Part 2

The highest mountain in the Braemar district is Ben-Macdhui (4296 feet). A few others are over 4000—Brae-riach and Cairntoul. Ben-na-Buird and Ben-Avon, which last is notable for the numerous tors or warty knots along its sky-line, are just under 4000 feet. Loch-na-gar, a few miles to the east and a conspicuous background to Balmoral Castle, is 3789. Byron called it “the most sublime and picturesque of the Caledonian Alps,” and Queen Victoria writing from Balmoral in 1850 described it as “the jewel of all the mountains here.” Its contour lines, which are somewhat more sharply curved than is usual in the Deeside hills, and the well-balanced distribution of its great mass make it easily recognised from a wide distance. This partly explains the pre-eminence which notwithstanding its inferiority of height it undoubtedly possesses. Due north from Ballater are Morven (2880) and Culblean, and due south is Mount Keen; a little east and on the boundary line of three counties is Mount Battock. Perhaps the most prominent hill, and the one most frequently visible to the great majority of Aberdeenshire folks, is Benachie, which stands as a fitting outpost of the vast regiment of hills. It stands apart and although only 1440 feet in height is an unfailing landmark from all parts of Buchan, from Aberdeen, from Donside, and even from Deveronside. Its well-defined outline and projecting “mither tap” render it an object of interest from far and near, while the presence or absence of cloud on its head and shoulders serves as a barometric index to the state of the weather.

[Illustration: Benachie]

5. Watershed. Rivers. Lochs.

As we have already pointed out, the watershed coincides to a large extent with the boundary line of the county. The lean of Aberdeenshire is from west to east so that all the rivers flow in an easterly direction to the North Sea. On the west and north-west of the highest mountain ridges, the slope of the land is to the north-east, and the Spey with its several tributaries carries the rainfall to the heart of the Moray Firth.

The chief river of the county is the Dee. It is the longest, the fullest-bodied, the most picturesque of all Aberdeenshire waters. Taking its rise in two small streams which drain the slopes of Brae-riach, it grows in volume and breadth, till, after an easterly course of nearly 100 miles, it reaches the sea at Aberdeen. The head-stream is the Garrachorry burn, which flows through the cleft between Brae-riach and Cairntoul. A more romantic spot for the cradle of a mighty river could hardly be found. The mountain masses rise steep, grim and imposing—on one side Cairntoul conical in shape, on the other Brae-riach broad and massive, a picture of solidity and immobility. The Dee well is 4060 feet above sea-level and 1300 above the stream which drains the eastern side of the Larig—the high pass to Strathspey. As it emerges from the Larig, it is a mere mountain torrent but presently it is joined at right angles by the Geldie from the south-west, and the united waters move eastward through a wild glen of rough and rugged slopes

[Illustration: Linn of Dee, Braemar]

and ragged, gnarled Scots firs to the Linn of Dee, 6-3/4 miles above Braemar. There is no great fall at the Linn, but here the channel of the river becomes suddenly contracted by great masses of rock and the water rushes through a narrow gorge only four feet wide. The pool below is deep and black and much overhung with rocks. For 300 yards stretches this natural sluice, formed by rocks with rugged sides and jagged bottom, the water racing past in small cascades. The river is here spanned by a handsome granite bridge opened in 1857 by Queen Victoria.

[Illustration: Old bridge of Dee, Invercauld]

As the river descends to Braemar, the glen gradually widens out, and the open, gravelly, and sinuous character of the bed, which is a feature from this point onwards, is very marked. Pool and stream, stream and pool succeed one another in shingly bends, clean, sparkling and beautiful. At Braemar the bed is 1066 feet above sea-level. Below Invercauld the river is crossed by the picturesque old bridge built by General Wade, when he made his well-known roads through the Highlands after the rebellion of 1745. Here the Garrawalt, a rough and obstructed

[Illustration: View from old bridge of Invercauld]

