out from the lodge we come to a point overlooking the great loch far below us, fringed with birch wood, girdled with mountains. Round the edge of the loch a sheet of ice has formed, but the central deeps are never frozen, even in the hardest winters. Some wild swans, driven from shallow lochs by the frost, are floating gracefully on the still water.

Then the path passes away from the loch over an open stretch of moorland. A mountain hare, clad in his white winter coat, scuds across the track, and in the distance we see a herd of deer feeding. We now near another and much smaller loch. Without climbing any high hill we have crossed the watershed between the East and West of Scotland somewhere in the last mile. The waters of this loch drain into the Atlantic, while those of the big loch ultimately pour into the German Ocean.

If we perseveringly trudge a few miles farther through the snow, we find the path enter a narrow glen between two mountains. One side of the glen slopes steeply down, while the other side is formed by a range of precipices draped with giant icicles. In the summer a burn brattles down the bottom of the glen, but, if yet running, ice and snow have buried it out of sight and hearing. Utter silence, awful rather than restful, reigns within the white gorge, broken only at long intervals by the sharp bark of a fox that has its den somewhere up among the rocks above the precipices. The path ascends to the head of the glen, and from the lofty col a splendid view opens up of snow-clad mountains and glens glittering in the sunshine, and away in the distance the lower straths appear, still green, and looking as if they belonged to another world than our wintry one.

If this ramble is taken early in the winter, before a great depth of snow has accumulated in the high passes, we may continue our walk round the shoulders of the great ben of the forest, and return by a loch far up in the heart of the hills, above which frown the cliffs of a magnificent corrie. The loch itself is only recognisable by its level surface, for ice a foot thick cases its waters, and snow conceals the ice. Some stags, disgusted at being disturbed even in this remote retreat, scramble up a steep, shingly hill-face with a speed and agility almost incredible in such bulky animals. From this loch the way leads downwards and homewards, though we are yet far from the lodge.

What grand bird is that that goes sailing upwards in wide spirals, hangs poised in mid-air for an instant, and then swoops down like a thunderbolt on a luckless hare? A falcon? No, it is the great golden eagle! It is still a rare bird, even in the Highlands, though

not so rare as it was twenty years ago, for it is now strictly protected in the deer-forests.

As we pass through the low ground on our homeward route, a herd of hinds is seen on a hill-side only three or four hundred yards away, near enough for us to make out the variety of colours in their hides, from dull brown to golden yellow. Presently one hind catches sight of the intruders, then another and another, until the whole herd stands at gaze. Then, as if at a given signal, they turn sharply round, brown heads being replaced by white tails, and trot quickly away, disappearing over the sky-line. If they have been thoroughly startled, they may not halt again till they have reached the "sanctuary." The "sanctuary," it may be explained, is a part of the forest where the deer are never molested by sportsman or forester. The deer soon come to understand its privileges, and take refuge there from danger. The reason why most large forests have sanctuaries is to induce the deer to stay in the forest. There are usually no fences between adjoining deer-forests, and if the deer found that they were being continually stalked in all parts of one forest, while in the neighbouring forest there was a tract of ground where they could be in safety, no man making them afraid, they would forsake the inhospitable forest for the one that offered a sanctuary.

The regular winter inhabitants of the forest, the forester and his assistants, have something else to do than to enjoy pleasant rambles through the forest on sunny days. A part of the winter is devoted to hind-shooting. Sometimes sportsmen take part in this, but as it yields no trophies like the stag's antlers, and as the winter's snows add greatly to the toils of stalking, the work is usually left to the foresters. It is work that needs to be done, for since only stags are shot in the "season," if the ranks of the hinds were never thinned, the forest would be overrun by them.

The hind, though despised by sportsmen out after the stag, is no easy prey, for she is more wary than the antlered lord of the forest. The stalkers set out while the winter morning is yet dark, in order to arrive by dawn at the passes by which the hinds are expected to leave the low ground where they have been grazing during the night. If wind and weather favour them, they may dispatch several hinds before sunrise. At other times they may have to spend half a day in toilsome stalking without any result. What the stalkers like is not, as the uninitiated might think, mild, fresh weather, but frost and deep snow. Mild weather allows the deer to keep to the hills, where they can only be reached after tramping many weary miles through slush and wet snow; whereas when the snow lies deep, and the

frost is intense so that no living creature save the ptarmigan can exist long on the open hill, the deer are to be found down at the loch side, or sheltering in low-lying corries.

