is their lot whenever found; and few acts are
considered more meritorious or more deserving of public thanks than
the destruction of a vixen and her cubs. Little fault can be found
with such a state of affairs when it is remembered that hunting is
impossible, and that otherwise foxes would increase to such an extent
as not only to do great damage to game, but to become a serious tax
upon the sheep-farmer, especially during the spring, when quantities
of lambs fall victims even under present circumstances. The great
extent of many Highland properties and the small number of keepers
employed, render it impossible for them to keep the foxes under without
assistance; and the result has been the installation of a regular
district fox-hunter, whose one employment is to go about from farm
to farm accompanied by his hounds and terriers, and kill foxes, on
consideration of receiving a toll of so much per score of sheep, as
well as free quarters for as long as he chooses to stay.
Such was my companion on this occasion. He deserves, however, a
more than general notice. To watch him as he sat over-night by the
kitchen-fire, his chin almost resting on his knees, no one would guess,
from his bent and stiffened appearance and long white hair, that they
were looking at the best hill-man within a radius of fifty miles; a man
who on three different occasions had ventured alone on the outlying
heights during the worst of a wild snow-storm in search of missing
shepherds, and who had succeeded in bringing two of them home alive,
despite having to carry one for nearly five miles through drifts out of
which no other man in the glen would have had a chance of extricating
himself. Although now near sixty years of age, time did not seem to
have had any effect upon his physical powers; and while he grumbled
and declared himself worn out and unfit for his position, entailing as
it did an immense amount of fatigue and hardship, it was well known
that the man who could live alongside of old Ian Cameron when once his
hounds had settled down to a fox, must not only be of sound wind and
limb, but more active than nine-tenths of the young Highlanders in the
district.
The hounds also deserve some notice before I enter upon the doings of
the day. They were small, very powerfully built animals, with heads
and frames much resembling the old Southern hound; and possessing a
grand bell-like note; but far too slow to come up to the modern idea
of a fox-hound. Indeed, except on some very rare occasions, when a
fox had been caught unawares or, as it is usually termed, 'chopped,'
neither they nor their immediate ancestors had ever killed one without
assistance. Ian had, he told me, first got the strain from the late
Lord Eglinton nearly fifty years ago, and had kept it pure from that
day to this. It was, however, in terriers that the old man excelled.
Talk of the prize-winners of the so-called Skye breed at the dog-shows
of the present day! I very much doubt if Ian would have accepted
one of them as a gift, while his specimens would no doubt have been
contemptuously ignored by any well-regulated judging mind. Long-bodied,
short-legged, powerful little animals they were, with rough coarse
coats of the thickest of thick hair, each of them able and willing to
bolt or half kill a fox single-handed. Their ancestors had originally
been brought from the island of Barra, where, in common with all the
western islands, the breed supposed to be confined to Skye is found of
the utmost purity; and they were as perfect representatives of their
class as it would be possible to find anywhere.
Their owner had arrived two days previously at the house of a large
sheep-farmer with whom I was staying; and as I knew there were several
foxes frequenting the cairns among the high hills, I had arranged to
accompany him on this and on subsequent occasions; and I may add, that
for those who both can and will run for miles over the wild tops of
our Highland hills, and who care for hunting and seeing hounds working
when separated from the excitement of hard riding, there are tamer
amusements than accompanying a professional fox-hunter on his rounds.
On this occasion we had some miles to go before there was much chance
of falling in with the object of our search. The wily tods rarely came
down to the low ground, where the house and arable portion of the
farm were situated, preferring to keep among the almost inaccessible
boulders and rocks which strew the surface of many acres on the
hill-tops, from whence during the breeding season they made nightly
raids against the lambs for miles around. In winter, however, the snow
drove them down somewhat, and they took up their quarters in such
low-lying cairns as contained rabbits, which, with an occasional white
hare, seem to form their principal food, until the advent of spring
brings them more easily captured and more toothsome victims. They by no
means, however, confined themselves to any one spot, but moved about
from cairn to cairn; and it was in the hope of getting on the line of
some such prowler and marking him to ground that we were making our
present expedition. A finer morning for hunting of any kind it would
have been impossible to conceive: a warm south-westerly breeze was
blowing, and the air felt more like May than February, while the few
remaining clouds were rapidly disappearing, and the newly-risen sun,
as yet concealed from us by the intervening mountains, was sparkling
on the snow-covered summits of the hills, or pouring down through the
glens in long rays of golden light on to the many lochs and woods
which, intermingled with cultivated fields, formed a belt of lowlands
at our feet stretching to the Western Ocean.