[Illustration: Falls of Muick, Ballater]

tributary, joins the main river. From Invercauld past Balmoral Castle to Ballater is sixteen miles. Here the bottom is at times rocky, at times filled with big rough stones, at other times shingly but never deep. The average depth is only four feet, and the normal pace under ordinary conditions 3-1/2 miles an hour. From Ballater, where the river is joined by the Gairn and the Muick, the Dee maintains the same character to Aboyne and Banchory, where it is joined by the Feugh from the forest of Birse. Just above Banchory is Cairnton, where the water supply for the town of Aberdeen, amounting on an average to 7 or 8 million gallons a day, is taken off. The course of the river near the mouth was diverted some 40 years ago to the south, at great expense, by the Town Council, and in this way a considerable area of land was reclaimed for feuing purposes. The spanning of the river at this point by the Victoria bridge, which superseded a ferry-boat, has led to the rise of a moderately sized town (Torry) on the south or Kincardine side of the river.

The scenery of Deeside, all the way from the Cairngorms to the old Bridge of Dee, two miles west of the centre of the city, is varied and attractive. It is well-wooded throughout; in the upper parts the birch, which would seem to be indigenous in the district, adds to the beauty of the hill-sides, while the clean pebbly bed of the river and its swift, dashing flow delight the eyes of those who are familiar only with sluggish and mud-stained waters. It is not surprising therefore that the district has attained the vogue it now enjoys.

The Don runs parallel to the Dee for a great part of its course, but it is a much shorter river, measuring only 78 miles. It rises at the very edge of the county close to the point where the Avon emerges from Glen Avon and turns north to join the Spey. It drains a valley which is only ten or fifteen miles separated from the valley of the larger river. In its upper reaches it somewhat resembles Deeside, being quite highland in character; but lower down the river loses its rapidity, becoming sluggish and winding. Strathdon, as the upper area is called, is undoubtedly picturesque, but it lacks the bolder features of Deeside, being less wooded and graced with few hills on the grand scale. It has not, therefore, become a popular

[Illustration: Birch Tree at Braemar]

summer resort, but its banks form the richest alluvial agricultural land in the county—

A mile o’ Don’s worth twa o’ Dee Except for salmon, stone and tree.

This old couplet is so far correct. The Dee is a great salmon river, providing more first-class salmon angling than any other river of Scotland, while the Don, though owing to its muddy bottom a stream excellent beyond measure and unsurpassed for brown trout, is not now, partly owing to obstruction and pollution, a great salmon river. But the agricultural land on Donside, which for the most part is rich deep loam, about Kintore, Inverurie and the vale of Alford is much more kindly to the farmer than the light gravelly soil of Deeside, which is so apt to be burnt up in a droughty summer. In the matter of stone, things have changed since the couplet took shape. The granite quarries of Donside are now superior to any on the Dee; but the trees of Deeside still hold their own, the Scots firs of Ballochbuie forest, west of Balmoral, being the finest specimens of their kind in the north.

The nether-Don has been utilised for more than a century as a driving power for paper and wool mills. Of these there is a regular succession for several miles of the river’s course, from Bucksburn to within a mile of Old Aberdeen. After heavy rains or a spring thaw the lower reaches of the river, especially from Kintore downwards, are apt to be flooded, and in spite of embankments which have been erected along the river’s course, few years pass without serious damage being done to the

[Illustration: Fir Trees at Braemar]

crops in low-lying fields. Some parts of Donside scenery, notably at Monymusk (called Paradise), and at Seaton House just below the Cathedral of Old Aberdeen, and before the river passes through the single Gothic arch of the ancient and historical bridge of Balgownie, are very fine—wooded and picturesque, and beloved of more than one famous artist.

