ill; and as we had been told many
strange stories regarding it--stories about bold fishers who had
threaded their dangerous way between the overhanging rock and the water,
and who, striking outwards, had speared salmon through the foam of the
cataract as they leaped--stories, too, of skilful sportsmen, who, taking
their stand in the thick wood beyond, had shot the rising animals, as
one shoots a bird flying,--both my Cromarty cousin and myself were
extremely desirous to visit the scene of such feats and marvels; and
Cousin William obligingly agreed to act as our guide and instructor by
the way. He did look somewhat askance at our naked feet; and we heard
him remark, in an under tone, to his mother, that when he and his
brothers were boys, she never suffered _them_ to visit her Cromarty
relations unshod; but neither Cousin Walter nor myself had the
magnanimity to say, that _our_ mothers had also taken care to see us
shod; but that, deeming it lighter and cooler to walk barefoot, the good
women had no sooner turned their backs than we both agreed to fling our
shoes into a corner, and set out on our journey without them. The walk
to the salmon-leap was a thoroughly delightful one. We passed through
the woods of Achanie, famous for their nuts; startled, as we went, a
herd of roe deer; and found the leap itself far exceeded all
anticipation. The Shin becomes savagely wild in its lower reaches.
Rugged precipices of gneiss, with scattered bushes fast anchored in the
crevices, overhang the stream, which boils in many a dark pool, and
foams over many a steep rapid; and immediately beneath, where it threw
itself headlong, at this time, over the leap--for it now merely rushes
in snow adown a steep slope--there was a caldron, so awfully dark and
profound, that, according to the accounts of the district, it had no
bottom; and so vexed was it by a frightful whirlpool, that no one ever
fairly caught in its eddies had succeeded, it was said, in regaining the
shore. We saw, as we stood amid the scraggy trees of an overhanging
wood, the salmon leaping up by scores, most of them, however, to fall
back again into the pool--for only a very few stray fish that attempted
the cataract at its edges seemed to succeed in forcing their upward way;
we saw, too, on a shelf of the precipitous but wooded bank, the rude
hut, formed of undressed logs, where a solitary watcher used to take his
stand, to protect them from the spear and fowlingpiece of the p