For nearly two hours we pursued our way, mounting higher and higher,
until we reached a broad glen, shut in by very high hills, on which
were some cairns much affected by the foxes. During this time the old
fox-hunter had kept up a continuous stream of talk, quite regardless
of the severity of the ascent, which was such in places as to render
me glad of the excuse afforded by the glorious view below, for a
momentary rest. His theme was foxes, and it may be imagined that after
an experience of nearly fifty years he had a good deal to say worth
listening to on the subject. One anecdote of a cub I remember. He
had been asked by some southern laird to preserve any cubs he could
catch, and to send them south to him for turning out; and one spring he
succeeded in getting three. They were too young at the time of capture
to bear the long journey; but after two months he put the three into
a wooden box, nailed it down, and took it in a cart to the pier, some
twelve miles distant, where the steamer by which he was going to send
them called. A gentleman he met there told him that unless he wished
the cubs to die of suffocation he had better take the top of the box
off and bore breathing-holes in it; and while doing so one of them made
its escape. It was dark at the time; and after a short pursuit he had
to give it up as hopeless, and returned home next morning after sending
off the remaining two. To his astonishment he found the missing cub
comfortably ensconced in its accustomed corner, and was told by his
wife that at eleven the previous evening, just three hours after the
little animal had made its escape, she had heard something scratching
at the door, and on opening it found the cub, much travel-stained and
wet, and evidently very tired, but delighted at reaching home again.
How it managed to find its way on a dark wet night over a road it had
never seen, and had only once traversed shut up in a box at the bottom
of a cart, is one of the mysteries of instinct; a faculty which ought
rather to be ranked with reason.
On entering the glen Ian commenced to cast his hounds, which had
hitherto kept to heel, from side to side; and we had hardly gone a
hundred yards before they began to get busy, and in a few minutes it
was evident they had got on the line of a fox. Knowing the ground
well, we watched them without moving for a little while, until indeed
we felt no doubt as to the particular cairn their quarry had been
making for, and then, as his line had by no means been a direct one,
we had ample time to get above the hounds and, while making our own
way as direct as possible, watch them as they followed him along the
mountain-side. It was pleasant to see them all working together, making
a cast here or a turn there, as they puzzled out the cold scent, their
rich full note every now and again reaching us as one or other of them
was able to 'speak' to it. Winding in and out among the small corries,
but ever rising higher and higher, the tiny pack at last headed direct
for the cairn, close to which we had arrived several minutes before;
and whether the scent was fresher, or they were encouraged by again
seeing us, every hound joined in the musical chorus.
We were standing on a small eminence close by, and as the rich
bell-like notes sounded through the clear air of the mountain-tops, an
old dog-fox with a white-tipped brush stole out, and before Ian could
get his gun up, was well under weigh. I am glad to say that shooting
straight did not form one of the old man's accomplishments, and I saw
his slugs flatten themselves into great white blotches on the face
of a big black rock a couple of yards behind the tod. At the same
instant, with a yell which brought the hounds to my heels, I rushed
after it, and only waiting long enough to see them racing away in full
view, I made for the top of the hill, now not many yards distant. Ian,
notwithstanding old age and white hairs, was already before me, and I
had to run hard before I could get on level terms with him. The chase
was for the time out of sight though not out of hearing; but after a
smart run of half an hour's duration we came to a jutting perpendicular
precipice, forming the angle where a smaller glen joined the main
one, and far below us we could see the hounds racing without a check,
while a careful search of the probable line of the tod revealed him
making the best of his way to a very strong cairn on the hill exactly
opposite to us. Feeling pretty certain that as he had got his mark in
that direction, he would make it his point, we sat down on the brink
of the precipice and watched both pursuers and pursued. The latter was
evidently gaining ground, and seemed to be aware of the fact, as he was
certainly not distressing himself; but the hounds were running so that
literally a sheet would have covered them, and were hunting his line
without even a momentary divergence; so that, however well this strong
hill-fox might have proved, he would have found it no easy matter to
run them out of scent. Five minutes across the glen, and another five
up the opposite hill, sufficed, however, to bring him close to his
stronghold; and secure in the prospect of immediate safety, he had the
coolness to turn round and watch his pursuers as they toiled up behind
him; disappearing from our view the moment after behind the great rock
and boulders which everywhere lay scattered around.