The next river is the Ythan, which, rising in the low hills of the Culsalmond district and flowing through the parish of Auchterless and past the charming hamlet of Fyvie, creeps somewhat sluggishly through Methlick and Lord Aberdeen’s estates to Ellon. A few miles below Ellon it forms a large tidal estuary four miles in length—a notable haunt of sea-trout, the most notable on the east coast. The river is only 37 miles long. It is slow and winding with deep pools and few rushing streams; moreover its waters have never the clear, sparkling quality of the silvery Dee. Yet at Fyvie and at Gight it has picturesque reaches that redeem it from a uniformity of tameness.

The Ugie, a small stream of 20 miles in length, is the only other river worthy of mention. It joins the sea north of the town of Peterhead. In character it closely resembles the Ythan, having the same kind of deep pools and the same sedge-grown banks.

The Deveron is more particularly a Banffshire river, yet in the Huntly district, it and its important tributary the Bogie (which gives its name to the well-known historic region called Strathbogie) are wholly in Aberdeenshire.

[Illustration: The Don, looking towards St Machar Cathedral]

The Deveron partakes of the character of the Dee and the character of the Don. It is neither so sparkling and rapid as the one nor so slow and muddy as the other. Around Huntly and in the locality of Turriff and Eden, where it is the boundary between the counties, it has some charmingly beautiful reaches. Along its banks is a succession of stately manor-houses, embosomed in trees, and these highly embellished demesnes enhance its natural charms.

[Illustration: Brig o’ Balgownie, Aberdeen]

Lakes are few in Aberdeenshire, and such as exist are not specially remarkable. The most interesting historically are the Deeside Lochs Kinnord and Davan which are held by antiquarians to be the seat of an ancient city Devana—the town of the two lakes. In pre-historic times there dwelt on the shores of these lakes as also in the valleys that converge upon them a tribe of people who built forts, and lake retreats, made oak canoes, and by means of palisades of the same material created artificial islands. The canoes which have been recovered from the bed of the loch are hollowed logs thirty feet in length. Other relics—a bronze vessel and a bronze spearhead, together with many beams of oak—have been fished up, all proving the existence of an early Pictish settlement.

[Illustration: Loch Muick, near Ballater]

Besides these, there is in the same district—but south-east of Loch-na-gar, another and larger lake called Loch Muick. From it flows the small river Muick—a tributary of the Dee, which it joins above Ballater. South-west of Loch-na-gar is Loch Callater, which drains into the Clunie, another Dee tributary, which joins the main river at Castleton of Braemar. On the lower reaches of the Dee are the Loch of Park or Drum, and the Loch of Skene, both of which drain into the Dee. Both are much frequented by water-fowl of various kinds.

The Loch of Strathbeg, which lies on the east coast not far from Rattray Head, is a brackish loch of some interest. Two hundred years ago, we are told, it was in direct communication with the sea and small vessels were able to enter it. In a single night a furious easterly gale blew away a sand-hill between the Castle-hill of Rattray and the sea, with the result that the wind-driven sand formed a sand-bar where formerly there was a clear

[Illustration: Loch Callater, Braemar]

water-way. Since that day the loch has been land-locked and though still slightly brackish may be regarded as an inland loch.

6. Geology.

Geology is the study of the rocks or the substances of which the earthy crust of a district is composed. Rocks are of two sorts: (1) those due to the action of heat, called igneous, (2) those formed and deposited by water, called aqueous. When the earth was a molten ball, it cooled at the surface, but every now and again liquid portions were ejected from cracks and weak places. The same process is seen in the eruptions of Mount Vesuvius, which sends out streams of liquid lava that gradually cools and forms hard rock. Such are _igneous_ rocks. But all the forces of nature are constantly at work disintegrating the solid land; frost, rain, the action of rivers and the atmosphere wear down the rocks; and the tiny particles are carried during floods to the sea, where they are deposited as mud or sand-beds laid flat one on the top of the other like sheets of paper. These are _aqueous_ rocks. The layers are afterwards apt to be tilted up on end or at various angles owing to the contortions of the earth’s crust, through pressure in particular directions. When so tilted they may rise above water and immediately the same process that made them now begins to unmake them. They too may in time be so worn away that only fragments of them are left whereby we may interpret their history.

