CHAPTER XIX

In the Hawaiian Isles—Spiritualism in Boston—Return to Britain—Invention

of the System of Easy Reading for Blind and Sighted Chinese.

“So long THY Power hath blest me, sure it still

Will lead me on

O’er moor and fen, o’er crag and torrent, till

The night is gone,

And with the morn those angel faces smile

Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile.”

The programme sketched in my letter was exactly carried out. I spent two

intensely interesting months in the group which we used to call “The

Sandwich Isles,” and was most kindly received by many of the principal

people, including the King and Queen, his sisters, and the Dowager Queen

Emma; but especially by Mr. and Mrs. Severance at Hilo. Also by some of

the early American missionaries, who could tell me first-hand of the

marvellous changes they had witnessed in the Isles since the days when

the people first found courage to defy the wrath of the awful volcanic

deities who manifested their power in such terrible earnest.

Thrilling indeed it was to hear such histories from those white-haired

“fathers,” as they were lovingly called, who had borne so active a part

in the conversion of the whole race to a pure Christian faith. And

thrilling, too, to receive from eye-witnesses details of the successive

appalling eruptions of the volcano and hairbreadth escapes of the

people.

My visit to the active volcano was most happily timed, as I had the

good-fortune to see and paint a succession of very remarkable changes

within the bed of the great crater, and subsequently to obtain a

striking picture of the interior of the largest dormant crater in the

known world, strangely suggestive of the illustrations which scientific

artists produce of the face of the moon.

All I saw and heard is fully told in my book _Fire Fountains of

Hawaii_,[70] which to my own mind is perhaps the most interesting of my

varied travel notes.

Then once again I returned to San Francisco, my impressions of which,

and of the glorious Californian forests, are recorded in _Granite Crags

of California_ (Blackwood).

Christmas with my nephew and niece in Maryland, and a very quaintly

interesting New Year in Washington, were followed by a visit to

wonderful Niagara (which, however, from its flat surroundings, did not

entrance me, as did Yosemite in its apparent fall from heaven). Then

came a delightful visit to the Winthrops at Boston, where their charming

home was the centre of all the most cultivated society. There I had the

great pleasure of making acquaintance with Oliver Wendell Holmes, _The

Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table_, and Longfellow, who each invited me to

spend a most interesting day with them at their respective homes.

The latter showed me a tree close to his house, bearing an inscription

to say that beneath it Washington took command of the army. The house

itself was Washington’s headquarters. Mr. Holmes showed me admirable

large landscapes (framed) embroidered by his daughter-in-law with silk

on silk (I think). They are like very effective oil-paintings—certainly

a triumph of needlework.

Mr. Winthrop took me all over Harvard College and to everything else

that was best worth seeing. But one distinctive feature of Boston—as a

centre of spiritualism—he and his family refused to countenance in any

way. Nevertheless, as a traveller I felt that my acquaintance with

Boston would be incomplete without hearing something about it, and they

therefore most kindly commended me to the care of a gentleman who,

though himself knowing nothing about it, undertook to escort me and

several other inquisitive ladies to visit one of the innumerable

“mediums,” whose names and addresses are registered at a regular

business office.

Thither he went, and quite at random wrote down a few names of mediums,

including that of Mrs. Nikersen White, a delicate little fair-haired

lady, with whom he made an appointment for us on the following morning.

What that lady (who by no possibility could have known any of the

details on which she spoke to each of us) said to us in her pretty

sitting-room, in bright morning sunshine, I do not care to recall here.

Under the name “UNFATHOMED MYSTERIES,” I wrote an account of that

interview, which appeared in _Blackwood’s Magazine_ for May 1883, and it

has been reproduced in _Tales from Blackwood_, No. XI. I need only say

that the interview so haunted me, that had I been remaining in Boston, I

should have found it difficult to act on the advice of my hosts (which I

am certain was sound), to have nothing more to do with it. As it was, my

speedy departure for England counteracted the strong temptation to

return.

Of the strange termination of my voyage in being wrecked in the ss.

_Montana_ off Holyhead, I have spoken in chapter X., when telling of my

start for Ceylon on board the _Hindoo_, and how the _Montana_ had on

board the first and last passengers of that ill-fated vessel.

Afterwards, when from time to time news reached me of how the various

vessels by which I have travelled have finally met their fate, I wrote a

paper on SOME EVENTFUL VOYAGES,[71] which appeared in _Blackwood’s

Magazine_ for March 1890. It certainly gave me matter for thought

considering the many, many thousands of miles by land and sea, which I

have travelled in such safety.

Among the new friends whom I was privileged to make soon after my return

to England, few proved so congenial as Miss Marianne North, who had

travelled over so much of the same ground as I had done, and with the

same love for faithfully reproducing by her paint-brush everything of

interest. I had accumulated about five hundred large landscapes in

water-colour, and about as many more small ones. She had upwards of

eight hundred oil-paintings, in each of which the subject was an

admirable study of flowers, and the scenery in which they grew wild was

thrown in as the background.

Sir Joseph Hooker told me that her work was so absolutely accurate, that

he could at once identify any new plant or variety. It was therefore a

matter of national congratulation when she decided to present all her

pictures as a gift to the Botanical Gardens at Kew, and there herself to

build a gallery in which to exhibit them permanently.

When I first knew her, these only numbered about five hundred, and her

gallery was designed and built to show that number. But the craving to

see more and more of her beloved plants in their native homes was still

so strong, that she could not resist further arduous travels in tropical

forests, whence she returned with ruined health, but with about three

hundred more paintings, all of which she likewise presented to the

nation. Naturally, the wall-space which would have shown five hundred to

advantage was insufficient for eight hundred, and with grief I have

watched her actually cut down pictures (which, as I saw them one by one

in her pleasant studio, were most fascinating) to the size which space

would allow, without any isolation between the pictures except a narrow

line of frame. Of course such close proximity has lamentably spoilt the

effect of each. But nevertheless her grand gift has been an abiding joy

to thousands of visitors to the beautiful gardens at Kew.[72]

She was a gifted and noble woman, and her home was ever a

gathering-point for cultured and interesting people. But whether her

early and life-long intimacy with Darwin and various agnostic[73]

thinkers had resulted in her own happiness, is another question. She

always gave me the impression of being an exceedingly sad woman.

Many a time I have been inclined to regret that I did not follow her

example, and present my portfolios as a whole to the nation, as

illustrations of Greater Britain. Undoubtedly their real value was

collective, in presenting successively a number of realistic pictures of

each district in each country where I so long sojourned, and worked so

diligently.

But unless I had also been in a position to build and keep up a costly

gallery, as she had done, I knew of no means to secure a permanent

exhibition. So, after acting private show-woman till my portfolios had

become a weariness to me, I lent three or four hundred for a few months

at a time to various great exhibitions in different cities—notably the

great Indian and Colonial Exhibition in London, when each of our

colonies borrowed my portfolios of its own scenery, and generously

returned them to me in large frames, with heavy glass, whereby they

became to me a sort of white elephant, requiring stables.

All this involved a good deal of trouble, especially in re-arranging

catalogues, and no advantage whatever, beyond receiving a couple of

medals, from the Indian and Colonial, and the Forestry Exhibitions. (To

the latter I had contributed pictures of many of the largest or most

celebrated trees in the world.) So at last I made over about two hundred

and fifty of my most important pictures in India, Ceylon, New Zealand,

and the Fijian Isles to my eldest nephew, to be added to the family

travel-accumulations at Altyre and Gordonstoun. Many more are scattered

in the homes of other relations, leaving a more manageable series of

portfolios in my own hands, to be looked over on those very rare

occasions when a busy Present allows a little time to think over the

Past.

Two large portfolios containing sixty pictures in China have really

proved the most useful of all, as affording interesting illustrations of

scenes where our missionaries are at work in that great Empire, and as

such have occupied a definite place in twenty-five of the great

Missionary Exhibitions which within the last few years have been held in

many large cities. They thus help to draw attention to other exhibits of

the particular mission in which (as the final result of my far

wanderings) I have become most deeply interested.

This is what is commonly called “THE MISSION TO THE CHINESE BLIND,” a

title which only describes the primary phase of a very much more

important invention, namely, the application to the use of sighted

persons, of the same system by which the blind are so easily taught to

read and write. Those practical men who have taken the trouble to give

the invention a fair trial, all agree that it is destined to prove one

of the most valuable factors in the evangelisation of China by the

Chinese.

In order to understand its value, I must explain that one of the many

difficulties of mission-work in China is due to having no alphabet.

Instead of a simple A, B, C, there is a complicated ideograph to

represent each sound and each combination of sounds in the many dialects

of the vast empire.

It is said that in the classics of Confucius forty thousand different

ideographs are found. Happily, a knowledge of four thousand suffices to

enable a student to read such a book as our Bible; but to acquire even

these takes an average student about six years, and even when he has

attained some skill in reading, he has not begun to learn to write. It

is estimated that only about five per cent. of the men and one in two

hundred of the women in China are able to read, and these are persons of

some leisure.

But our Christian converts are all poor, hard-working people. It is in

China to-day as it was in Judea, when the Pharisees asked in derision,

“Have any of the rulers of the people believed on Christ?” None of the

rulers, but a very large number of the poor, and when once a Chinaman

does become a Christian, he does so heart and soul, and never rests till

he can persuade friends and neighbours to accept the same great Gift

which has gladdened his own life, albeit he is certain thereby sooner or

later to incur cruel persecution.

But he cannot give his neighbour a book and say, “Read this for

yourself,” for few indeed of the poor can read the difficult Chinese

characters. Hence the value of a system which will put very cheap books

in a very easy character into the hands of the poorest.

Let me give you a slight sketch of this work and of its origin. (I have

written more fully concerning it under the title _The Inventor of the

Numeral-Type for China_, printed by Gilbert and Rivington, St. John’s

House, Clerkenwell, London.) When the inventor, WILLIAM HILL MURRAY, was

a boy about nine years of age, his left arm was torn off by an accident

in a sawmill in Glasgow. Ere long he was employed as a rural postman,

carrying the mail-bag on his crippled shoulder eighteen miles daily, but

devoting his evenings to the study of Greek and Hebrew, and beguiling

his long daily tramp by the study of his Greek or Hebrew Testament.

After awhile he became convinced that in some way he was to work for

missions, so he applied to the National Bible Society of Scotland, who

employed him for seven years in selling portions of the Scriptures in

foreign languages to the crews of foreign vessels in the Clyde. All this

time he carried on his own education by rising at 3 A.M., and studying

in his humble attic till 8 A.M., when he went to the Old College for

classes till 10 A.M. Then his day of hard work as an open-air bookseller

began.

When for seven years he had thus proved his grit, the Society asked him

if he would go as a colporteur to North China. He accepted joyfully, and

putting his soul into the study of Chinese and its bewildering

ideograph, was soon able to commence work, when his exceeding courtesy

and unfailing good temper soon won him a favourable reception among a

race who have always something of reverence for everything literary.

Like every newcomer in China, he was amazed by the number of the blind

leading the blind, in doleful processions sometimes numbering from ten

to twenty, all making a hideous noise with cymbals and castanets, and

howling dismal ditties, which induce the hearers to give them

infinitesimal coin to bribe them to go and make their horrible music

elsewhere. Their great multitude is due to leprosy, neglected smallpox,

or ophthalmia, and largely to exceeding dirt.

As a general rule they bear a very bad character, but occasionally an

adult who has been a devout heathen becomes blind, and of course retains

the devout habit of mind. Now and then one of these amazed Mr. Hill

Murray by coming to buy a copy of “The Foreign Classic of Jesus” (as

they might have asked for the Classics of Confucius). They said that

they wished to possess the book, hoping that some one would read it to

them, as they wished to know what it was about.

Now, considering the exceeding poverty of these men, these purchases

were the more remarkable, and from that time Mr. Hill Murray ceaselessly

strove to devise some means by which the blind Chinese might be enabled

to read for themselves. Year after year he persevered, with small

encouragement from any one, for even other missionaries deemed the thing

quite impracticable. And for eight years all his efforts failed.

Then came the solution. As a Glasgow man, he had made his headquarters

beside Dr. Dudgeon, likewise a Glasgow man, then in charge of the

medical mission. Just about the time of Hill Murray’s arrival in Peking

a little blind baby had been added to that family, and of course became

the special pet of every one. When she was eight years old, a lady was

sent out from England to teach the little Scottish child to read by

means of Dr. Braille’s system of embossed dots, which represent the

alphabet, punctuation, and music.

Naturally Mr. Hill Murray quickly mastered these, but how could this

simple system be applied to China, which has no alphabet? As he prayed

for guiding, the thought was given to him: “Make the dots represent

numerals. Then write out all the sounds in use at Peking, with a numeral

under each, and in reading or writing only mark the number, and memory

will supply the corresponding sound.” So instead of reading A N D H E W

E N T U P, the dots all stand only for numbers, and the gliding finger

recognises 1, 26, 48, 94, 308, etc., and simultaneously the lips utter

in Chinese, AND HE WENT UP IN-TO AN EX-CEED-ING HIGH MOUNTAIN, _i.e._

one numeral suggests one sound.