As soon as he did so, we got up and made the best of our way across,
finding the hounds mounting guard on the rock under which he had
disappeared. The cairn he had taken refuge in was the strongest and
largest on the property. A chaotic mass of loose boulders were strewed
one above another among enormous masses of rock over an extent of some
four acres; and so rough was the walking that it was exceedingly
difficult if not absolutely dangerous to attempt to cross it. Rabbits
inhabited it by the thousand, and the whole mass was connected more
or less by passages beneath the surface. Indeed there was nothing to
prevent a fox from taking the ground on one side and bolting perhaps
two hundred yards off on the other; and Ian's first care on arriving
was to take his hounds round outside, to make sure that it had not
done so. Satisfied on this point, he chose a position on one of the
biggest rocks, and after putting his terrier in he retired there, in
readiness to fire if the fox bolted. I remained down below, to follow
as far as practicable the progress of the terrier. The little animal
well knew its work, and plunged in under the rock with the utmost
keenness. A second after, a yelp or two told that it could feel the hot
scent, if it had not reached the fox; but the yelps grew fainter and
fainter, and at last died away. I kept moving about among the boulders,
listening at the rabbit-burrows and crevices of the rocks, and at
last I distinguished the snarl of the terrier, followed at intervals
by distant sounds of tearing and scratching. The combat, however, if
combat it was, was taking place very deep down, and it was impossible
to distinguish what was going on. By degrees also, even these sounds
ceased; and as, after waiting for more than half an hour, they were not
renewed, Ian joined me, and ineffectually called and whistled for his
dog.
After persevering in trying to make out its position for some time, we
at length desisted; and as it was necessary for one of us to go for
assistance in the shape of other terriers and more men, I volunteered
to undertake the task, leaving Ian to guard the cairn during my
absence. A sharp run of an hour took me to the farmhouse, where the
news of our having got a fox in the Gray Rock Cairn soon spread; and
by the time I had bolted a few mouthfuls of breakfast, and got some
grub put up for Ian, I found half-a-dozen men and three times that
number of terriers and collies in readiness to accompany me back. A
little over two hours saw us at the scene of action; and we heard that
nothing had occurred during my absence, except that Ian felt pretty
confident that he had once distinguished the sound of his terrier
scraping. We had brought four others of his up with us, and these he
at once turned in; while every one who owned a dog of the breed put it
into some part of the cairn, and then awaited the result; the collies
meanwhile contemplating the proceedings, sitting on their haunches with
their ears half cocked and their heads a little on one side; pictures
of canine wisdom. The terriers had not been in many minutes before a
regular chorus of yelping commenced, followed by the appearance of one
or two of the less courageous with their tails well tucked in between
their legs, only to receive execrations in guttural Gaelic from their
owners. We now set to work to move some of the smaller boulders; and
at the end of about an hour's hard work, we reached the scene of the
conflict, and found the fox which we had marked to ground, and another,
quite dead.
Great were the rejoicings over the death of these two of the shepherds'
enemies, and loud the praises each man bestowed on his own terrier, if
he was fortunate enough to possess one. In real truth, however, it was
those belonging to Ian which had done the work, as they were put in
first, and not more than three could have reached the fox at one time.
On several other occasions I was out on such-like expeditions from dawn
to an hour or two after dark, during which time we killed six foxes,
one falling a victim to Ian's gun, and the rest meeting their death
in fair fight with one or two terriers; as except on the occasion I
have just related, I do not remember more than the latter number being
turned in at once. We also had some capital runs with the hounds; and
whatever may be the opinion of the legitimate fox-hunter, I can assure
him he may have worse sport than a day on foot among our Highland hills.