Part 9

The Ulbster shootings, which constituted the main strath when I first knew Dunbar, were divided as follows, or thereabouts, including about 5000 acres leased from other proprietors:--

Braal 10,000 Strathmore and Achlybster 19,000 Chullacan and Bachlas 6,000 Dalnawillan 18,000 Glutt 15,000 ------ 68,000

The Thurso salmon angling was let to six rods, and the anglers lodged in the early months at Braal Castle, and later on at Strathmore Lodge.

In those days the lower beats fished well in February and March, the fish running from 8lb. to 10lb., with an occasional big one; but now in the early months they run about double the weight, few and far between, and make up almost at once for Loch More and the upper beats. The reason for the change is not far to seek.

Dunbar had a happy knack in letting shootings and fishings. He understood sport, was frank, truthful, and kept back nothing. It did not need an old hand to read between the lines of his statements.

He was pretty keen in making his bargains, but once made he did his best to make things comfortable for his clients. He went for a connection, and he made one. There was not a grain of meanness or littleness in his composition; whether in the bond or not he did the fair thing. He knew how to deal with gentlemen, and men felt safe in his hands, and voids in his shootings and fishings were rare.

He was popular in Caithness with all classes.

Fred elected not to continue grouse shooting, and our pleasant partnership came to an end, and I had to decide what I would do.

When in Caithness, I had picked up all the information I could gather as to Caithness moors.

In all ways they were the very opposite to Glenmarkie. Grouse sat well for quite a month, rather more on the hill moors, and rather less on the low moors, and nowhere did they pack, except in heavy snowstorms when the ground was all white, and they made away to the lower grounds for food.

There was nothing like the quantity of grouse that I had at Glenmarkie, but the ranges were larger--wide ranging dogs and good walking imperative; but when dogs got birds they sat well.

There was also a considerable quantity of wild fowl, wild geese, ducks, and blue hares; very few on Glenmarkie. No low ground shooting, in fact, no arable on the hill moors.

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The heather was short and stunted, with stretches of deer grass and flows; in fact, no good heather on the hill moors. Excepting on the burn banks and dry knolls, the ground was mostly peat bog, too soft to carry a pannier pony, and the birds had to be carried in panniers on gillies' backs.

The trout fishing in the upper streams and burns of the Thurso that fed Loch More was pretty good. The trout were plentiful but small, running about four to the pound, but they came quick and lively. The loch fishing was not much account; perhaps I should except one loch, that yielded heavy trout of fine quality, but very shy.

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Glenmarkie was a Christian-like place, but the principal moors of Caithness were a howling wilderness, not a tree and scarcely a shrub; but it was a wilderness of weird beauty in changing lights. The outlook from the top of Ben Alasky on a wild stormy day, with changing sunlight and storms, over the loch bespattered land, backed up by the cliffs of Orkney, was one of the things to see and to remember.

To me this wild and weird land has great charms.

Well, I wrote to Dunbar in the early summer to say that my lease was expiring, and that I wanted a shooting for 1872, and on a long lease.

He offered me one or two small ones in the Watton and Wick districts, but I told him that I must have Glutt, Dalnawillan, or Strathmore. He replied that all were let on lease, and could not be had.

But in September he wrote again, saying that his tenant Col. C., from failing health, desired probably to relinquish the lease of Dalnawillan and Chullacan, 18,000 and 6000 acres respectively, and that they could be had jointly or separately at £400 and £160, for the unexpired term of the Colonel's lease, of which there was nine years then to run.

I sent Black down to inspect and report.

It culminated as Dunbar had foreshadowed, and at the latter end of October I went straight from Glenmarkie to Dalnawillan.

The railway was then open to Helmsdale, and from there I travelled by mail coach as far as Dunbeath, a lovely drive past Berriedale, the property of the Duke of Portland, but being night I could see but little of it on that occasion.

I slept at Dunbeath, and posted over next morning, 16 miles, the whole distance across the moorland, to Dalnawillan.

Angus Mackay, the Colonel's gillie, met me at the march with a dog, and, getting the gun out of the case, I shot up to the lodge.

The day was warm and sunny, and I was amazed and puzzled; I saw no birds. At Glenmarkie they would have rolled up over the sky line; but birds sat to the dog, and I killed three and a half brace. Three days before, at Glenmarkie, being the last day that I should shoot, I tried to get a few grouse, my endeavours resulting in one bird, but plenty of packs rising before me.

The next day was showery and gusty, and the birds did not sit well, but at Glenmarkie they would have rolled up in packs.