Having completed this arrangement, Mr. Hill Murray selected four blind

men who were not lepers—a matter of some consequence in bringing them

under his own roof—but who were otherwise typical cases, their fingers

being either knotted with rheumatism or hardened by toil, and proceeded

to teach them. In less than three months those four poor blind beggars

could read and write fluently, far better than the majority of their

sighted countrymen could do after six years of study.

It is from this point that my interest in the subject dates, for at that

moment, quite unintentionally, I arrived not only in Peking, but

actually as a guest at the Medical Mission, where my hosts, Dr. and Mrs.

Dudgeon, assured me that three months earlier these four men were as

miserable and as ignorant as all the other blind men I saw begging in

the streets. Only a Chinaman can fully estimate the social rise involved

by such a literary triumph as the power of reading.

I said my journey to Peking was quite unintentional. In point of fact I

had so thoroughly enjoyed my five months in Southern China, from Canton

to Ningpo, that on my return to Shanghai I decided to make a clear run

thence to California on my homeward way, and I had actually secured my

ticket to Japan, _en route_ to San Francisco, when it really appeared as

if for some reason I HAD to go to Peking. All my friends in Shanghai

seemed to be seized with an unaccountable determination that I MUST go,

and though I vainly pleaded that it was a long and expensive journey,

and that, moreover, I had not the slightest wish to visit that dirty

city of “magnificent distances,” all my protestations were silenced,

till at last I consented to cancel my homeward ticket, and accompany a

very agreeable couple, who had just arrived from England, on their

return to Peking, and who most kindly undertook all the trouble of

making arrangements for me on the complicated voyage.

In the easy way in which, in those days, people in the East passed on

their friends to the assured hospitality of other friends, several of

the leading residents in Shanghai had consigned me to one of the

principal residents in Peking. Had I gone there I should most certainly

never have heard of the existence of my humble countryman, the crippled

street bookseller. But by one of those developments which men call

chance, a lady at Tientsin had occasion to send a special messenger to

the Medical Mission at Peking, and mentioned that I was on my way

thither, and so I was met by a heart-warming letter of welcome from Dr.

and Mrs. Dudgeon, inviting me to make their house my home for as long as

I cared to stay in Peking.

Thus it was that, arriving there on 5th June 1879, just when Mr. Hill

Murray’s first four blind students had mastered his system, I became an

eye and ear-witness of the perfect success of this very remarkable

invention. In fact I stood, as it were, at the fountainhead of that

which I now believe is destined to be a great river of the Water of Life

for millions yet unborn in the great Chinese Empire.

But I did not at the time realise how very wonderful it was, nor dreamt

of its infinitely wider value when it should be applied to the use of

illiterate sighted persons. I was absolutely bewildered by all the

varied novelties to be seen in and around Peking. Then I returned to

Japan for six months, and thence to the Hawaiian volcanoes, so it was

not till, in 1885, when I found leisure to write my _Wanderings in

China_, that it occurred to me to wonder how the teaching of the blind

was progressing. On inquiry I learnt with surprise that Mr. Hill Murray

was still known only as a very good colporteur who had a curious fad for

looking after blind people.

So the development of the work was still left entirely to the

self-denying efforts of a working-man, who (with just one gift from a

friend in Glasgow) had contrived, off the meagre salary intended to

support one man, to lodge, feed, and clothe upwards of a dozen men and

boys. The latter, having become blind through neglect in smallpox, had

been cast by their relatives into foul pools, there to suffocate in

filthy black mud. When washed, fed, and comforted, these small lads were

taught to read to the sick men in hospital, who never wearied of hearing

the little fellows, who read so fluently with the tips of their fingers.

One of these salvage boys actually started the School for Blind Women,

for, being under eight years of age, he was admitted to the women’s part

of a house in which a blind woman longed to acquire this wonderful new

art, which she could not possibly have been taught direct by Mr. Hill

Murray. But the small boy taught her to read, write, and play the

concertina, and then she announced her willingness to teach other blind

women, and I know of at least two women who separately persuaded their

relatives to bring them a whole month’s journey day by day in the depth

of winter, on a horribly uncomfortable Chinese wheelbarrow, jolting over

the rough, frozen rice-fields, that they might be taught by her to read

the Scriptures, and thus enriched, return to teach others in their own

villages.

In this interval Mr. Hill Murray had also devised an adaptation of the

Tonic Sol-Fa in numerals, by which he taught all his pupils to read and

write music, and also to play the accompaniments of about two hundred

hymns on harmoniums and American organs, which he had contrived to buy

very cheap, as being quite worthless. But, getting a Chinaman with two

hands to help his one hand, they replaced the rusty wires, the split

reeds, and decayed felts and leathers, and produced instruments on which

this self-taught musician taught his blind pupils so efficiently that a

number of them are now organists at different mission-stations.

When at last I realised in how great a measure this remarkable work was

still dependent on the small earnings of the inventor, then for the

first time I understood why I had been constrained to end my prolonged

aimless travels by making that journey to Peking so entirely against my

own inclination. Also, why it had been so ordered that I became a guest

at the Medical Mission at the very moment when Mr. Hill Murray’s eight

years of earnest endeavours on behalf of the blind had been so signally

crowned with success. If we believe at all in the daily guiding of our

lives, even in smallest details, as I emphatically do believe, I could

not doubt that it was clearly my duty and my privilege to tell the story

of this earnest worker, and so enable his countrymen and countrywomen to

share the honour of helping him to carry out his beneficent projects.

I accordingly did so, with such success that ere long his tiny school

was placed on a more satisfactory footing, a good business committee

undertook to do their part in forwarding his views, and arranged with

the National Bible Society that, while still devoting one-third of his

time to street bookselling (in order to keep his influence with the

people, and avoid the danger of their attributing his work for the blind

to evil magic), he should be able to employ the remainder of his time in

developing his special work.

Thus for ten years from the date of my visit to Peking we knew only that

he was engaged in a very interesting work on behalf of the blind.

But in 1889 some poor sighted Christians came to him, and urged him to

devise some easy method by which they also might learn to read rapidly,

as they could not possibly give the time, even if they had the ability,

to master the complicated Chinese characters. Very sorrowfully he

explained to them that the dots could only be felt by the finger, and

were useless to those who would read by the eyes.

In his grave perplexity he made it a matter of earnest prayer that God

would guide him to some means by which he might help these people who

did so wish to learn to read. Then in direct answer to his prayer the

thought seemed flashed into his mind, “JUST CONNECT THE DOTS BY STRAIGHT

BLACK LINES.” That was all—a very simple thought, but one which solved

the whole difficulty. By so doing, he produced a series of lines,

angles, and squares, forming the simplest set of symbols ever devised

for use in any country.

He at once realised that this was a distinct revelation for the good of

the illiterate sighted, and as soon as possible he got these simple

forms cast in metal printing-type, and gave them to his blind students,

who were embossing the Scriptures for their own use. They at once

recognised them as being their own symbols, but asked why lines had been

used instead of dots? “Because,” said Mr. Hill Murray, “YOU ARE NOW

GOING TO PRINT BOOKS FOR SIGHTED PERSONS, AND YOU WILL TEACH THEM TO

READ FROM THESE BOOKS.”

And this has proved a wonderful success. The neat-fingered blind

compositors set up the type, and when the book, perhaps one of the

Gospels, was printed, a blind man or a blind girl took a class of

perhaps a dozen sighted persons, quite ignorant field-workers or others,

and in periods ranging from six weeks to three months all would be able

to read and write, and could return to their villages to teach others,

who in their turn could carry on the chain of blessing to more remote

villages, carrying with them the cheap paper-bound books printed at the

blind school.

Now it is evident that if Mr. Hill Murray had in the first instance

tried to help the illiterate, he would certainly have experimented with

the alphabetic curved forms—so dear to us, but so obnoxious to the

Chinese, and which, moreover, would have to be adapted separately for

every variety of dialect. BUT BECAUSE HE HAD BEEN GUIDED TO WORK FIRST

FOR THE BLIND, HE HAD OF NECESSITY USED BRAILLE’S SYMBOLS, WHICH, BEING

FILLED IN WITH LINES, PRODUCE THE SIMPLEST SET OF GEOMETRIC FIGURES, AND

THESE HE HAD USED TO DENOTE NUMERALS, AND BOTH GEOMETRIC FIGURES AND

NUMERALS ARE HELD IN REVERENCE BY THE CHINESE.

Thus he was guided not only to adopt the simplest possible square and

angular forms, but these are also symbols which the people are naturally

inclined to revere.

Further, he was signally guided in having adapted his system to that

dialect of Mandarin Chinese which is spoken at Peking. For although

about three hundred and eighteen millions of the people talk Mandarin

dialects, these vary greatly in different parts of the Empire, and had

Mr. Hill Murray begun to work in any other part, even of

Mandarin-speaking China, he would have found a different number of

sounds. But from his being led to begin work at Peking, he of course

ADAPTED HIS SYSTEM TO PEKINGESE MANDARIN, AND AFTERWARDS DISCOVERED THAT

IT IS THE RECOGNISED STANDARD FOR THE WHOLE EMPIRE.

(About eighty-four million persons, chiefly along the south-east coast,

speak non-Mandarin dialects, so different from one another that each

requires a separate version of the Bible, which has been printed for

their use by the great Bible societies in the Roman alphabet, and this

the converts do learn, notwithstanding their natural repugnance to it.)

Mr. Hill Murray’s conviction is that by his system one version, with

slight modifications for certain provinces, can be used wherever

Mandarin is spoken. Of course it has opponents among missionaries who

have already agonised over having to learn the four thousand essential

Chinese characters, and would much prefer that the illiterate converts

should have to learn to read by the alphabet, than that they themselves

should have the trouble of learning the numeral system.

On the other hand, those missionaries who have given the numeral system

a fair trial, are unanimous in their praise of it, and if any one is

sufficiently interested by this brief outline to care to know more, if

he will send 1s. 9d. to my printers, Messrs. Gilbert and Rivington (as

aforesaid), he will receive my little “yellow book,” and on pages 139 to

160 he will find the testimony of many men who have used the system and

pronounce it an unqualified success.

Some of its strongest advocates are workers in Manchuria, where the last

thirty years have wrought such great progress in Christian work. At that

time there were virtually no Christians in that great province. Mr. Hill

Murray had the gladness of selling the very first copy of the Scriptures

which was carried thither by Mr. Wang, who became instrumental in

beginning to arouse attention. Then a small medical mission was

established, and from that centre the light radiated. By the year 1900

there were fully twenty-five thousand staunch Manchurian Christians, and

upwards of a thousand of these who, one by one, came to the missionaries

to ask for baptism stated that their conversion was due to the teaching

and example of one of the blind men trained by Mr. Hill Murray.

The story of that man is very striking. He was known as Chang, the Blind

Apostle of Manchuria. Alas! we now have to say “Apostle and Martyr.” He

was one of those who came to the Medical Mission at Moukden to see

whether his sight could be restored. That was impossible, but he opened

his whole heart to receive the teaching there given. He said, “I have

been all my life studying the systems of Taou, Buddha, and Confucius,

and there is not a grain of comfort in one of them. But to hear of a

Friend who cares for me is very different. I will be His servant for

ever.” Very soon he craved baptism. But a lengthened probation is always

required, and six months elapsed ere it was possible to follow him to

his mountain home. During that time, he preached his new faith so

earnestly that a considerable number of his neighbours desired to be

baptized with him. Nine were so unmistakably in earnest, that they were

received with him. Others were required to wait for further instruction.

His friend (the Rev. James Webster) said to Chang that he feared he had

already been subjected to considerable persecution for his faith, but he

replied that it was not worth speaking about, he had been so cheered by

a wonderful dream. “A dream? what was it?” Then he told how he had

dreamt that his Lord had appeared to him in radiant light, had put a

book in his hand, and then vanished. He added: “Of course I know it was

only a dream, but it was so vivid that it has been a real comfort to

me.”

His friend had the presence of mind to reply, “It was no dream; it was a

true vision, for THE BOOK is now put into the hands of the blind, but in

all Manchuria there is no one competent to teach you to read it. If you

are going on teaching others, you must go all the way to Peking to be

taught to read.”

It was a wearily long journey for a blind man. A hundred miles on foot

through the forests back to Moukden; then by boat down the river to the

sea-coast, thence by ship across the Yellow Sea, then hiring another

boat to go up the Peiho to Peking. But the blind man faced it all,

chiefly to please Mr. Webster, for he did not believe that he could

really be taught to read. But like the others, within three months he

could read, write, and play the concertina to accompany the hymns he

loved to sing.

Mr. Hill Murray tried to persuade him to stay at Peking for a course of

theological training. But he replied, “I would love to stay with you to

learn all that you can teach me, but none of my people in Manchuria ever

heard about JESUS and HIS offer of the gift of Eternal Life, and now

that I know this, do you think I can keep it to myself? No, I must go

and tell my people.” So he returned to Manchuria, and thenceforward till

the day of his martyrdom he never ceased going up and down the steep

mountain-passes, feeling his way along difficult mountain-paths and

visiting all the villages hidden in the valleys. He preached with such

earnestness that, as I said just now, upwards of a thousand men came one

by one to ask for baptism, because they were convinced from Chang’s life

that his teaching must be good.

