Our host strongly advised us to keep to the main road,
but we decided, in spite of our sore feet and the raging elements, to
cross over the Maiden's Paps. We therefore left the main road and
followed a track which led towards the mountains and the wild moors. We
had not gone very far when we met a disconsolate sportsman, accompanied
by his gillies and dogs, who was retreating to the inn which he had left
early in the morning. He explained to us how the rain would spoil his
sport amongst the grouse, though he consoled himself by claiming that it
had been one of the finest sporting seasons ever known in Caithness. As
an illustration, he said that on the eighteenth day of September he had
been out with a party who had shot forty-one and a half brace of grouse
to each gun, besides other game. The average weight of grouse on the
Scotch moors was twenty-five ounces, but those on the Caithness moors
were heavier, and averaged twenty-five and a half ounces.
He was curious to know where we were going, and when we told him, he
said we were attempting an impossible feat in such awful weather, and
strongly advised us to return to the hotel, and try the journey on a
finer day.
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