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.