His marvellous memory helped him right well, for as he constantly read

the Holy Scriptures with his finger-tips, he seemed to see the very

words ever before him, and he not only knew by heart the whole of the

New Testament, the Psalms, and several other books of the Old Testament,

and the two hundred and forty hymns in the hymn-book, but if you named

any chapter and verses, he could at once begin at the right verse, and

quote faultlessly to the exact word indicated.

Of course he was a very marked man, and as soon as the Boxers came to

his village they seized him, and with him a young sighted Christian,

who, however, could not face all the horrors and the bloodshed. So he

burnt the little stick of incense at Buddha’s shrine, and they let him

go. He had thereby denied the faith. But old blind Chang stood stedfast.

They forced him on to his knees, and bade him worship Buddha. He said:

“I am on my knees, but not to that idol. I am kneeling to my Lord

Jesus.” Then one took a sword and cut off his head, and then they

chopped up his body into bits, that in the spirit-world it might be

recognised as that of a malefactor decapitated and mutilated—a doom of

terror in the eyes of all except decided Christians.

Through much opposition and amid many difficulties Mr. Hill Murray held

calmly on his way, gradually developing his system, and as home interest

increased, we were at length able to secure really good old Chinese

houses, which were transformed into good schools for blind men and blind

women. There we had good printing-presses, where all were busily at

work, useful and happy. Then in an evil hour came the Boxer troubles.

Happily Mrs. Hill Murray and her children were not in Peking during that

awful siege. The four eldest were at Bishop Scott’s school for

missionaries’ children at Tientsin, and were with the Bishop and Mrs.

Scott during the bombardment of that city. Their parents and the younger

children were at the sea-coast, whence Mr. Murray hurried back to Peking

to be with his poor blind people.

The Mandarins came and told him that if he was found there by the

Boxers, his presence would inevitably lead to a general massacre, but

that if he would join the other foreigners at the British Legation, they

would put Chinese soldiers to guard his schools and all would be well.

Having no option in the matter, he obeyed, and shared in all the horrors

of that appalling nine weeks’ siege, the memory of which must for ever

haunt all who survived it.

But even in that awful time there were gleams of wondrous light for

those who looked for them, such as in that hour of direst peril, when

the Chinese in their mad determination to destroy the foreigners,

resolved to set fire to their own most precious national library, the

Hanlin, which was so situated that, should it catch fire while the wind

was blowing from that quarter, the fate of the British Legation was

inevitable. As a measure of self-defence, that building should have been

at once destroyed, but reverence for its antiquity and for the national

archives therein stored made the besieged resolve to spare it, feeling

convinced that the Chinese would likewise endeavour to save it from

harm.

So they could scarcely believe their eyes when they saw the besiegers

commence piling cases all round the building, which were unmistakably

cases of kerosene! Soon a strong wind set in from that quarter; and when

they saw a Chinaman deliberately set these on fire, all felt that their

doom was sealed. Another moment, and with a wild, rushing sound the

flames commenced sweeping towards the Legation. Then those who believed

that even then, HE, at WHOSE bidding the raging wind and the waves of

Gennesaret were stilled, could stay the progress of the flames, united

in a brief agonised prayer—such real prayer of faith as perhaps does not

often rise to heaven.

Suddenly the wild roaring of the wind and flames ceased, the flames rose

straight to heaven, not a breath stirred, there was a great calm. Even

those whose prayer had so mightily availed looked one to another,

bewildered—all were bewildered. Then once more the soughing of the wind

recommenced. What did it forebode? Were they after all to perish by

fire? No! THE WIND DID INDEED RISE AGAIN, BUT FROM QUITE ANOTHER

QUARTER, CARRYING THE FLAMES RIGHT AWAY FROM THE LEGATION, WHICH WAS

THUS MIRACULOUSLY SAVED. The great Answerer of Prayer had once more

proved “a very present help in time of trouble.”

The secular papers (and some who might have known better than to be

ashamed of giving the only clue to this story of a great deliverance)

all described this hour of awful peril, and all added: “At this moment,

when destruction appeared inevitable, A TOTALLY UNACCOUNTABLE CHANGE OF

THE WIND carried the flames in a new direction, and the danger was

averted.” I suppose many answers to believing prayer do appear

unaccountable to those who only see results.

But although these lives were spared, doubtless to accomplish special

work on earth, the great enemy was allowed to triumph appallingly in

other places. Upwards of two hundred European and American missionaries,

and according to the lowest computation, fully twenty thousand Chinese,

who were either Christians or closely associated with them, were

barbarously put to death.

Often as we repeat in the _Te Deum_, “The noble army of martyrs praise

Thee,” do we ever give a thought to the Chinese contingent of twenty

thousand added to that army in A.D. 1900? and to the thousands of

Japanese martyrs prior to the year 1870 (in which year eight hundred

families of Christians were scattered and deported from lovely Nagasaki

to bleak districts in the Northern Isle, one and all expressing their

determination to die, as so many of their brave countrymen and women had

already done, sooner than abjure the Christian religion).

When the arrival of the allies enabled the besieged missionaries to

go forth to their homes, they found nothing but ruin and

desolation—churches and schools totally destroyed, and converts

massacred. Mr. Hill Murray found only blackened earth to mark the

spot where his flourishing schools and printing-presses had stood.

The Chinese soldiers placed to guard them had decamped on the

approach of the Boxers, who had rushed in and martyred all the blind

women and girls, and as many as they could catch of the blind men.

Some of the latter mercifully escaped. When they had thoroughly

ransacked and plundered the mission-house, and destroyed what they

could not remove, they set fire to the whole, and the beautiful

carved wood and other well-seasoned timber of the old Chinese houses

formed a funeral-pyre which utterly consumed every vestige of the

massacres.

Then all foreigners who could possibly be spared, left Peking in search

of much-needed change and rest. But sorely as he, too, needed it, Mr.

Hill Murray utterly refused to leave the city of awful death till he had

hunted through its slums for any of his blind men who might be in

hiding. In order to prepare a home to which to bring them, he took

possession of an empty, deserted house, and there established himself

under protection of the Union Jack. After months of patient search he

found, one by one, about seven of his blind men, and two or three of his

sighted helpers, and also learned that two of his blind men had made

their way safely fully three hundred miles across country haunted by

Boxers, straight back to their own villages.

All this time he was carrying on very troublesome negotiations with the

leading Mandarins, to secure new premises in which to re-establish his

work. This was only accomplished by their anxiety to induce him to

vacate the house he occupied, which proved to be Imperial property. He

was kept perpetually going to and fro over the huge city, exhausted by

suffocating, midsummer heat, and constantly exposed to such pitiless

rain that for four months he never knew the luxury of dry clothes. This

brought on torturing neuralgia in the head, and such excruciating agony

in the right eye that for months he was unable to read or write.

Still he struggled on, till at last he secured suitable Chinese houses

which could be adapted to his purpose. He had also the satisfaction of

receiving from Shanghai a case of numeral-type which we had just sent

out from Edinburgh, and which we feared had been melted down for

bullets! He also succeeded in buying a small printing-press from

Shanghai, and forthwith setting his men to work. And so the first book

printed in Peking after the Reign of Terror was an edition of a thousand

copies of the Gospel of St. John for sighted persons, printed in

Murray’s numeral-type, by blind survivors.

Truly pathetic was the joy of many of the recipients who had lost

everything they possessed, including their precious books, but who in

several instances had written out large portions of the Gospels from

memory, and were actually teaching some of their neighbours to read from

these manuscripts!

At length, when he had got his new premises and the poor remnant of his

scholars into thorough working order, Mr. Hill Murray quite broke down,

and was sent to London by the doctor, to see what could be done for him.

Of course the first care was for his precious sight, and he was received

as an in-patient at the Royal Eye Hospital in the City Road. Alas! it

was at once pronounced that the excruciating agony he had so bravely

endured, was due to _glaucōma_, and that it had left the right eye

totally blind, and the left seriously damaged, and exposed to the future

danger of a similar attack of _glaucōma_—a most pathetic result of his

devoted care for his blind pupils.

That poor dimmed eye is an abiding badge of heroism. Never was V.C. more

gallantly won in the service of poor, defenceless creatures, than this

most honourable scar. Had Mr. Hill Murray left Peking to seek treatment

when the agony commenced, the sight of the right eye might probably have

been saved. But had he once vacated the deserted house which he occupied

and held as a hostage for the three burnt properties of the Mission, he

would have lost his hold on the Mandarins, who would not have helped him

to secure new premises, except to induce him to remove himself and his

blind men from that house. But this great gain to his Mission has proved

for himself a dearly-bought triumph.

The three months of awful anxiety, followed by many months of hardship

and privation, had proved well-nigh as calamitous to his wife’s health

as to his own, but the terrible expense of the journey for so large a

family made her resolve to remain in China with her children. Soon,

however, she broke down so completely that the doctor shipped the whole

party to London, whence they all came to Scotland, to Joppa—a seaside

suburb of Edinburgh, where a year of Scottish sea breezes wrought such

wonders for them all, that a twelvemonth later the whole party, father,

mother, seven children, and two young men, practical printers, sailed to

recommence work at Peking.

We can only hope that, as for the last fifty years Mr. Hill Murray has

done more work for his fellow-men with one arm than most people do with

two, so he may be enabled with the partial sight of one eye to continue

his work of blessing for China’s millions. I felt it inexpressibly

pathetic to see him gazing wistfully at his happy, bonnie bairns, with

all their life before them, and taking comfort in the thought that if he

MUST face the possibility of a trial so awful as that of total

blindness, he has seven pairs of bright young eyes to see for him.

It had been supposed that it would be deemed desirable to leave the

elder children in Scotland, and it had been a matter of serious anxiety

how to get them disposed of. Happily the parents soon solved that

difficulty by their determination not to part from even one of their

flock. For they said: “They were all given to us in China, and we must

take them back to China, there to train them all to work for China.” And

this was the wish of all those little Scottish children, who claim China

as their loved native land, and longed to return to their dear Chinese

friends, both blind and sighted. Thus they will retain their valuable

birthright, which is a perfect knowledge of the purest Mandarin Chinese,

and they all hope as they grow up, to be of real use in developing their

father’s schemes for benefiting the illiterate classes of China.

Can you wonder that, from having been an eyewitness of this work from

its very beginning, and having for the last fifteen years been in

constant correspondence with all concerned in it, it has become to me an

ever-increasing source of interest, both as regards its extension in

China and the endeavour to increase PRACTICAL interest in it in this

country. As I have already said, any one desiring further information

can obtain it by sending for my “yellow book,” _The Inventor of the

Numeral-Type for China_, and subscriptions in aid of any branch of the

work will be welcomed either by the OFFICIAL TREASURER, JAMES DRUMMOND,

ESQ., CHARTERED ACCOUNTANT, 58 BATH STREET, GLASGOW; or by me, MISS C.

F. GORDON-CUMMING, COLLEGE HOUSE, CRIEFF, SCOTLAND.

For as the very extensive correspondence connected with this work makes

it necessary for me to have a permanent address from which my letters

can be daily forwarded, I some years ago secured a couple of rooms at

Crieff, in a house which has the merit of being probably the oldest in

that little town, and into these I have crammed so many of my travel

treasures and home pictures, as to be continual reminders of a larger

past. And here I can test to the full that power of adaptation to

circumstances which has stood me in such good stead in many lands (as it

did to St. Paul in his more serious variations!)

In chapter ix. I have chronicled the events which led a very dear sister

to make her home in Perthshire. On my return from my prolonged travels,

that home became my headquarters. At that time Crieff (which has now

become such a centre of attraction to summer visitors) was quite a small

town, and pleasant open fields and shady lanes, overshadowed by fine old

trees, extended in every direction; now most of the noble trees have

been felled, and the quiet lanes are replaced by terraces of comfortable

villas and small gardens, extending along the face of “the Knock,” so

that there are few houses which do not command a fine view of either the

Grampians or the Ochils.

Of all these houses, few are externally so unpromising as the ugly block

of buildings at the top of the High Street known as “College Buildings”

and entered from the street. They are as hideous as plaster and brown

paint can make them—only from one attic window can we see one side of

the tower, which has been spared by the plasterers, and reveals the fine

rough blocks of red sandstone of which the college was built. We enter

from the street, but so suddenly does the ground fall, that the back

windows command the finest and most extensive view of Strath Earn,

bounded on the horizon by the whole low range of the Ochils, stretching

right from east to west.

The attention of strangers is often arrested by the ugly painted tower,

capped by a small spire, and also by a church window, which looks

strangely incongruous at the end of a wing, now transformed into a

number of small flats, but any inquiry as to their origin will only

elicit the information that it was once a ladies’ college. In order to

rescue an interesting history from oblivion, I have noted the following

details from the lips of one who lived in the college fifty years ago,

and was vividly interested in all concerning it.