[Illustration: Loch of Skene]

To these may be added a third kind of rock called _metamorphic_, or rocks so altered by the heat and pressure of other rocks intruding upon them, that they lose their original character and become metamorphosed. They may be either sedimentary, laid down originally by water, or they may be igneous, but in both cases they are entirely changed or modified in appearance and structure by the treatment they have suffered.

The geology of Aberdeenshire is almost entirely concerned with igneous and metamorphic rocks. The whole backbone of the county is granite which has to some extent been rubbed smooth by glacial action; but in a great part of the county the granite gives place to metamorphic rocks, gneiss, schist, and quartzite. A young geologist viewing a deep cutting in the soil about Aberdeen finds that the material consists of layers of sand, gravel, clay, which are loosely piled together all the way down to the solid granite. This is the glacial drift, or boulder clay, a much later formation than the granite and a legacy of what is called the great Ice Age. Far back in a time before the dawn of history all the north-east of Scotland was buried deep under a vast snow-sheet. The snow consolidated into glaciers just as in Switzerland to-day, and the glaciers thus formed worked their way down the valleys, carrying a great quantity of loose material along with them. When a warmer time came, the ice melted and all the sand and boulders mixed up in the ice were liberated and sank as loose deposits on the land. This is the boulder clay which in and around Aberdeen is the usual subsoil. It consists of rough, half-rounded pebbles, large and small, of clay, sand, and shingle, and makes a very cold and unkindly soil, being difficult to drain properly and slow to take in warmth.

Below this boulder clay are the fundamental rocks. At Aberdeen these are pure granite; but in other parts of the county they are, as we have said, metamorphic, that is, they have been altered by powerful forces, heat and pressure. Whether they were originally sedimentary, before they were altered, is doubtful; some geologists think the crystalline rocks round Fraserburgh and Peterhead were aqueous. Mormond Hill was once a sandstone, and the schists of Cruden Bay and Collieston were clay. The same beds traced to the south are found to pass gradually into sedimentary rocks that are little altered. Whether they were aqueous or igneous originally, they have to-day lost all their original character. No fossils are found in them. These rocks are the oldest and lowest in Aberdeenshire. After their formation, they were invaded from below by intrusive masses of molten igneous rock, which in many parts of the county is now near the surface. This is the granite already referred to. Its presence throughout the county has materially influenced the character and the industry of the people.

Wherever granite enters, it tears its irregular way through the opposing rocks, and sends veins through cracks where such occur. The result of its forcible entrance in a molten condition is that the contiguous rocks are melted, blistered, and baked by the intrusive matter. Why granite should differ from the lava we see exuding from active volcanoes is explained by the fact that it is formed deep below the surface where there is no outlet for its gases. It cools slowly and under great pressure and this gives it its special character. If found, therefore, at the surface, as it is in Aberdeen, this is because the rocks once high above it, concealing its presence have been worn away, which gives some idea of the great age of the district. One large granitic mass is at Peterhead, where it covers an area of 46 square miles, and forms the rocky coast for eight miles; but the whole valley of the Dee as far as Ben Macdhui, and a great part of Donside, consist of this intrusive granite. It varies in colour and quality, being in some districts reddish in tint as at Sterling Hill near Peterhead, at Hill of Fare, and Corennie; in other parts it is light grey in various shades.

The succession in the order of sedimentary rocks is definitely settled, and although this has little application to Aberdeenshire, an outline may be given. The oldest are the Palaeozoic which includes—in order of age—

Cambrian, Silurian, Old Red Sandstone or Devonian, Carboniferous, Permian.

