But there were
too many other men with rods there to suit my taste. "The feesh in this
loch," said the boatman, "iss not so numerous ass the feeshermen, but
more wise. There iss not one of them that hass not felt the hook, and
they know ferry well what side of the fly has the forkit tail."

At Altnaharra, in the shadow of Ben Clebrig, there was a cozy little
house with good fare, and abundant trout-fishing in Loch Naver and Loch
Meadie. It was there that I fell in with a wandering pearl-peddler who
gathered his wares from the mussels in the moorland streams. They were
not of the finest quality, these Scotch pearls, but they had pretty,
changeable colours of pink and blue upon them, like the iridescent light
that plays over the heather in the long northern evenings. I thought it
must be a hard life for the man, wading day after day in the ice-cold
water, and groping among the coggly, sliddery stones for the shellfish,
and cracking open perhaps a thousand before he could find one pearl.
"Oh, yess," said be, "and it iss not an easy life, and I am not saying
that it will be so warm and dry ass liffing in a rich house. But it iss
the life that I am fit for, and I hef my own time and my thoughts to
mysel', and that is a ferry goot thing; and then, sir, I haf found the
Pearl of Great Price, and I think upon that day and night."

Under the black, shattered peaks of Ben Laoghal, where I saw an eagle
poising day after day as if some invisible centripetal force bound him
forever to that small circle of air, there was a loch with plenty of
brown trout and a few salmo ferox; and down at Tongue there was a little
river where the sea-trout sometimes come up with the tide.

Here I found myself upon the north coast, and took the road eastward
between the mountains and the sea. It was a beautiful region of
desolation. There were rocky glens cutting across the road, and
occasionally a brawling stream ran down to the salt water, breaking the
line of cliffs with a little bay and a half-moon of yellow sand. The
heather covered all the hills. There were no trees, and but few houses.
The chief signs of human labour were the rounded piles of peat, and the
square cuttings in the moor marking the places where the subterranean
wood-choppers had gathered their harvests. The long straths were once
cultivated, and every patch of arable land had its group of cottages
full of children. The human harvest has always been the richest and most
abundant t