Its excellent site was selected towards the close of the eighteenth

century by Dr. Malcolm, who thereon built a central house, with wings on

either side, as a college for medical students. A high wall enclosed the

large garden, sloping to the south, and forming the foreground to the

grand panorama beyond. So the young men studied amid pleasant

surroundings, but at Dr. Malcolm’s death the college was broken up. The

buildings, however, long retained the name of “Malcolm’s Houses,” and

the garden wall was known as “Malcolm’s Wall.”

The side wings of what had been the medical college were now divided

into sets of two rooms, eight on each side of the central building.

These were tenanted by sixteen families, almost all hand-loom weavers,

whose busy shuttles and cheery songs were heard by those passing along

the street. About a dozen more weavers and their families occupied small

cottages facing the college.

One of these was owned by Duncan M‘Nab, who acted as “weavers’ agent.”

Week by week he distributed the huge balls of cotton, which they wove

into striped and checked ginghams for tropical countries. My informant

vividly remembers how on a Saturday morning she often saw forty or more

weavers, either receiving these huge balls, or bringing in their

“cuts”—_i.e._, a portion of their “web” (pieces of gingham), for which

they received part payment, or “subsistence-money,” for the next week,

the balance being paid when the web, consisting of several pieces, was

complete.

At that time there were upwards of six hundred hand-loom weavers living

in Crieff—both men and women—their houses being all down the High

Street, Comrie Street, Bridgend, Commissioner Street, Galvelmore Street,

and Burrell Street. Now I believe that not one remains.

The centre of the college was next divided between the police and the

Episcopalians of Crieff, the police-constables occupying the ground

floor, and the basement (including the present kitchen, scullery,

larder, etc.) being divided into cells for prisoners, while the large

drawing-room on the upper floor was used on week-days as a school for

about fifty children of Episcopalian parents, and on Sundays for

services conducted by Mr. Wildman, who was curate to Mr. Lendrum, Vicar

of the Episcopal Church at Muthill (three miles distant).

[Illustration:

ELLIOTT & FRY

]

Ere long Mr. Lendrum succeeded in getting the small Episcopal Church of

St. Michael built in Lodge Street, in the lower part of the town. He

then resigned his charge at Muthill, and came to live at Bank Place, in

Crieff. Very soon he found an opportunity to buy the college buildings,

and having ejected all the inhabitants, he remodelled the whole,

transforming them into a commodious college, thenceforth known as St.

Margaret’s College, for sixty Episcopalian girls, some of whom came from

the south of England. They were taught by four resident governesses—two

English, one French, and one German; also by music and drawing-masters,

who came twice a week from Edinburgh and Glasgow, travelling by rail as

far as Greenloaning, whence the coach brought them to Crieff, returning

next day. The standard of teaching, as proved by printed examination

papers and replies, was excellent. Dr. Wordsworth, Bishop of St.

Andrews, was visiting director.

Externally the building now assumed a rigidly conventual aspect. With

the exception of the lancet windows of the chapel in the east wing, with

a door to admit favoured members of the congregation, and the

entrance-door in the centre of the college, surmounted with a cross,

nothing was seen from the street save a dead wall, without a single

window. Those shown in a now very rare engraving were a survival of the

older days, but all built up: the dormitories in each wing, and the

other rooms on the street side being lighted only by skylight.

On either side of the entrance-door were music-rooms, glazed like a

greenhouse, occupying the space which is now laid down in grass. The

ecclesiastical-looking window, still so conspicuous as seen from

Dollerie Terrace, and so incongruous in its present surroundings, was

that of St. Margaret’s Chapel, where the girls met for daily morning and

evening church service. A large organ in the loft between the

dining-hall and chapel was played by one of the governesses, an

excellent musician. But on Sundays and high festivals about seventy-five

persons from the college marched two and two down to St. Michael’s

Church, at the further end of the town. On Whitsunday all the girls wore

white dresses, forming a pretty procession.

The central house was occupied by the Lendrum family, the resident

governesses, and a family of boarders from Calcutta; and many leading

members of the Episcopal Church, such as Bishop Wordsworth, Dean Torry,

Provost Fortescue of St. Ninian’s Cathedral; and Captain the Hon. A. Hay

Drummond of Cromlix, met from time to time in the large dining-room.

The kitchen and laundries were situated near the chapel; and here we

touch on a weak point, for in those days the pure and abundant waters of

Loch Turret had not been enlisted to bring health and cleanliness to the

town, and in this large house, as in its humbler neighbours, there was

neither water nor drainage. There was, indeed, a pump in the middle of

the garden, but in summer it ran dry, so all the year round, twice or

three times a day, a water-cart brought water from the burn at

Tomaknock, on the Dollerie road.

But for drinking, the house-maidens fetched water in pails from a spring

half-way down the High Street, and were much chaffed by the weavers on

account of their caps. In the forenoon all, even the youngest girls,

wore large “mutches,” such as were then invariably worn by old women;

but in the afternoon these were replaced by smart caps, gaily trimmed,

and having long streamers of bright-coloured ribbon. Neat white aprons

were essential. Although there were thirteen of these maidens, their

wages were not so serious an item as they would be now, as the majority

only received £3 or £4, and the upper servants £8 per annum.

What with the very inadequate water-supply and other exceedingly

defective sanitary arrangements, the school was subject to frequent

outbreaks of illness—measles, scarlet fever, and whooping-cough. But

after thirteen years typhoid fever broke out, of so virulent a type that

two of the girls died, as did also the French governess. The latter was

buried at Innerpeffray. Of course the students were dispersed, never to

meet again, the financial affairs of the college being found to be in a

hopeless muddle.

Mr. Lendrum continued for some years to carry on a similar school near

London, on a larger and more expensive scale. It was known as St.

Margaret’s College, Fulham. After a while that also came to grief

financially.

Once more the college buildings in the High Street came into the market,

and were next bought by the Roman Catholic Priest, who, with others,

lived in them for a while.

Ere long they were sold to the Trustees of Morrison’s Academy, and used

as a temporary house for the Rector (Rev. William Ogilvie) and his

boarders, until the permanent house at the Academy was built. So Mr.

Ogilvie occupied the central house, and his boys occupied the

dormitories in the wings. He was succeeded by Mr. Tyacke, whose lamented

death was partly attributed to his haste in removing into the new house

aforesaid ere the plaster was fully dry.

The college buildings were next bought by Mr. Donaldson, builder, who

once again transformed the two wings into a number of small flats, just

as when they were purchased by Mr. Lendrum. The centre, which is

distinguished as being “College House,” continues to be an old-fashioned

private residence, which is let as lodgings. Its once sombre old

dining-room is now my pleasant sitting-room, where, surrounded by the

pictures and treasures collected in many climes, I can recall those

sunny lands, while watching the ever-changing lights and shadows, all

effects of sunshine or storm sweeping by turns over the fertile valley

of the Earn and the peaceful Ochils.

As I am jotting down memories of matters of local interest, which are in

danger of being forgotten in the rush of modern life, I think I must

refer to an old Crieff legend, which, when I first knew the town some

forty years ago, was generally known. It refers to the hill called

“Callum’s Hill,” about ten minutes’ walk from my door. It faces the

house and park of Fern Tower, which, like itself, is the property of our

cousin, Lord Abercromby. In the park a few large boulders still remain,

of what a hundred years ago was still a very fine Druidic circle, much

frequented at Hallowe’en and May morning or “Beltane” (the ancient

spring and autumn fire-festivals) by the lads and lassies, who here kept

up the old customs of sun-wise turns, and sitting round a bonfire

shuffling for bits of oat-cake, leaping across the fire, etc.

The legend was that St. Columba came to Crieff, and ascending the hill

overlooking the stones whence the Druids worshipped the rising sun, he

taught the people of the true Sun of Righteousness already risen to be

the Light of the World. It was on account of this tradition, which he

had known all his life, that old Mr. Murray of Dollerie suggested to the

congregation of the new Episcopal Church at Crieff, very near this hill,

that it should be called St. Columba—a suggestion which was at once

adopted. But so little do the present generation know of old tradition,

that you will probably find no one who knows anything beyond the fact

that the hill is Callum’s Hill, but who Callum was they neither know nor

care.

POSTSCRIPT

And now (having returned to that corner of Scotland in which I hope that

my beloved body will some day be laid to rest in the sweet God’s-acre at

Ochtertyre), for the benefit of friends who may not be acquainted with

Mr. Cosmo Monkhouse’s address of a soul to its dying body, I cannot

refrain from quoting lines which so exactly describe the feelings of one

whose soul-case has for well-nigh seventy years ministered so faithfully

to every requirement of an exacting mistress.

ANY SOUL TO ANY BODY.[74]

“So we must part, my body, you and I,

Who’ve spent so many pleasant years together,

’Tis sorry work to lose your company,

Who clove to me so close, whate’er the weather,

From winter unto winter, wet or dry;

But you have reached the limit of your tether,

And I must journey on my way alone,

And leave you quietly beneath a stone.

“They say that you are altogether bad

(Forgive me, ’tis not my experience),

And think me very wicked to be sad

At leaving you, a clod, a prison, whence

To get quite free I should be very glad.

Perhaps I may be so some few days hence,

But now, methinks, ’twere graceless not to spend

A tear or two on my departing friend.

· · · · ·

“But you must stay, dear body, and I go.

And I was once so very proud of you;

You made my mother’s eyes to overflow

When first she saw you, wonderful and new,

And now, with all your faults, ’twere hard to find

A slave more willing, or a friend more true.

Ay, even they who say the worst about you

Can scarcely tell what I shall do without you.”

AT LAST.

“When on my day of life the night is falling,

And, in the winds from unsunned spaces blown,

I hear far voices out of darkness calling

My feet to paths unknown.

“THOU WHO hast made my home of life so pleasant,

Leave not its tenant when its walls decay;

O LOVE DIVINE, O HELPER ever present,

Be THOU my strength and stay.

“Be near me when all else is from me drifting—

Earth, sky, home’s pictures, days of shade and shine,

And kindly faces to my own unlifting

The love which answers mine.

“I have but THEE, O FATHER! Let THY SPIRIT

Be with me, then, to comfort and uphold,

No gate of pearl, no branch of palm I merit,

Nor street of shining gold.

“Suffice it if—my good and ill unreckoned,

And both forgiv’n through THY abounding grace—

I find myself by hands familiar beckoned

Unto my fitting place.

“Some humble door among THY many mansions,

Some sheltering shade where sin and striving cease,

And flows for ever through heaven’s green expansions

The river of THY peace.

“There from the music round about me stealing,

I fain would learn the new and holy song,

And find, at last, beneath THY trees of healing,

The LIFE for which I long.”

WHITTIER.

“I know WHOM I have believed, and am persuaded that HE is able to keep

that which I have committed unto HIM against that Day.”—2 TIMOTHY i. 12.

APPENDIX

NOTE A

_The Wolf of Badenoch_

From the fact that the lands of Badenoch were so long held by my

ancestors, the Comyns of Badenoch, it has often been assumed that the

fierce “Wolfe of Badenoch” was a Comyn. This, happily, was not the case,

though he held broad lands wrested from the Comyns, and dwelt in their

old Castle of Lochindorb.

The ruthless Wolf was Lord Alexander Stewart, fourth son of King Robert

the Second, who died A.D. 1390, by whom he was created Earl of Buchan,

when that title was forfeited by Comyn in 1374. He was also made Earl of

Ross in right of his wife, Eufame, Countess of Ross, in right of whom he

held the Thanedom and Castle of Dingwall, the Baronies of Skye and the

Lewes, lands in Caithness, Sutherland, Inverness, Nairn, Athol,

Banffshire, and Perth, the latter including Forgandenny and Kinfauns,

while from his royal father he obtained, besides Badenoch, Abernethy,

and other lands of the Comyns, those of Robert de Chisholm in

Inverness-shire, and Strathaven in Banffshire, and was created King’s

Lieutenant for all the North of Scotland. So he was a most powerful

noble, who could brook no contradiction.

When he found that his wife Eufame bore him no children, he sought

another love, Mariota, daughter of Athyn, by whom he had five

illegitimate sons, Sir Alexander, Sir Andrew, Walter, James, and Duncan.

These all grew up as fierce as their father, each drawing to himself a

company of wild Highlanders, reckless freebooters who carried fire and

sword throughout the country. The eldest stormed the Castle of

Kildrummy, which belonged to the Countess of Mar, and either compelled

or prevailed on her to become his wife, whereupon he assumed the title

of Earl of Mar. After this rude wooing, he employed his energies in the

service of his country, and was twice ambassador to England.

But the chapter in the Wolf’s history which chiefly affected Morayshire

was when, having incurred the censure of the Church for forsaking his

wife, he in revenge took possession of the Bishop of Moray’s lands in

Badenoch, whereupon he was solemnly excommunicated. To avenge this step,

he swooped down from his mountain stronghold at Lochindorb, burnt the

town of Forres, with the Church of St. Lawrence and the manor of the

Archdeacon, and a month later dealt likewise with Elgin, which, being

almost entirely built of wood, was quickly consumed, as were also the

Church of St. Giles, “the House of God, ‘Domus Dei,’ near Elgyn,

eighteen noble and beautiful manses of the canons and chaplains, and the

noble and highly adorned Church of Moray, the delight of the country and

ornament of the kingdom, with all the books, charters, and other goods

of the country placed therein.”

