different from what is characteristic of the native stone, and the
taste for novelty and variety has prompted their importation. In 1909
as much as 27,308 tons were imported in this way. Celtic and Runic
crosses, recumbent tombs, and statuary are common as exports.
The stone is also used for the humbler purpose of street paving and is
shipped to London and other ports in blocks of regular and recognised
sizes. These are called “setts,” and of them 30,000 tons are annually
transmitted to the south. Stones of a larger size are also exported for
use as pavement kerbs.
The presence of quarries is not so detrimental to the atmosphere and
the landscape as coal mines, and yet the heaps of _débris_, of waste
and useless stone piled up in great sloping ridges near the granite
quarries, are undoubtedly an eyesore. To-day a means has been found
whereby this blot on the landscape is partially removed. The waste
_débris_ is now crushed by special machinery into granite meal and
gravel, and used as a surface dressing for walks and garden paths—a
purpose it serves admirably, being both cleanly and easily dried. Not
only so but great quantities of the waste are ground to fine powder,
and after being mixed with cement and treated to great pressure become
adamant blocks for pavements. These adamant blocks have now superseded
the ordinary concrete pavement just as it superseded the use of solid
granite blocks and Caithness flags. This ingenious utilisation of the
waste has solved the problem which was beginning to face many of the
larger quarries, namely, how they could dispose of their waste without
burying valuable agricultural land under its mass.
Granite is the only mineral worthy of mention found in the county.
Limestone exists in considerable quantities here and there, but as a
rule it is too far from the railway routes to be profitably worked. It
is, however, burned locally and applied to arable land as a manure.
In the upper reaches of Strathdon, lime-kilns are numerous. By means
of peat from the adjoining mosses the limestone was regularly burned
half a century ago. To-day the practice is dwindling. A unique mineral
deposit called Kieselguhr is found in considerable quantity in the
peat-mosses of Dinnet, on Deeside. It is really the fossil remains of
diatoms, and consists almost entirely of silica with a trace of lime
and iron. When dried it is used as a polishing powder for steel, silver
and other metals; but its chief use is in the manufacture of dynamite,
of which it is the absorbent basis. It absorbs from three to four times
its own weight of nitro-glycerine, which is the active property in
dynamite. As found in the moss it is a layer two feet thick of cheesy
light coloured matter, which is cut out into oblong pieces like peats.
When these are dried, they become lighter in colour and ash-like in
character. The Dinnet deposits are the only deposits of the kind in
the country. Inferior beds are found in Skye. The industry employs 50
hands during the summer months, and has been in operation for 28 years.
The beds show no sign of exhaustion as yet, and the demand for the
substance is on the increase.
13. Other Industries. Paper, Wool, Combs.
The industries apart from agriculture, work in granite, and the
fisheries are mostly concentrated in and around the chief city. These,
although numerous, are not carried on in a large way, but they are
varied; and there is this advantage in the eggs not being all in one
basket that when depression attacks one trade, its effect is only
partial and does not affect business as a whole. Paper, combs, wool,
soap are all manufactured. The first of these engages four large
establishments on the Don and one on the Dee at Culter. Writing paper
and the paper used for the daily press and magazines as well as the
coarser kinds of packing paper are all made in considerable quantity.
Esparto grass and wood pulp are imported in connection with this
industry. Comb-making is also carried on, and the factory in Aberdeen
is the largest of its kind in the kingdom.
Textile fabrics are still produced, but the progress made in these is
not to be compared with the advances made in the south of Scotland,
where coal is cheap. Weaving was introduced at an early period by
Flemish settlers, who made coarse linens and woollens till the end
of the sixteenth century, when “grograms” and worsteds, broadcloth
and friezes were added. Provost Alexander Jaffray the elder in 1636
established a house of correction—the prototype of the modern
reformatory—where beggars and disorderly persons were employed in the
manufacture of broadcloths, kerseys and other stuffs. A record of this
novelty in discipline survives in the Aberdeen street called Correction
Wynd.