Of these the only one represented in Aberdeenshire is the Old Red Sandstone, which occupies a considerable strip on the coast from Aberdour to Gardenstown, and runs inland to Fyvie and Auchterless and even as far as Kildrummy and Auchindoir. The deposit is 1300 feet thick. A visitor to the town of Turriff is struck by the red colour of many of the houses there, a most unusual variant upon the blue-grey whinstone of the surrounding districts. The explanation is that a convenient quarry of Old Red Sandstone exists between Turriff and Cuminestown. Kildrummy Castle, one of the finest and most ancient ruins in the county, is not like the majority of the old castles built of granite but of a sandstone in the vicinity. The same band extends across country to Auchindoir, where it is still quarried.

The next geological group of Rocks, the Secondary or Mesozoic, includes—in order of age—

Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous.

These are not at all or but barely represented. A patch of clay at Plaidy, which was laid bare in cutting the railway track, belongs to the Jurassic system and contains ammonites and other fossils characteristic of that period. Over a ridge of high ground stretching from Sterling Hill south-eastwards are found numbers of rolled flints belonging to the Cretaceous or chalk period, but the probability is that they have been transported from elsewhere by moving ice and are not in their natural place.

The Tertiary epoch is just as meagrely represented as the Secondary. Yet this is the period which in other parts of the world possesses records of the most ample kind. The Alps, the Caucasus, the Himalayas were all upheaved in Tertiary times; but of any corresponding activity in the north-east of Scotland, there is no trace. It is only when the Tertiary merges in the Quaternary period that the history is resumed. The deposits of the Ice Age, when Scotland was under the grip of an arctic climate, are much in evidence all over the county and have already been referred to. It is necessary to treat the subject in some detail.

During the glacial period, the snow and ice accumulated on the west side of the country, and overflowed into Aberdeenshire. There were several invasions owing to the recurrence of periods of more genial temperature when the ice-sheet dwindled. One of the earlier inroads probably brought with it the chalk flints now found west of Buchan Ness; another brought boulders from the district of Moray. South of Peterhead a drift of a different character took place. Most of Slains and Cruden as well as Ellon, Foveran, and Belhelvie are covered with a reddish clay with round red pebbles like those of the Old Red Sandstone. This points to an invasion of the ice-sheet from Kincardine, where such deposits are rife. Dark blue clay came from the west, red clay from the south, and in some parts they met and intermixed as at St Fergus. A probable third source of glacial remains is Scandinavia. In the Ice Age Britain was part of the continental mainland, the shallow North Sea having been formed at a subsequent period. The low-lying land at the north-east of the county was the hollow to which the glaciers gravitated from west and south and east, leaving their _débris_ on the surface when the ice disappeared. So much is this a feature of Buchan that one well-known geologist has humorously described it as the riddling heap of creation.

Both the red and the blue clay are often buried under the coarse earthy matter and rough stones that formed the residuum of the last sheet of ice. This has greatly increased the difficulty of clearing the land for cultivation. Moreover a clay subsoil of this kind, which forms a hard bottom pan that water cannot percolate through, is not conducive to successful farming. Drainage is difficult but absolutely necessary before good crops will be produced. Both difficulties have been successfully overcome by the Aberdeenshire agriculturist, but only by dint of great expenditure of time and labour and money.

The district of the clays is associated with peat beds. There is peat, or rather there was once peat all over Aberdeenshire, but the depth and extent of the beds are greatest where the clay bottom exists. A climate that is moist without being too cold favours the growth of peat and the Buchan district, projecting so far into the North Sea and being subject to somewhat less sunshine than other parts of the county, provides the favouring conditions. The rainfall is only moderate but it is distributed at frequent intervals, and the clay bottom helps to retain the moisture and thus promotes the growth of those mosses which after many years become beds of peat. These peat beds for long provided the fuel of the population. In recent years they are all but exhausted, and the facility with which coals are transported by sea and by rail is gradually putting an end to the “casting” and drying of peats.