Eventually the proud Wolf submitted to the Church, and by special

commission from the Bishop of Moray to Lord Walter Trail, Bishop of St.

Andrews, he was absolved from the sentence of excommunication, in

presence of his royal brother and many great nobles at Perth, outside

the doors of the Church of the Predicate Brothers, and afterwards before

the High Altar, on condition that he should make satisfaction to the

Church of Moray, and also that he should send to Rome to obtain the

Pope’s special absolution.

He died in 1394, and was buried in the choir of the Cathedral Church of

Dunkeld, where a mutilated but still stately monument of a knight

recumbent in full armour bears his name as “Senescallus Comes de Buchan

et Dominus de Badenoch, _bonæ memoriæ_.”

NOTE B

_The Lowlands of Moray_

Probably in no part of Scotland has the whole face of Nature been so

entirely changed within the last four hundred years, as in “The Laich of

Moray,” namely, that low-lying portion of the county of Elgin or Moray

traversed by the railway which connects Aberdeen with Inverness.

In comparing Moray of the present day with the ancient province of

Morayland, we must first of all remember how very much larger was the

tract of country formerly bearing this name, and which included the

present counties of Inverness, Nairn, and Elgin, extending eastward to

Buchan and Mar, and south along the valley of the Spey as far as

Badenoch. Thus, when King Robert Bruce erected his lands in Moray into

an earldom, they extended from Fochabers on the east to Glengarry and

Glenelg on the western sea-coast. Early overrun by Norsemen, and often

invaded by the Danes, Morayland has ever held a prominent position in

the history of Scotland, and the blood of the old sea-kings doubtless

accounts for much of the turbulence of the Moray men of old, and the

vigour on which they pride themselves to this day.

Of their ancient turbulence there is proof enough in the record of

kingly murders here perpetrated; for though history goes to prove that

Macbeth killed King Duncan in fair open fight near Elgin, there is

little doubt that King Malcolm the First and King Duffus were both

murdered at the Castle of Forres, and a certain King Donald was slain in

the same district.

In short, the men of Moray ever strove so hard for independence that it

has been said to puzzle antiquarians to decide whether at length

Scotland annexed Morayland, or Moray absorbed all the rest of Scotland!

That the former was the true solution must, however, be conceded;

inasmuch as we find that, A.D. 1160, King Malcolm IV., having conquered

the men of Moray, endeavoured to break their power by transplanting

large bodies into other counties, extending from Caithness in the north

to Galloway in the south, thereby, of course, greatly benefiting these

other races!

Having once obtained a footing in the province, these Scottish kings

showed themselves so well pleased with it, that they established royal

castles at Forres, Elgin, and Banff, and had other hunting-seats

besides. The ecclesiastical powers also showed a full appreciation of a

climate which has ever been accounted nearer to that of Devonshire than

of any other part of Britain—in fact, local tradition gives it credit

for forty days of fine weather in the twelvemonth in excess of any other

part of Scotland.

Although always noted for this excellent climate, and also for the

exceeding fertility of its soil, its agriculture appears to have

continued greatly inferior to that of the Southern Lowlands till the

beginning of the present century; so that Morayshire farmers may with

just pride point to its present high state of cultivation and the

perfection of their cattle as among the most notable changes of Moray.

As regards cultivation, Moray now acknowledges no superior in Britain,

though she admits Lincoln and Norfolk to be her worthy rivals; while, as

regards her herds of polled cattle, the Smithfield prize-list tells its

tale year by year, and Morayshire farmers will not soon forget the

unprecedented circumstance that _the two finest beasts_ in the

Smithfield show for 1881, selected to compete for the Champion Medal[75]

(the highest honour that can be attained by a British farmer) were

_both_ bred and exhibited by the same man, and that he hailed from the

Laich of Moray!

Altogether, there is a good deal to justify the pride with which the

many Moray men scattered all over the earth ever speak of this their

special fatherland, and their innate conviction that the world itself

could not get on without “the Moray loons.”[76] The feeling was

admirably exemplified by the reply of a Morayshire gardener when asked

his opinion of the English among whom his lot was cast. “Weel,” said he,

“I’ve nae great faut tae find with the Sassenach, but I maun remark that

_for meenisters or gairdeners, or onything needing head-wark, ye maun

come tae us in the North!_”

They will not, however, always give full credit even to the said

ministers, for I remember the comment of an old man who kept my

brother’s lodge, and whose verdict on his minister was that he was of no

more account than the figure 9 with the tail cut off!

Craving forgiveness of all southern readers for quoting (of course

sympathetically!) this tribute to the dear land which gave me birth, I

would now draw attention to some really remarkable changes in the

relations of flood and fell, land and water, which have here been

effected, partly by drainage and partly by natural causes, and also to

various alterations in the fauna of the province.

In the old historical days, vast tracts of the land now under

cultivation were all beast-haunted forest, wherein wolves lingered long

after they had been exterminated in more accessible regions. There were

also great expanses of marsh-land dotted with numerous fresh-water

lochs, while the coast was intersected by tidal channels and harbours,

some of which have wholly vanished, while others are so altered as to

render it difficult to trace their ancient boundaries.

Under the head of vanished waters, we may class the ancient lochs of

Cotts, Inchstellie, Inverlochty, Keam, Outlet, Rose-isle, the Laveroch

Loch, and the great Loch of Spynie, all of which have disappeared within

the last two centuries, chiefly under the prosaic influence of drainage.

By far the largest of these, and the most important loch in the province

of Moray, was that of Spynie, which has undergone such a singular

succession of changes as to make its history one of unique interest. In

the records of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries it figures as an

estuary of the sea—a secure harbour of refuge, on whose shores stood the

ancient burgh of Spynie—a fisher-town, whose inhabitants were vassals of

those mighty lords temporal and spiritual, the Bishops of Moray.

Strange to say, as years rolled on, the ceaseless labour of the waves

(aided by the rivers Lossie and Spey, which supplied a multitude of

great boulders and masses of gravel) resulted in the formation along the

coast of such enormous breakwaters in the form of great terraced banks

of huge shingle that, by about the fifteenth century, the sea at last

found itself excluded from the harbour by its own work.

Thenceforward the isolated loch gradually changed from salt water to

brackish, and then became fresh. No longer tenanted by sea-fish and

oysters, fresh-water creatures began to appear and to multiply. As the

waters expanded more and more, they overspread the cultivated lands on

every side, transforming them to sedgy swamps, which soon were peopled

by shy, man-fearing wild creatures, and became the favourite

breeding-ground of all manner of water-fowl—a true paradise for

naturalists and sportsmen.

Towards the close of the eighteenth century the neighbouring proprietors

united in such energetic efforts to recover their lost lands that

extensive drainage-works were commenced, and the area of water greatly

reduced. But such difficulties were encountered that, for the first half

of the last century, the Loch of Spynie held its place as a most

attractive feature in the landscape, as its blue waters faithfully

mirrored the noble old tower of the Bishop’s Palace, and offered a

resting-place to immense flocks of wild swans, wild geese, and rare

birds innumerable. Many a day of delight have we spent among those reedy

inlets, where all my brothers taught themselves the natural history of

their own home ere seeking wider fields for sport in distant lands.

But about the year 1860 agricultural interest carried the day, and the

prospective value of the reclaimable lands lent new energy to the

proprietors. Now only one little corner of blue lake remains to tell of

the vanished waters—a little lakelet covering about eighty acres, with

reedy shores extending over half as much more. But all the rest is

transformed into rich arable land, beautiful only to the eye of the

farmer—a dead level, which for some years waved golden in the autumn

sunlight with heavy wheat-crops. But Californian competition having

taught the Moray farmers to rely rather on their beasts than on their

grain, turnips now carry the day, and afford cover for the more

commonplace game which has replaced the strange and interesting

creatures, now for ever departed.

Both the climate and the soil of “the Laich of Moray” rank exceptionally

high. Of the former, as I have already observed, it is locally said to

have forty days more sunshine in the year than any other part of

Scotland. The old records tell that in the grievous famine which caused

so much suffering in the end of the sixteenth century, Moray alone was

exempt, and that meal-merchants came all the way from Forfarshire to buy

the surplus produce, for which they paid very heavily, and, moreover,

had the great cost and toil of transport across the Grampians.

In the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries

there was a grievous period of famine. For seven years the harvests were

so bad that many of the poorest folk literally died of starvation. 1740,

1782, 1799, and 1800 were also famine years, and though in each case

Morayshire fared better than the neighbouring counties, the sufferings

of the people were very serious.

Even in normal years there was often grievous scarcity, for up to the

middle of the eighteenth century turnips and potatoes were only known as

garden vegetables; they were not grown as field-crops, and there was no

sown grass. Cattle wandered over the stubble-fields and moors, and

picked up a scanty living till the snow drove them to the byres, where

they were kept alive on straw, marsh hay, and rushes. Sometimes the poor

starving beasts were bled that their starving owners might keep

themselves alive.

In Sir Robert Gordon’s accounts of his housekeeping at Dunrobin, when he

was guardian to his nephew, the Earl of Sutherland, he enters orders to

kill red deer in April and May (when the meat is unfit to eat), because

household meal was exhausted. It was not till about 1760 that wheat was

extensively grown, and that the clover, ryegrass, and turnips, now so

abundant, began to be generally cultivated.

In those days, when our smart forefathers were so gaily apparelled with

fine lace at breast and wrist, powdered periwig and cocked hat (terribly

inconvenient in windy weather),[77] the peasantry were looked upon

simply as slaves, bound to the soil, bought and sold with it. They were

ill-housed, ill-fed, ill-clothed. To them a bad harvest surely brought

famine, and famine brought pestilence, and marshfever and ague annually

claimed many victims.

Sheriff Cosmo Innes told me that his own father had told him how the

Highlanders who came in bands to shear his harvests at Leuchars and

Dunkirty used generally to take home with them a shaking ague from

working in the marshy land. Now, thanks to the farmer and his drainage,

ague and intermittent fever have been banished from bonnie Moray.

While Spynie’s triple change from sea-harbour to fresh-water lake and

from lake to corn-land was gradually taking place in the neighbourhood

of Elgin, an equally remarkable transformation occurred along the coast

between Forres and Nairn, whereby a broad tract of about four thousand

acres of rich alluvial soil was overwhelmed by drifting sands forming a

strange belt of desert. Prior to the winter of 1694 and the spring of

1695, this estate was so fertile as to be commonly called “the granary

of Moray,” but is now known only as the Culbin Sandhills—a most

lamentable example of what strange freaks Nature can occasionally

indulge in! It is now a most desolate region of yellow hillocks,

composed only of the very finest pale sea-sand, always in movement, and

for the most part drifting eastward, stirred by every breath of wind,

and carried along in clouds, or running down the hillsides from their

summits in trickles, like rills of running water.

A walk on the pale, phantom hills is like a scene in some strange dream,

where the very ground beneath one’s feet is all unstable, and runs away

from one’s tread. Some of these great mounds are occasionally upwards of

a hundred feet in height, and from such a summit we obtain a strange and

most eerie view—nothing on every side but a most desolate, dreary waste

of barren sand; but even as we mount our steps are loosening the sand

beneath us, and inviting the play of the wind which, perchance, ere the

morrow has swept the hillock and sportively scattered its atoms over the

country miles away.

On the lesser hills there is a sprinkling of dry, tufted bent—that

harshest of grasses—but the larger hills are entirely devoid of any

vestige of vegetation, and one marvels how even the snails subsist,

whose bright-coloured, delicate shells are here so numerous. But though

food seems scarce, rabbits and hares contrive to flourish (the latter,

however, have of late years greatly diminished in numbers). These in

their turn provide an abundant larder for numerous foxes, to whom these

lonely solitudes afford blissful hunting-grounds, and both the foxes and

rabbits of Culbin are noted for their remarkable size.

Speaking of Morayshire rabbits, the trapping and shooting of which is

now so serious a care, it is interesting to note the relation between

their increase and the destruction of all the rabbit foes which

gamekeepers account “vermin.” In the early part of this century all such

wild creatures were allowed to hunt unmolested; consequently, although

rabbits were tolerably numerous along the sea-coast, they were so scarce

in the woods that their occasional appearance was noted with interest.

This was especially the case on my father’s estate of Altyre, on the

Findhorn River; but about the year 1816 he engaged an English keeper for

the express purpose of killing down vermin. The first year’s bag showed

a return of sixty-five foxes, and almost innumerable wild cats, hunting

domestic cats, weasels, and pole-cats. A second, third, and fourth

year’s work went far towards clearing the woods of these depredators,

greatly to the benefit of the neighbouring poultry yards.

Then it began to be observed that there were a few rabbits on the

estate. In the second year there was no mistake about it. In the third,

my father bagged twenty couple in a single field. As years wore on they

increased so as to become a pest. It was almost like the story of New

Zealand. All the young oaks, so carefully planted, were devoured, and

soon the damage to the woods was estimated at several thousand pounds.