In 1703 a joint-stock company was formed for woollen manufactures
at Gordon’s Mills on the Don, where a fulling-mill had existed for
generations, and where the making of paper had been initiated a few
years earlier. The Gordon’s Mills developed the manufacture of cloths
of a higher quality, half-silk serges, damask and plush, and skilled
workmen were brought from France to guide and instruct the operatives.
To-day high-class tweeds are made at Grandholm, and such is the
reputation of these goods for quality and durability that in spite of
high tariffs they make their way into America, where they command a
large sale at prices more than double of the home prices.
In the olden days the cloth sold in the home markets was a product
of domestic industry. The farmers’ daughters spun the wool of their
own sheep into yarn, which was sent to county weavers to be made into
cloth. Aberdeenshire serge made in this way was sold at fairs and was
hawked about the county by travelling packmen.
The hosiery trade was worked on similar lines. The wool was converted
into worsted by rock and spindle, and the worsted was knitted into
stockings by the women and girls of the rural population. One man
employed as many as 400 knitters and spinners. In the latter half of
the eighteenth century this industry brought from £100,000 to £120,000
into Aberdeenshire every year. Stockings were made of such fineness
that they cost 20s. a pair and occasional rarities were sold at four
or five guineas. In 1771 twenty-two mercantile houses were engaged in
the export trade of these goods, which went chiefly to Holland. The
merchants attended the weekly markets and country fairs, where they
purchased the products of the knitters’ labour. Such work provided a
source of income to the rural population and was indirectly the means
of increasing the number of small holdings. These were multiplied
of set purpose to keep the industrious element in the population
within the county. The invention of the stocking-frame together with
the dislocation of trade due to the Napoleonic wars made the trade
unremunerative and it came to an end with the eighteenth century.
The linen trade began in 1737 at Huntly, where an Irishman under the
patronage and encouragement of the Duke of Gordon manufactured yarn
and exported it to England and the southern Scottish towns. Silk
stockings were also made there. By and by linen works sprang up on the
Don at Gordon’s Mills and Grandholm as well as within Aberdeen itself.
The linen trade in the form of spinning and hand-loom weaving was
carried on in most of the towns and villages of the county and several
new villages grew up in consequence, such as Cuminestown, New Byth,
Strichen, New Pitsligo, Stuartfield and Fetterangus, in some of which
the manufacture is continued on a small scale to this day. Much flax
was grown in the county for a time to minister to this industry, but
gradually the crop disappeared as fibre of better quality was imported
from Holland. Yet the spinning of linen yarn was widely practised as a
domestic industry when the woollen trade declined, and every farmer’s
daughter made a point of spinning her own linen as the nucleus of her
future house-furnishings. The linen trade, except as regards coarser
materials such as sacking, has decayed. There is still a jute factory
in Aberdeen.
Another industry which employs a large number of hands is the
preserving of meat, fish, fruit, and vegetables. There are several
of these preserving works in Aberdeen. Dried and smoked haddocks,
usually called “Finnan Haddies,” from the village of Findon on the
Kincardineshire coast, are one of the specialities of Aberdeen. They
had at one time a great vogue, and are still largely in demand though
the quality has fallen off by the adoption of a simpler and less
expensive method of treatment.
Ship-building is another industry long established at Aberdeen. In the
days before iron steamships, fleets of swift-sailing vessels known
as “Aberdeen Clippers” were built on the Dee and made record voyages
to China in the tea trade and to Australia. The industry of to-day
is concerned, for the greater part, with the building of trawlers
and other fishing craft, but occasionally an ocean going steamer is
launched. The trade is meantime suffering from depression.
[Illustration: Making smoked haddocks, Aberdeen]
Other industries well represented are soap and candle making, coach
and motor-car building, iron-founding and engineering, rope and twine
making, the manufacture of chemicals, colours and aerated waters.
Besides, Aberdeen is a great printing centre and many of the books
issued by London publishers are printed by local presses.
14. Fisheries.
During the last quarter of a century the fishing industry has made
great strides, the value of fish landed in Scotland having more than
doubled in that period. Nowhere has the impetus been more felt than
in Aberdeenshire, which now contributes as much as one-third of the
whole product of Scotch fisheries. Since 1886 the weight of fish caught
round the Scottish coast has increased from five million hundredweights
to over nine millions, while the money value has risen in even a
greater proportion from £1,403,391, to £3,149,127. To these totals
Aberdeen alone has contributed over a hundred thousand tons of white
fish (excluding herrings), valued at over a million pounds sterling.