Sometimes a roe-deer hunt is organised when these dainty little beasts have been doing damage in the plantations. It is of the nature of a deer-drive, with the guns posted at some break in the wood towards which the roes are driven by beaters. The moment when the roe-deer break cover and come under fire is very exciting ; but often they prefer to turn back and burst through the line of beaters. This is the easier to do, because in young plantations on hillsides the wood is usually so dense and the ground so rough that the beaters have difficulty in knowing where their comrades are, and in preserving anything like a straight line.

Foxes, too, have to be hunted down. Some time ago a question was asked in the House of Commons about the increase of foxes in the deer-forests, the terms of which suggested that the questioner supposed that foxes were preserved in the Highland forests in order to be hunted by horsemen and hounds, as in England or the Lowlands of Scotland. The horse has yet to be discovered that could keep up with the hill-fox going up the mountain side, or that would not break his own or his rider's neck descending the rocky screes where the "red dog" usually has his home. In the deer-forest the fox is no beast of chase held in high honour, but is mere vermin to be shot on sight; and if he prove so shy that he has to be sought for in his lurking-places, he is driven out of his earth by shaggy terriers, and unceremoniously shot as he emerges.

Throughout the foresters' winter work, peril of storm is lying in wait. A snowstorm that has given warning of its approach has discounted most of its terrors. It may, indeed, cut off the dwellers in the forest from all communication with the outer world for some weeks; but that is nearly the worst it can do to them. Well housed and provisioned for the winter, they can easily stand a snow blockade. The wind may roar down the glens, and the snow drift into monstrous wreaths; but they are secure against the fury of the storm.

But if the storm comes on unexpectedly, when the men are away in a remote part of the forest, then is the terrible time of struggle on the hillside, of anxiety in the home. The gale sweeps before it the falling and the already fallen snow in a whirling, blinding cloud. The dry, powdery particles fill the eyes, choke the nostrils, making sight and breathing alike difficult. The freezing wind chills to the bone. Even the mountaineers' skill and powers of endurance are tried to the utmost when overtaken by such a blizzard many miles

away from any sheltering roof, with no fences to guide, and with all landmarks blotted out by the swirling snow-dust. It is a battle, long and stern, against the might of the storm. Hour after hour they fight on against the blinding, baffling drift, plunging through the deep wreaths, struggling against the numbing blast, until darkness falls on the short winter day. Deep is their thankfulness when at last they see, glimmering faintly through the driving snow, the lights of home.

HECTOR FRASER.

THE FRENCH AND SIERRA

LEONE.

N view of the aggressive action of France in the rear of our possessions on the Gold Coast and the Niger, it may be interesting to recall how the French have hemmed in our possessions in the neighbourhood of Sierra Leone. The events in that region throw considerable light on what is going on in the great bend of the Niger, and show the steady territorial advance which threatens to engulf our more limited possessions. Whilst, in consonance with the recommendations of the Parliamentary Committee of 1865, English policy has been opposed to the extension of our responsibilities in these regions, country after country has been added to the French empire.

At the time of the Franco-German war the whole region from the Gambia to the Cameroons could have been appropriated by Great Britain without opposition from any European power; and when the rapid recovery of France from the disasters of 1871 was followed by a policy of imperial extension in the neighbourhood of Senegal, it was not for long realised that this might call for a more active policy on our part.

On June 28, 1882, a convention was signed at Paris by Lord Lyons and M. de Freycinet, providing that the line of demarcation between the territories occupied or claimed by Great Britain and France respectively to the north of Sierra Leone should be drawn between the basins of the rivers Scarcies and Mellicourie (or Mellacoree), in such a manner as to ensure to Great Britain the complete control of the Scarcies rivers and to France the complete control of the Mellicourie river. This agreement only affected the regions in the vicinity of the coast; but on August 10, 1889, another arrangement was signed at Paris, carrying the line of demarcation along the tenth parallel of latitude to 10° 40' east of Greenwich. This gave to 'Hertslet's The Map of Africa by Treaty, ii., 554-57, 585.

2 Herts!et, pp. 559, 586.

VOL. CCLXXXV. NO. 2015.

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