In the year 1840 William Reader, a Norfolk rabbitcatcher, was engaged,

and _in the first year_, between April and September, he killed nearly

seven thousand rabbits in the Altyre woods. The annual return for the

two following years was about two thousand, and the number of rabbits

was soon so far diminished that the services of the rabbitcatcher were

dispensed with. Not for long, however, for soon the increase of the foe,

and the destruction of valuable young wood, necessitated his recall, and

from that day to the end of the century his work was never-ending. Then,

handing over his work to his son, he retired on a pension from the

laird. He died in 1902, in his eighty-eighth year, after sixty-two years

of faithful service. It is worthy of note that during his brief absence

the rabbits had contrived to make head again, notwithstanding a

corresponding increase of vermin, the return for one year showing twenty

foxes and a great multitude of weasels.

In that same year, 1840, the first squirrel was shot in the Altyre woods

by my brother John, then a lad of fourteen, and the unknown animal was

shown to the English trapper as a great curiosity. It was, however,

assumed to have been a tame squirrel escaped from captivity, as these

beautiful but mischievous little creatures were never seen north of the

Grampians till about the year 1844, when they were introduced by Lady

Lovat, and turned loose in Beaufort woods as pretty and ornamental

little innocents.

Whether these were the progenitors of all the devouring host which now

make havoc in the northern forests, or whether another couple were

turned out by Lady Cawdor in the woods round Cawdor Castle, is not

certain; but this I know, that when in the autumn of 1855 Sir Alexander

Gordon-Cumming caught a glimpse of the first squirrel which appeared on

his lawn at Altyre, he could scarcely believe he had seen aright, but

with the instinct of a keen forester, he very quickly despatched this

poor little precursor of the destructive army which so quickly followed.

The notion that this solitary visitor was only the herald of a rapidly

multiplying host of immigrants was not at first realised, and the

keepers, ever on the alert to destroy all game-consuming vermin, took

small heed of these pretty newcomers, which, of course, were deemed very

interesting strangers. Soon, however, it became known that the Beaufort

and Cawdor woods were suffering severely from their depredations, and

that rewards had been offered for every squirrel’s head produced.

All too quickly the nibbling armies made their way through Lord Moray’s

forests of Darnaway, and, crossing the Findhorn River, invaded the

Altyre woods, and there finding congenial quarters, increased and

multiplied so rapidly that soon the forester reported very serious

damage, and consequent pecuniary loss. The young shoots and buds of all

coniferous trees find especial favour with these busy and most wasteful

foragers, who destroy far more than they consume, leaping from bough to

bough to secure some bud or cone more attractive than that which they

have just tasted and dropped, so that the whole ground is thickly strewn

with their rejected fragments.

Not content with this wholesale destruction of young shoots, the

squirrels have a fancy for barking trees of a considerable size within

eight or ten feet of the summit, which is so enfeebled by loss of sap as

to offer small resistance to the next gale, so the snapping of many a

good tree is laid to the account of these depredators. Even when the

wounds heal over, and the tree appears to have recovered, it carries

within it ineffaceable traces of its early sufferings, and when, twenty

years later, it is sold as timber, the buyer finds to his cost how

serious has been the damage done. Especially do young larch-plantations

suffer in the early spring, when the winter store of nuts has run short.

Then the ground is thickly strewn with the tender young shoots, and,

when weary of these, the foliage is devoured; so, what with squirrels

overhead and rabbits below, the poor trees have no lack of foes.

Ere long the increase of the squirrels in the Altyre woods was so marked

as to necessitate the employment of an extra man, whose sole work was to

destroy the invaders (and it required a good marksman to bring down

these agile little creatures, in their never-ending games at

hide-and-seek). Though the warfare has thenceforth been incessant, each

autumn is marked by a special campaign, when the squirrels seek a change

of diet, and, forsaking the fir-woods, assemble in force among the oaks,

beeches, and other hard woods, to gather their winter store of acorns,

nuts, and beech-mast. Then the squirrel-slayer and his assistants find

their best opportunity, and wage war unsparingly.

I have no return of the annual squirrel-slaughter on the estate previous

to 1870, but from that year till 1880 the average annual destruction was

a thousand head. It has now been reduced to about one hundred.

This refers only to the Altyre woods. In those round Cawdor Castle the

damage done was so great that a reward of threepence per head was

offered, and for upwards of twenty years this price was paid on an

annual average of one thousand one hundred squirrels. In the sixteen

years between 1862 and 1878, a total of fourteen thousand one hundred

and twenty-three squirrels were killed, for which was paid a sum of

£213, 13s. And still they abound!

Strange to say, in the adjacent forests round Darnaway Castle these

pretty pests were very rare till about 1875, when their numbers rapidly

increased. The forester attributes this fact to their preference for

fir-trees, “from prop-wood to spar-wood size,” and to the fact that,

till recently, there were few trees in the forest of this favoured size.

The fastidious creatures show a marked preference for young trees of

vigorous growth and full of sap. Having once established themselves, the

prolific invaders increased and multiplied so rapidly that it was found

necessary to put on an extra keeper for their special destruction,

besides offering a reward of one penny per head for every squirrel

slain, notwithstanding which Darnaway still adds from four hundred to

one thousand four hundred to the annual return of little victims. The

total in 1901 was one thousand three hundred and fifty-eight. And the

war of extermination has to be kept up steadily, in order to prevent a

truly alarming increase.

At Beaufort Castle the annual return is almost always upwards of a

thousand. In 1898 and 1899 it rose to one thousand seven hundred and

eighty one, and one thousand six hundred and fifty-one.

The destructive little beauties have now invaded Ross-shire in such

numbers, and have done such grievous damage to young plantations, that

the owners of thirty-eight thousand acres of wood in that county have

formed themselves into an Anti-Squirrel Club, allowing their gamekeepers

fourpence for every tail (? brush) produced. The return for the first

year, 1903, was four thousand six hundred and forty!

Changes in the natural history of a country creep in so silently and so

unmarked, that it is only by looking back a few years that we become

conscious that old friends have disappeared, and that new ones have

taken their place. Members of the Society for the Destruction of Rooks

and Pigeons in the North of Scotland, which pays a penny per bird on so

many thousands annually, find it hard to realise that at the end of the

eighteenth century, the arrival of one pair of wood-pigeons in certain

fir-woods not far from the Lake of Spynie, furnished an interesting

topic for the naturalists of Moray.

My uncle, Sir Alexander Dunbar, used to start on a long walk from the

Duffus Woods to the loch, and would mention on his return that he had

seen the two pigeons, or, as he preferred to call them, “the cushats.”

By the time his eldest son was a bird-nesting lad, the descendants of

the gentle pair were so numerous as to afford the boys good sport, and

they noted with special interest that these new colonists bred all the

year round, and there was not a single month in the year in which they

did not find nests with newly-laid eggs. It was some time ere their

quest was successful in the month of January, but at length a mild

winter enabled them to complete the score of the twelve months.

Of course, the increase of “the cushie do’es” is largely due to the fact

that proprietors began to protect their game by killing down the

numerous hawks, kites, and buzzards which had hitherto preyed on all

wild creatures. Hence the increase of hedgehogs, whose very existence in

the country had scarcely been suspected.

Starlings too, now so abundant, were actually unknown, as was well

proven by the absence of their eggs from the very perfect collection

made by my bird-nesting brothers (at least from the eggs of their own

finding in Morayshire). As the starlings increased, the larks (which had

given their name to the Laveroch Loch) became fewer and fewer. They

almost seem to have vanished with the waters. The hares, formerly so

abundant in the cultivated lands of Gordonstoun and Duffus, have also

greatly diminished since the extensive drainage of the neighbourhood;

while, on the other hand, the increased area devoted to turnips, and the

incessant war waged on the “hoodie craws” and other vermin, have been

favourable to a corresponding increase of partridges.

Pheasants were in those days quite unknown in this part of Scotland, as

also in the adjoining county of Banff, where now some five thousand are

annually killed on the banks of the Deveron alone—an increase, however,

which of course is in a great measure due to careful rearing on at least

one large estate.

Here, too, starlings only made their appearance forty years ago, and the

first squirrel was observed about sixty years ago. Except along the

sea-board, rabbits were so scarce that when, in 1830, Lord Kintore

introduced fox-hunting on the borders of Aberdeen and Banff, his keepers

used to go all over the country carrying rabbits, which they dropped in

couples, in order to provide tempting diet for the foxes! Indeed in

these days of “Ground Game Acts” it seems difficult to realise that less

than a century has elapsed since the British Parliament deemed it

necessary to pass a special Act (A.D. 1792) for the “Protection of

Rabbits” throughout the kingdom.

The said “conies” have tempted me to a long digression. To return from

the woods to the sandhills.

To lovers of strange wild birds (naturalists, not bird-butchers) this

Moravian desert has long been a paradise, for its unbroken solitude has

attracted many a shy, rare visitor. Not only are migratory birds tempted

to alight on such a feeding-ground as this sea-shore (shielded from

man’s territory by this desert belt, with its outer barrier of low

fir-woods), but there are also at the further extremity certain marshy

lochs, and a tract of peat-moss and rank heather, which afford inviting

shelter to a very varied game-list, from roe-deer to wild swans.

The latter have in recent years been greatly scared by over-zealous

pursuit, and the disturbance of frequent trains rushing through the

fir-woods; but from forty to fifty years ago, my brothers occasionally

had the luck to see flocks of fifty or sixty of these noble birds

quietly feeding in the sheltered little lochs aforesaid, their presence

being, moreover, a sure guarantee for that of numerous wild-duck, ever

on the watch to profit by the exertions of the swans in pulling up weeds

from the deeper water, of which they could snatch their share.

Besides the commoner varieties of wild-duck, such as widgeon and

mallard, the rarer scoter and velvet duck, the morillon and the

golden-eye were prizes occasionally secured; as also the brent goose,

the bean goose, and the gossander, a fish-eating bird of beautiful

plumage, with cream-coloured breast and glossy green back, which found a

breeding-ground just suited to its tastes among the rank herbage beside

the fresh-water lochs, yet within easy distance of the sea.

The shore is still frequented by an astonishing variety of birds, teal

and snipe, curlews, peewits, golden plovers, sandpipers, and red-shanks,

and great flocks of oyster-catchers, with an occasional tall grey heron,

though these last are fewer since the persistent attacks of the jackdaws

succeeded in driving them from their heronry on the River Findhorn.

Neither have we heard in recent years of such immense flocks of

beautiful white wild swans as occasionally assembled in the Bay of

Findhorn, where as many as three hundred birds have been seen to alight,

at the time of their October migrations, there remaining for some hours,

to feed and talk, ere dispersing to their several destinations; for

after these great swan-parliaments they started in every direction, in

parties of from four to twenty, uttering far-sounding musical calls.

Another shy creature which now rarely, if ever, approaches this shore,

is the seal, which in the early part of the century haunted the bay,

attracted thither by the salmon. The fishers consequently waged a war of

extinction, with such results that it is recorded that in the year 1790

one man actually killed a hundred and thirty!

Many conflicting theories have been started to account for the existence

of this strange desert. The work of destruction appears to have been due

to divers agencies, for in some parts of this region of wind-blown sand

we come on tracts of hard sand, sea-shells, and high ridges of

water-worn shingle, which appear to have been deposited by an influx of

the ocean at some much earlier period. Here and in the neighbouring

peat-moss have been found various relics of a remote past. Numerous

flint arrow-heads and strange ornaments of bronze—one of which, a

ponderous serpentine bracelet, supposed to have belonged to some old

Viking, was treasured by my mother, and to her children was ever a

talisman to awaken wondering dreams concerning the pale mysterious

sandhills which had given birth to such eerie legends of diabolic

agency.

For, of course, the supernatural must needs claim a place in the popular

tradition which accounts for their existence; and many a time have we

listened, with ever-renewed interest, to the thrilling tale of the

wicked laird of Culbin, whose iniquities were crowned by refusing to

leave his cards on the Sabbath morning, vowing that he would play all

day, if the devil himself were his partner—a challenge which was

straightway followed by a thunder-clap and the appearance of so skilful

a card-player that the wicked laird sat engrossed, hour after hour, and

knew nothing of the awful sandstorm which had overwhelmed his dwelling;

and there to this day he sits in his buried hall, playing a never-ending

game!

Some of the old folks told us how once, as they crossed the sandhills

for the first time after a great gale, they had suddenly come on the old

mansion, the upper part of which had been laid bare, but a few days

later it had again entirely disappeared, and there remained no landmark

on the ever-moving desert to show even its whereabouts. From time to

time, at long intervals, some of its chimneys have been laid bare by the

wind, and once, about a hundred years ago, an old apple-tree came to

light, and proved its vitality by blossoming and bearing fruit ere it

again disappeared.