Peterhead and Fraserburgh are also contributors especially as regards
herrings, the former landing 739,878 hundredweights and Fraserburgh
very nearly a similar quantity. These three ports amongst them
account for one half of all the fish landed at Scottish ports. When
we consider the number of persons collaterally employed in handling
this enormous quantity of merchandise, the coopers, cleaners, packers,
basket makers, boat-builders, makers of nets, clerks and so on, apart
altogether from the army of fishermen employed in catching the fish, we
see how far-reaching this industry is, not merely in increasing the
food-supply of the country but in providing profitable employment for
the population. At Aberdeen, it is estimated, 13,512 persons are so
employed and at the other two ports combined, almost a similar number.
There are two great branches of the fishing industry—herrings and
white fish. The herrings are caught for the most part, though not
exclusively, in the summer, July being the great month. They are
captured with nets mostly by steam-drifters as they are called, but
also to some extent by the ordinary sailing boats of a smaller size
than the drifters. Fraserburgh and Peterhead land in each case double
the weight of herrings that come to Aberdeen. In recent years a
beginning has been made in May and June with gratifying success, but
July and August give the maximum returns. Later on in the year, when
the shoals have moved along the coast southwards, the herring fleets
follow them thither, to North Shields and Hartlepool, to Yarmouth and
Lowestoft; and bands of curers, coopers and workers migrate in hundreds
from one port to another, employing themselves in curing the fish. The
bulk of the herrings are cured by salting, and are then exported to
Germany and Russia, where they are much in demand.
Even more important is the white fishing. Aberdeen is here pre-eminent,
being perhaps the most important fishing centre in the world. The total
catch for Scotland in 1909 was short of three million hundredweights,
of which Aberdeen with its large fleet of trawlers and steam-liners
accounted for 67 per cent. The most important of the so-called round
fish is the haddock, of which over a million hundredweights are landed
in Scotland, Aberdeen contributing the lion’s share, three-fourths of
the whole. Next to the haddock comes the cod, of which nearly three
hundred and forty thousand hundredweights were handled in the Aberdeen
fish market. The next fish is ling, and then come whitings, saithe,
torsk, conger-eels. The flat-fish are also important, plaice, witches,
megrims, halibut, lemon soles and turbot. This last is the scarcest and
most highly prized of all flat fish, and commands a price next to that
given for salmon. Ling and halibut are still mostly caught by hook and
line; the turbot and the lemon sole on the other hand are distinctively
the product of the trawl net and were little known until trawling was
begun.
A certain small percentage of this great weight of fish is consumed
locally, but the great bulk of it is packed in ice and dispatched by
swift passenger trains to the southern markets. The Aberdeen fish
market, extending for half a mile along the west and north sides of the
Albert Basin (originally the bed of the Dee) is the property of the
Town Corporation and is capable of dealing with large catches. As much
as 760 tons of fish have been exposed on its concrete floor in a single
day. In the early morning the place is one of the sights of the city,
with the larger fish laid out in symmetrical rows on the pavement, and
the smaller fish—haddocks, whiting and soles—in boxes arranged for
the auction sale at 8 a.m.
The majority of the fishing craft are still sailing vessels, but
steam-drifters and motor-boats and steam-trawlers
[Illustration: Fish Market, Aberdeen]
are gradually driving the ordinary sail-boats from the trade, just as
the trawl net is superseding the old-fashioned mode of fishing with
set lines. Still about 86 per cent. of the number of boats employed is
made up of sailing vessels, but the tonnage is relatively small. The
quantity of fish caught by hook and line is only one-tenth of the whole.
[Illustration: Fishwives, The Green, Aberdeen]
[Illustration: North Harbour, Peterhead]
[Illustration: Herring boats at Fraserburgh]
The amount of capital invested in boats and fishing gear for all
Scotland is estimated by the Fishery Board at over £5,000,000. Of this
total, Aberdeenshire claims very nearly two millions. It is now the
case that the value of fish discharged at the fish market of Aberdeen
is as great as the yearly value of the agricultural land of the whole
county—truly a marvellous revolution.
