As much care of them as if
they was two glass jars filled with rubies; and we believed him, for he
has done nothing but take care of us since we came to Edinburgh, and
good care, too.
Letter Number Twenty-two
KINLOCH RANNOCH.
It happened that the day we went north was a very fine one, and as soon
as we got into the real Highland country there was nothing to hinder me
from feeling that my feet was on my native heath, except that I was in
a railway carriage, and that I had no Scotch blood in me, but the joy
of my soul was all the same. There was an old gentleman got into our
carriage at Perth, and when he saw how we was taking in everything our
eyes could reach, for Jone is a good deal more fired up by travel than
he used to be - I expect it must have been the Buxton waters that made
the change - he began to tell us all about the places we were passing
through. There didn't seem to be a rock or a stream that hadn't a bit
of history to it for that old gentleman to tell us about.
We got out at a little town called Struan, and then we took a carriage
and drove across the wild moors and hills for thirteen miles till we
came to this village at the end of Loch Rannoch. The wind blew strong
and sharp, but we knew what we had to expect, and had warm clothes on.
And with the cool breeze, and remembering "Scots wha ha' wi' Wallace
bled," it made my blood tingle all the way.
We are going to stay here at least a week. We shall not try to do
everything that can be done on Scottish soil, for we shall not stalk
stags or shoot grouse; and I have told Jone that he may put on as many
Scotch bonnets and plaids as he likes, but there is one thing he is not
going to do, and that is to go bare-kneed, to which he answered, he
would never do that unless he could dip his knees into weak coffee so
that they would be the same color as his face.
There is a nice inn here with beautiful scenery all around, and the
lovely Loch Rannoch stretches away for eleven miles. Everything is just
as Scotch as it can be. Even the English people who come here put on
knickerbockers and bonnets. I have never been anywhere else where it is
considered the correct thing to dress like the natives, and I will say
here that it is very few of the natives that wear kilts. That sort of
thing seems to be given up to the fancy Highlanders.
Nearly all the talk at the inn is about, shooting and fishing.
Stag-hunting here is very different from what it is in England in more
ways than one. In the first place, stags are not hunted with horses and
hounds. In the second place, the sport is not free. A gentleman here
told Jone that if a man wanted to shoot a stag on these moors it would
cost him one rifle cartridge and six five pound notes; and when Jone
did not understand what that meant, the man went on and told him about
how the deer-stalking was carried on here. He said that some of the big
proprietors up here owned as much as ninety thousand acres of moorland,
and they let it out mostly to English people for hunting and fishing.
And if it is stag-hunting the tenant wants, the price he pays is
regulated by the number of stags he has the privilege of shooting. Each
stag he is allowed to kill costs him thirty pounds. So if he wants the
pleasure of shooting thirty stags in the season, his rent will be nine
hundred pounds. This he pays for the stag-shooting, but some kind of a
house and about ten thousand acres are thrown in, which he has a
perfect right to sit down on and rest himself on, but he can't shoot a
grouse on it unless he pays extra for that. And, what is more, if he
happens to be a bad shot, or breaks his leg and has to stay in the
house, and doesn't shoot his thirty stags, he has got to pay for them
all the same.
When Jone told me all this, I said I thought a hundred and fifty
dollars a pretty high price to pay for the right to shoot one deer. But
Jone said I didn't consider all the rest the man got. In the first
place, he had the right to get up very early in the morning, in the
gloom and drizzle, and to trudge through the slop and the heather until
he got far away from the neighborhood of any human being, and then he
could go up on some high piece of ground and take a spyglass and search
the whole country round for a stag. When he saw one way off in the
distance snuffing the morning air, or hunting for his breakfast among
the heather, he had the privilege of walking two or three miles over
the moor so as to get that stag between the wind and himself, so that
it could not scent him or hear him. Then he had the glorious right to
get his rifle all ready, and steal and creep toward that stag to cut
short his existence. He has to be as careful and as sneaky as if he was
a snake in the grass, going behind little hills and down into gullies,
and sometimes almost crawling on his stomach where he goes over an open
place, and doing everything he can to keep that stag from knowing his
end is near.