Rash is the man who counts on ever finding any one spot unchanged on the

morrow! A case very much to the point was that of a whole cargo of

smuggled goods having been landed on the shore, and there deposited till

they could conveniently be removed. A few days elapsed ere the owners

returned, and vainly sought for the spot where their stuff lay

concealed. The whole shore seemed to have moved—hills were level, and

the valleys were hills. So from that day to this nothing has been seen

of the lost goods.

At another time a dispute arose as to the boundary between the estate of

Culbin and one of its neighbours, and the disputants had the incredible

folly to waste labour in transporting a number of stones, eight feet in

height, which were placed on the principal hills to mark the line of

march. It is needless to say that after a very short time had elapsed

there remained no trace of the boundary-stones!

Before examining such records as we possess concerning the origin of

this strange desert tract, it may be well to look back to some earlier

chronicles concerning similar disasters that have from time to time

befallen our shores. Thus in the Red Book or _Records of the Priory of

Pluscarden_, preserved in the Advocates’ Library in Edinburgh, it is

stated that in the year A.D. 1010 the whole low country of Moray was

deluged by the sea.

Less than a century elapsed ere the coast of Britain was swept by that

awful wave which submerged the lands of Earl Goodwin, and left in their

place the dreaded sands which still bear his name. That this same

“devastation by sand” wrought desolation on the coast of Moray is

affirmed by three ancient chroniclers, Fordun, Buchanan, and Bœthius.

The latter tells how “villages, castles, towns, _and extensive woods_,

both in England and Scotland, were overwhelmed by an inundation of the

German Ocean, by the weight of which tempest the lands of Godowine, near

the mouth of the Thames, were overwhelmed by sand; and likewise THE LAND

OF MORAY IN SCOTLAND WAS AT THAT TIME DESOLATED BY THE SEA, castles

subverted from their foundation, some towns destroyed, and the labours

of men laid waste by the discharge of sand from the sea; monstrous

thunders also roaring, horrible and vast!”

Of the destruction of “extensive woods” all along the coast of Moray and

Nairn there is ample proof, as not only are the broad expanses of

peat-moss full of remains of fine old trees, both oak and pine,

furnishing the best of firewood at the present day, but the same peat is

known to extend far under the sea, and occasionally, after very rough

weather, large masses of peat are washed up from the ocean bed. The same

old forest is known to have extended right along the coast, and

peat-moss crops out from beneath the great sandhills, which have existed

for the last two centuries. On the other hand, the incursion of the sea

has left its mark in various beaches of water-worn stones, and beds of

sea-sand, with quantities of cockle and other marine shells, lying at

distances of fully a mile from the present sea-board.

Probably this great volcanic or tidal wave deposited sand all over the

country; but it would seem to have been gradually absorbed, as the

ruined forest eventually became a great marshy peat-moss, and the once

cultivated lands again gradually became overspread with vegetation and

restored to fertility. As regards this low-lying estate of Culbin, we

find no allusion to anything amiss when, in 1240, it was held by Richard

de Moravia, or when, early in the fifteenth century, it passed to the

Lady Egidia Moray. The heiress of Culbin bestowed her hand and fortune

on Sir Thomas Kinnaird of that Ilk, and her descendants held the estates

till the end of the seventeenth century, when they were as effectually

destroyed as were those of Earl Goodwin.

There is a tradition to the effect that twenty years before the final

catastrophe there had been several serious alarms, owing to the vast

accumulations of sand which were cast up by the sea, and which, being

carried inland by every gale from the west, gradually deteriorated the

value of the farms nearest to the sea-board, destroying the pastures.

The first grave alarm seems to have arisen in the autumn of 1676, when

the harvest was fully ripe, and the farmers rejoiced in their

good-fortune in holding the richest corn-lands of the north. On the

westernmost farm the reapers had assembled with their sickles (there

were no steam-reapers in those days), and great was their praise of the

heavy crop of barley which was to be cut on the morrow. Its richness was

noted with wonder, because the summer and autumn had been so

exceptionally dry.

The same dry, warm weather still continued, and there was a brooding

stillness in the air which excited the misgivings of some, who said it

surely presaged storm. Well were their fears verified. Soon a terrific

gale sprang up from the north-west, carrying blinding clouds of driving

sand; and when the morning dawned, it revealed a level plain of sand,

covering the corn-fields to a depth of fully two feet, so that only the

tops of the barley were visible. Then the wind fell, and the reapers set

about their heavy task of rescuing what they could of the grain, while

compelled to sacrifice the straw.

No very serious damage seems to have occurred in the next few years, for

up to 1693 the rental of the estates showed no diminution, the sixteen

principal farmers each paying on an average two hundred pounds Scots in

money, with forty bolls wheat, forty bolls bear (rye), forty bolls oats,

and forty bolls oatmeal in kind. (Proprietors in those days needed ample

storehouses, and were in fact compelled to be grain-merchants.) This

rental represents a sum which may have been equal to about £6000

sterling.

But in the terrible winter of 1694–95 the awful calamity occurred, and

in the following summer we find the poor ruined laird, Alexander

Kinnaird, petitioning the Scottish Parliament for relief of cess and

taxes, on the ground that “the two best parts of his estate of Culbin

were quite ruined and destroyed by great and vast heaps of sand which

had overblown the same, so that there was not a vestige to be seen of

his manor-place of Culbin, yards, orchards, and mains thereof, and which

within these twenty years were as considerable as many in the county of

Moray; and the small remainder of his estate which yet remained

uncovered was exposed to the like hazard, and the sand daily gained

ground thereon, where-through he was like to run the hazard of losing

the whole ... as a certificate produced under the hands of thirty of the

most worthy gentlemen of the shire of Moray, Nairn, and Inverness,

thereto can testify.”

Not only were the fruits of the land thus destroyed, but also part of

the fishing, for in 1733 we find mention of the salmon-fishings on

Findhorn being now quite lost by the alteration of the course of the

river, and “having yielded no rent these several years bye past.”

Very different is the rent-roll in the barony of Culbin in this year

from that which I have already quoted before the sandstorm. Now we find

only thirteen tenants, no longer holding equally-divided portions of

land, and of these only six make any payment in money, amounting to an

average of five pounds. Very quaint are the terms of rental. Thus:—

1. William Falconer, Laich of Culbin, pays nine bolls, two firlots bear

(_i.e._ rye), six hears of yarn, four capons _and a half_, two hens, and

thirteen loads of peats.

2. Robert Duncan pays two bolls, one firlot, two pecks bear, two capons

_and a half_, two hens, and three loads of peats.

3. Margaret Innes pays two firlots bear, _half a capon_,[78] and two

loads of peats.

4. John Nicoll pays five pounds ten shillings money, _two hens, and six

poultry_.

And so on. From the total of this singular rental, considerable

deduction was made for payment of the minister of Dyke’s stipend, and

altogether we can scarcely wonder that the poor laird found himself

compelled to dispose of his estates for what they would fetch, and so in

1698 we find a lengthy legal deed of sale, by which he makes them over

to Duff of Drummuir, accompanying the deed “_with my goodwill and

blessing_”—a remarkable entry to appear in a legal document, and one

which illustrates the existence of a curious old superstition, to the

effect that it was exceedingly unlucky to enter into possession of any

house or land which the last occupant had been obliged to leave

unwillingly. The cause which had led to his being compelled to abandon

his home was one which might well excuse the awakening of dormant

superstition, and therefore was Kinnaird the more careful to avert any

possible source of offence.

It would appear that the shock must have preyed on his mind, for he did

not long survive the sale of his estates: within three months he was

numbered with the dead.

Nor did the Duffs long retain possession of Culbin, notwithstanding poor

Kinnaird’s goodwill and blessing. Only thirty-five years went by ere it

was sold by public roup for the benefit of John Duff’s creditors, the

sum thus realised being £11,366 Scots, which is somewhat less than £1000

sterling.

Within the last forty years much has been done to prevent the further

extension of the sand, and to commence the reclamation of at least the

borders of this great Sahara. The means adopted have been the planting

of thick belts of young fir-trees, which seem as capable of deriving

sustenance from these dry sands as their kindred in mountain districts

are of existing on barren rocks.

Further efforts were also made to bind the light, shifting sands by

transplanting to them large quantities of the hardy bent, which

resembles a very dry rush. Its long fibrous roots throw out innumerable

filaments, forming a fine net-work. To secure for it a fair start,

quantities of broom and whins were laid on the sandhills and pegged

down, so as in some measure to diminish their exposure to the wind. How

these labours would be facilitated, if only it were possible to

introduce a great family of Californian lupines, which have wrought such

wonders in transforming the arid sands around San Francisco into fertile

soil!

The formation of this strange desert has by no means been Nature’s only

recent freak on these shores. Just beyond the sandhills lies the

pleasant bay of Findhorn, at the mouth of the beautiful river of that

name (not beautiful as seen at the dead level where it is crossed by the

railway, but most romantic in its loveliness as it cuts its deep

rock-channel through the great fir-forests). Prior to the year 1701 the

fishing and seaport town of Findhorn stood upon a pleasant plain, a mile

north-west from the present situation. That plain is now the bottom of

the sea!

This great change occurred suddenly, when an unusually high tide burst

through the natural sand-bar at the mouth of the river, and surging

shoreward, overwhelmed the town. Fortunately, however, this danger had

long been foreseen, so the majority of the inhabitants had already

forsaken their homes; consequently few lives were endangered.

The old town of Findhorn was situated near a level peat-moss, wherein

lay embedded roots and trunks of the great trees which had once

nourished in the great forest whose very existence had been forgotten.

In the middle of this moorland rose a conical artificial mound about

forty fathoms high, called the Douff-hillock. It now lies deep beneath

the waves, for that peat-moss is now the ocean bed, and the sea has

encroached so far into the land, that instead of the fisher-folk, when

bound for the town of Burghead, having a five-mile walk direct to that

headland, they have to make a circuit of ten miles round the bay.

The last noteworthy effort of the great waters to pass their accustomed

limits on these pleasant shores of Moray occurred in the year 1755, when

the fearful earthquake at Lisbon spread terror far and near. Its effects

were felt even here, in the form of a volcanic wave, which swept this

coast; and it is especially recorded that in the parish of Dyke, near

Forres, a flock of sheep, folded in apparent security far beyond the

reach of any ordinary tide, were all drowned by the overwhelming wave.

On the other hand, the sea now appears to be steadily receding from

these parts of the coast. Old men tell us how, in their youth, they were

wont to gather shells and dig for bait on the wet sands between

Campbelton and Nairn, where now sheep graze on the brine-sprinkled

grass. Moreover, in cutting turf from the older pasture further inland,

they were amazed to discover, beneath the thick turf, a paved way,

leading to a rude pier, which still retained the iron ring to which

boats had been moored at some forgotten time, ere the waters had

retreated.

[Illustration:

_C. F. Gordon Cumming._

A CAVE AT COVESEA.

]

A far more remarkable instance of such recession is to be found a little

further along the coast, beyond the fine Covesea Cliffs, whose fantastic

caves and strangely water-quarried rocks tell of a time when they, too,

must have lain for countless ages deep beneath the ocean.

But of the changes which have occurred in historic times, undoubtedly

the most remarkable is that to which I have already alluded, whereby the

ocean deliberately built up the mighty sea-wall which so effectually

shut it out from the once beautiful harbour of Spynie.

Such are a few of the many singular changes which would doubtless amaze

our ancestors considerably could they return in this nineteenth century

to visit their favourite hunting-grounds in the Lowlands of Moray.

NOTE C

_A Legend of Vanished Waters_

Although in speaking of the Lowlands of Moray I have briefly referred to

the very remarkable changes which within the last five hundred years

have befallen the beautiful Loch of Spynie, I think it well to record

these in fuller detail.

The loch, which was about three miles from Gordonstoun, was till

recently the fairest sheet of blue water in all the once great and

important province of Moray. Now only a tiny lake, covering an area of

about eighty acres, remains in that little corner, which alone of all

the ancient province, still bears the name of Moray—a small lakelet in a

small county.

Not fifty years have elapsed (I write in 1904) since this great

fresh-water lake was one of the most important features in the scenery

of the east coast. But the circumstance of chief interest connected with

it is that within comparatively recent years, when our ancestors and

their contemporaries built their castles on the shores of the lake, it

was an estuary of the sea, a secure harbour, where fishing-smacks and

sometimes trading-ships from far countries found secure refuge. And now,

so complete is the transformation, and so utterly have the waters

vanished, that the whole district is one wide expanse of rich arable

land.

The two prominent objects in the midst of those level corn-fields, are

the little hill on which stand the ruins of old Duffus Castle, and those

of the Palace of Spynie. The former was once the fortified stronghold of

Freskinus de Moravia, one of a race of barons of renown in the days of

King David I. In later ages it passed to the possession of the Lords

Duffus, who held it till the beginning of the eighteenth century.

One of their servants, who only died in 1760, used to tell of the time

when Bonnie Dundee, the celebrated Claverhouse, was a guest in the

castle, about the year 1689, and how she brought the claret from the

cask in a _timber stoup_, and served it to the guests in a silver cup.

She described Claverhouse as “a swarthy little man, with keen lively

eyes, and black hair, tinged with grey, which he wore in locks which

covered each ear, and were _rolled upon slips of lead twisted together

at the ends_.”