[Illustration: Fishing Fleet going out, Aberdeen]
The herring fishery was prosecuted off the Scottish coast by the Dutch,
long before the Scotch could be induced to take part in it. Many futile
attempts were made to exploit the industry but little came of them
till the nineteenth century. A beginning was made at Peterhead in 1820
and at Fraserburgh a little earlier. Aberdeen followed in 1836 but no
great development took place till 1870. The first trawler came on the
scene in 1882; to-day there are over 200 local vessels of this type
besides many from other ports.
The salmon fishery has long been famous and at one time was relatively
a source of much greater revenue than at present. It still yields a
considerable annual surplus to the Corporation funds, but has been
eclipsed by the growth of other fisheries. The rateable value of the
salmon fishings on the Dee is nearly £19,000; those of the other salmon
rivers—the Don, Ythan and Ugie—being much less. The fish are caught
by fixed engines in the sea—stake-nets and bag-nets—set within a
statutory radius of the river mouth, and by sweep- or drag-nets in the
tidal reaches of the rivers. A good many fish are caught by rod and
line throughout the whole course of the rivers but angling is not the
commercial side of salmon-fishing.
15. Shipping and Trade.
Aberdeenshire has practically but three ports—Fraserburgh, Peterhead
and Aberdeen. The herring fishing with its concomitant activities
absorbs the energies of the two former so far as shipping is concerned,
but Aberdeen having to serve a larger and wider area than these two
northern burghs has developed a range of docks of considerable extent
and importance. During the last forty years the Harbour Commissioners
have spent £3,000,000 in improving the harbour, increasing the
wharfage, adding break-waters, diverting the course of the Dee,
deepening the entrance channel, forming a graving dock and so forth.
Still, in spite of these outlays, Aberdeen, which has been a port
for centuries, has hardly grown in shipping proportionately to its
growth in other respects. The reason is that, except fish, granite and
agricultural products, the city has nothing of much moment to export.
[Illustration: At the docks, Aberdeen]
Exclusive of fishing vessels the tonnage of home and foreign going
vessels was in 1882, 587,173; in 1909 it had advanced to over a
million, hardly doubling itself in 27 years. While its imports have
gone up from 522,544 tons in 1882 to 1,165,060 in 1909, the exports
have made only a very slight advance. The chief export is herrings, and
last year nearly 100,000 tons of these, salted and packed in barrels,
were sent by sea. The fresh fish are dispatched by rail. Stones in
the form of granite, either polished for monumental purposes or in
setts and kerbs for paving, account for 50,000 tons. The remainder (of
210,554 tons) is made up by oats, barley, oatmeal, paper, preserved
provisions, whisky, manures, flax and cotton fabrics, woollen cloth,
cattle and horses, butter and eggs, salmon and pine-wood.
The trade is mostly a coasting trade and more an import than an export
one. Coal is the chief article of import, 600,000 tons being discharged
in a year. Besides coal, esparto grass, wood-pulp and rags for
paper-making, foreign granite in the rough state sent to be polished,
flour, maize, linseed, the horns of cattle used for comb-making, and
the salt used in fish-curing, are the chief materials landed on the
Aberdeen quays. Aberdeen being the distributing centre for the county,
and all the railway routes focussing in it, the coal and the building
materials not produced in the district, such as lime, slate and cement,
all pass this way, while the tea and sugar, the tobacco and other
articles of daily use, also arrive mostly by the harbour.
There are regular lines of steamers between Aberdeen and the following
ports: London, Newcastle, Hull, Liverpool, Glasgow and Leith, as also
with continental towns such as Hamburg, Rotterdam and Christiania.
16. History of the County.
Standing remote from the centre of the country, Aberdeenshire has not
been fated to figure largely in general history. The story of its own
evolution from poverty to prosperity is an interesting one, but it is
only now and again that the county is involved in the main current of
the history of Scotland.