The old castle was a square tower, with walls about five feet thick, and

defended by parapet, ditch, and drawbridge; and round about it was an

orchard and garden, noted for its excellent and abundant produce. The

moss-grown fruit-trees remain to this day.

Speaking of this castle, my dear old friend Cosmo Innes, historian and

antiquarian, and for many years Sheriff of Moray, said: “Of domestic

comfort these great lords had not dreamt. This castle of Duffus had no

chimneys nor any window glass. When the winter winds blew fiercely

across the fen, they shut their stout window-boards—outside

window-shutters—and crowded round a fire of peats in the middle of the

hall, while the smoke found its way out as it could, and was welcome as

communicating some feeling of heat to the upper chambers.” What a

suggestive description of a cheerful home!

At a distance of about five miles, on another slightly raised site,

stand the stately ruins of the Palace of Spynie, which, six hundred

years ago, was the summer home of the Bishops of Moray, at a time ere

their magnificent Cathedral of Elgin (still so beautiful in its decay)

had been ruthlessly pillaged and destroyed. Notwithstanding its

ecclesiastical character, this too was a stronghold, with loopholed

walls of enormous thickness, watch-towers, and portcullis; and here

baronial warrior-bishops, backed by a goodly company of armed retainers,

held their supremacy over turbulent neighbours, not only by Divine

right, but by very emphatic temporal force, for, as has been well said,

“while holding the crosier in one hand, they could ever wield the sword

with the other, and act the part of commanders of their stronghold at

Spynie, whenever danger threatened.”

Various kings and great nobles had bestowed on the diocese of Moray

grants of land, forests, and fishing, and the revenues and temporal

power of its Bishops as “Lords of Regality of Spynie,” were so great,

that they could well afford to live as princes, and accordingly they did

so—their households including as many officials, with high-sounding

titles, as those of the greatest nobles.

The title of “Lord of Regality” was no empty name. It was a grant from

the Crown, conferring the right of legal jurisdiction in a specified

district, both in matters civil and criminal. The Lord of Regality held

the power of life and death, and was the arbitrary sovereign within its

territory. These extraordinary and most dangerous powers were bestowed

on various subjects, and in 1452 were granted by King James II. to the

Bishop of Moray and his successors. The jurisdiction extended over the

lands of the Church in the shires of Elgin, Nairn, Inverness, Ross,

Banff, and Aberdeen, and included no fewer than nine baronies, besides

other lands.

These magnificent Prelates were certainly “lords over God’s heritage” in

a most literal sense. Their daily lives practically exemplified how

“when a strong man armed keepeth his palace, his goods are in peace,”

for dire experience had taught them the need of supplementing their

spiritual armour with every efficient temporal defence. For though their

tenants and vassals were so far privileged that they were not liable to

be called upon to serve the king in time of war, they were not

infrequently compelled to act on the defensive.

Thus it was that when David Stewart of Lorn was made Bishop in 1461, and

was so sorely troubled by the Earl of Huntly as to be compelled to pass

sentence of excommunication against him, the wrathful Clan Gordon

threatened to pull the Prelate from his pigeon-holes (in allusion to the

small rooms of the old palace). The Bishop replied that he would soon

build a house out of which the Earl and all his clan should not be able

to pull him. Thereupon he built the great tower which has ever since

borne his name—“Davie’s Tower,” four stories high, with walls of solid

masonry nine feet in thickness.

Even the large windows of the upper rooms were defended by strong iron

bars, while the casement was occupied by vaulted rooms, doubtless for

the use of the men-at-arms. The roof is also vaulted and surrounded with

battlements. But neither devotion nor recreation were forgotten in the

building of this lordly palace, for within its great quadrangle stood

the Bishop’s Chapel, and also a spacious tennis-court, while round about

the precincts were gardens well supplied with fruit-trees. Here the poor

of the parish daily assembled at a given hour, when a bell was rung, and

from the postern gate an abundant supply of bread and soup and other

food was freely dispensed to all comers.

Many a strange change have these grey walls witnessed—ecclesiastical

pomp and martial display—pious and benevolent lives contrasting with

scenes of cruel warfare and outrage—but no such changes have been half

so startling as those physical transformations which have altered the

whole aspect of the land. In place of rich harvest-fields extending far

as the eye can reach, much of the country round and all the distant high

ground, was covered with dense natural forest, haunted by wolves, which

were the terror of the peasants, and afforded worthier sport for the

barons than their descendants can create for themselves in the slaughter

of home-reared pheasants.

Even the older members of the present generation found true sport in

abundance round the reedy shores of the great fresh-water Loch of

Spynie—the largest loch in the land of Moray—a beautiful sheet of water

which, after long resisting successive efforts at drainage, has within

the last forty years yielded to a determined attack, to the joy of the

farmers and the bitter regret of naturalists and sportsmen.

The latter might (but do not) find a corner of consolation in being

saved from the temptation to lay up for themselves after years of

agonising rheumatism, brought on by long hours spent in creeping among

marshy shallows on bitter winter mornings—such expeditions as were

deemed joy by my brothers, whose well-filled bag often included some

rare bird—a chance visitor of these shores. For until the middle of this

century the rushes and water-grasses and rank herbage of the swamps

offered such favourable breeding-grounds as to attract wild-fowl in

incalculable numbers; widgeon and mallard, pochard and pintail ducks,

teal, moorhens, and great flocks of coot. The loch was also the resort

of numerous wild swans, though these had already become rarer visitants

than of yore.

Many were the grey-brindled wild cats which haunted the neighbouring

fir-woods, and many the badgers, which burrowed like rabbits in the dry

banks, thence emerging to dig up the soil after the fashion of pigs. So

numerous must these creatures have been in bygone times, that they have

bequeathed their name to the lands of Inch-brock, “The Isle of Badgers,”

a name worthy of note in that it tells not only of the presence of an

animal now well-nigh extinct, but also of the time when the sea covered

these lowlands, and this now inland farm was a wave-washed isle.

The capercailzie, too (which, being interpreted from the Gaelic, means

“the cock of the woods,” and which had entirely died out of Scotland

till it was recently re-imported from Norway to Perthshire, where now

twenty to twenty-five brace sometimes figure in a single day’s battue),

was a regular winter guest in the pinewoods of Moray,[79] until the

latter part of the eighteenth century, when it ceased to make its annual

appearance, a loss not much regretted by the proprietors of the forests,

in which this “cock of the woods” leaves his mark in the destruction of

many a promising shoot.

But when we speak of the blue, fresh-water loch (familiar to many

travellers from the fact that some fifty years ago the railroad from

Elgin to Lossiemouth was constructed right across its shallow,

half-drained bed, so that the passengers looked to right and left across

its glassy waters),[80] we are speaking of a comparatively modern

feature in the landscape. At the time when these two grey ruins, the

Palace of Spynie, and the Castle of Duffus, were built, both stood on

the brink of a broad estuary of the sea—indeed, there is little doubt

that prior to A.D. 1200, the Castle of Duffus, on its green hill, was

actually an island. Up to the year 1380, Spynie was a secure harbour,

whence “the fishers of sea-fish” were in the habit of sailing with their

wives and children to the sea, thence bringing back fish in boats.

Thither came trading-vessels from France, Flanders, and Holland, for

until the fifteenth century this loch, known as the Bishop’s Port, was

the seaport for Elgin, involving only two miles of land transport. After

the closing up of the lake, Findhorn became the chief port. But in its

earlier days the sea-lake extended about five miles eastward of the

Palace of Spynie to a spot called Kintrae, a Gaelic name signifying “the

top of the tide.”

Strange to say, there are actually four places bearing this name, each

but a little distance from the other, and evidently marking the gradual

recession of the tide, as the coast-line changed. Finally we come to a

spot which still bears the name of Salterhill, and here, about fifty

years ago, the remains of a salt factory were discovered, in the course

of digging deep drains. There were also salt-works on the banks of Loch

Spynie itself, for they are mentioned in a deed by Bishop Bricius,

bearing date A.D. 1203.

Nearly two centuries later, in A.D. 1383, a protest was made by the Lord

Bishop Alexander Bar, against Lord John Dunbar, Earl of Moray, and the

burgesses of Elgin, respecting the right of the fishing and of the

harbour of Spynie, which he maintained to be within the ecclesiastical

marches, and to have ever been held by the Bishops of Moray, who, each

in his time, had “fishers, with cobles and boats, for catching salmon,

grilses, and finnacs, and other kinds of fish, with nets and hooks,

without impediment or opposition, the present dispute excepted.”

Later documents, bearing date 1451, still speak of the fishermen and

harbour of the town or burgh of Spynie.

All manner of shell-fish abounded in this ancient sea-loch, more

especially cockles and oysters. The latter, alas! have long since

disappeared from our shores, together with the alluvial mud in which

they formerly flourished, the sea-coast being now essentially sandy; but

their presence in older days is proven by the numerous shellmounds,

marking where clusters of fishers’ huts once stood. These

“kitchen-middens” have in recent years been discovered all along the

banks of this great basin. One of these (at Briggsies), which covers a

space nearly an acre, and is in many places about a foot in depth,

consists of masses of periwinkles, mussels, limpets, razor-shell,

cockles, and oysters, but especially oysters of very large growth, such

as may well increase our regret that they should have ceased to exist on

these shores. A good deal of charred wood mingled with the shells, tells

of the kitchen fires of the consumers, and one bronze pin has been

found, as if just to prove that these villagers were possessed of such

treasures.

A very remarkable confirmation of the old records regarding the ancient

bounds of the sea was obtained when the loch was drained, and _large

beds of oysters and mussels were found buried beneath the deposit of

fresh-water shells and mud_. Several anchors of vessels were found, and

sundry skeletons. In the same connection we may notice the name of

Scart-hill, _i.e._, the Cormorant’s hill, which now lies at some

distance inland, but which assuredly was originally on the sea-shore.

When the recession of the ocean deprived the bishops of their natural

harbour, and the fish-supply could no longer be landed at their very

door, they still retained their right to the coast fishing; and so, in

the year 1561, we find the Bishop and Chapter of Moray granting a

charter for “the fishing called the Coifsea” (which we now call

Covesea), to Thomas Innes, in consideration of certain payment in kind,

the Bishop reserving the right of purchasing the fish caught at the rate

of twenty haddocks or whitings for one penny, a skate or ling, twopence,

a turbot, fourpence, and a _seleich_, or seal, for four shillings.

The harvest of the sea included cod, skate, halibut, haddocks, whitings,

saiths, crabs, and lobsters. The latter continued abundant until the

close of the eighteenth century, when an English company established a

lobster-fishery in the bay of Stotfield, for the London market, and in

the first season forwarded sixty thousand lobsters alive to town, in

wells formed in the hold of the ship, the prisoners simply having their

claws tied to their sides. They were captured in iron traps, which seem

to have had the effect of frightening the lobsters away from the coast,

for, like the oysters, their presence here is now a tale of the past.

The lobsters, when captured, were stored in a marine prison, till an

opportunity presented itself for sending them to the southern market;

and the lobster-catchers were apparently not very discriminating in

their selection of a suitable spot where these cases should be sunk.

Hence, in April 1677, we find an appeal from the Captain of a

trading-ship, _The Margaret_ of Inverness, who, having occasion to call

at the port of Crail, summoned a pilot to take in his vessel. He says:

“Ane Inglish man being heir had two Lapister-kists[81] in the

harbour-muth, and the boatmen towed close to them, and they aleadge that

they did losse two hundred Lapisters, for which the Bailies heir has

fyned me in thretie punds Scots, and arested and lodged me in prison

till I will pay the same, which I doe think ought not to be payed by me,

since that I had a Poileot, and the chists lay right in the midle of the

harbour-muth.”

No historical record tells how or when the sea threw up the wide barrier

of shingle and sand which in later ages separated it from the loch,

transforming the broad estuary into a brackish lake with wide-spreading

marshy shores, extending as far as Gordonstoun.

That the change was gradual seems proven by the formation of a series of

raised beaches, distant about a mile inland from the present coast-line,

and forming a succession of plateaus covered with large rounded stones,

extending for about three miles along the shore. This curious ridge

averages a height of twenty feet above the sea-level, and is from fifty

to a hundred yards in width. It is known that in these remote times, the

River Spey, which now enters the sea at Fochabers, flowed far more to

the west, and probably brought down from the mountains those vast

supplies of gravel and water-worn boulders. But though the Spey may have

brought the material, the process by which the separation of the sea and

lake was effected is all a mystery.

Whether, as some suppose, by sudden storms, or else by gradual recession

of the ocean, certain it is that when Boece wrote his _History of

Scotland_ (which, though not published till 1526, was probably written

earlier, since we learn that the author was born in Forfarshire in

1465), the sea was shut out from the lake; and though he mentions that

in his time old persons remembered the lake being stocked with sea-fish,

and although the river Lossie continued to flow right through the loch,

certainly as recently as 1586 even salmon had all forsaken the loch, and

were replaced by pike and trout, and multitudes of eels.