If the Romans ever visited it, which is highly doubtful, they left
no convincing evidence of their stay. Of positive Roman influence
no indication has survived, and no conquest of the district can
have taken place. The only records of the early inhabitants of the
district—usually called Picts—are the Eirde houses, the lake
dwellings or crannogs, the hill forts or duns, the “Druidical” circles
and standing stones and the flint arrow-heads, all of which will be
dealt with in a later chapter.
Christianity had reached the south of Scotland before the Romans left
early in the fifth century. The first missionary who crossed the Mounth
was St Ternan, whose name survives at Banchory-Ternan on the Dee,
the place of his death. St Kentigern or St Mungo, the patron saint
of Glasgow, had a church dedicated to him at Glengairn. St Kentigern
belonged to the sixth century, and was therefore a contemporary of
St Columba, who christianised Aberdeenshire from Iona. In this way
two great currents met in the north-east. Columba accompanied by his
disciple Drostan first appeared at Aberdour on the northern coast.
From Aberdour he passed on through Buchan, and having established the
Monastery of Deer and left Drostan in charge, moved on to other fields
of labour. His name survives in the fishing village of St Combs. He
is the tutelar saint of Belhelvie, and the churches of New Machar and
Daviot were dedicated to him. These facts indicate the mode in which
Pictland was brought under the influence of Christianity.
The next historical item worthy of mention is the ravages of the
Scandinavian Vikings. The descents on the coast of these sea-rovers
were directed against the monastic communities, which had gathered
some wealth. The Aberdeenshire coast, having few inlets convenient for
the entry of their long boats, was to a large extent exempt from their
raids, but in 1012 an expedition under Cnut, son of Swegen, the king of
Denmark, landed at Cruden Bay.
Another fact of interest is the death of Macbeth, who for seventeen
years had by the help of Thorfinn, the Scandinavian (whose name
may be seen in the Deeside town of Torphins), usurped the kingship
of Scotland. Malcolm Canmore led an army against him in 1057, and
gradually driving him north, beyond the Mounth, overtook him at
Lumphanan. There Macbeth was slain. A Macbeth’s stone is said to mark
the place where he received his death-wound, and Macbeth’s Cairn is
marked by a clump of trees in the midst of cultivated land. The farm
called Cairnbethie retains the echo of his name. Kincardine O’Neil,
where Malcolm awaited the result of the conflict, commands the ford of
the Dee on the ancient route of travel from south to north across the
Cairn-o-Mounth.
Malcolm shortly after passed through Aberdeenshire at the head of an
expedition against the Celtic population which had supported Macbeth.
The Norman Conquest, nine years thereafter, was the occasion of
Anglo-Saxon settlements in the county. The court of Malcolm and Queen
Margaret became a centre of Anglo-Saxon influence. The old Gaelic
language gave way before the new Teutonic speech. The Celtic population
made various attempts to recover the power that was fast slipping from
their hands. Malcolm headed a second expedition to Aberdeenshire in
1078, and on that occasion granted the lands of Monymusk and Keig to
the church of St Andrews. He is said to have had a hunting-seat in the
forest of Mar, and the ruined castle of Kindrochit in the village of
Braemar is associated with this fact.
The earliest mention of Aberdeen is in a charter of Alexander I,
granting to the monks of Scone a dwelling in each of the principal
towns—one of which is Aberdeen. A stream of Anglo-Saxons, Flemings and
Scandinavians had been gradually flowing towards the settlement at the
mouth of the Dee, where they pursued their handicrafts and established
trade with other ports. William the Lion frequently visited the town
and ultimately built a royal residence, which after a time was gifted
to the Trinity or Red Friars for a monastery. The bishopric of Aberdeen
dates from 1150.
Edward I of England in 1296 at the head of a large army paid these
northern parts a visit. He entered the county by the road leading from
Glenbervie to Durris, whence he proceeded to Aberdeen, exacting homage
from the burghers during his five days’ stay. From Aberdeen he went
to Kintore and Fyvie and on to Speyside, returning by the Cabrach,
Kildrummy, Kincardine O’Neil and the Cairn-o-Mounth.