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people could lie down, and sleep very comfortably, at whatever rate the carriage might be going. It was not by such machinery, however, or manners that the family estate of Lovat was acquired.Luxury is but a bad omen of the stability of estates.

"Nam imperium facilé is artibus retinetur quibus initio
partum est."*

On clearing the Aichils, where the great road from the Queen's Ferry to Perth begins to descend into the extensive and most charming valley of Stratherne, near a place called the Wics of Baigly, a view bursts on the sight, that makes you suddenly stop, as if by instinct, to behold it. The valley of the lower Stratherne, rich by nature, highly cultivated, and beautifully interspersed with noblemen's and gentlemen's seats, is seen in a line, from east to west, with the Carse of Gowrie; from which it is separated only by the Tay, a little before and after it begins to expand into a Frith, by receiving the tide and the waters of the Erne. The tide flows in the Tay for two miles above Perth, that is about eight miles above its junction with the Erne, and about as far up this river. In front, you see the celebrated Hill of Moncrieff, on the south-west a lofty cliff; but gradually declining from its precipitous summit, into a gentle declivity, every where planted with trees, or bearing grain, and occupying the whole triangle, formed by the Tay on the one side, the Erne on the other, and the great road between the bridge of Erne, and where the Tay bends more than

*Sall. Bell. Catall.

it did eastward, at the village or farmstead of the Friartown. Where the southern aspect of the Hill of Moncrieff begins to present verdant turf, and a possibility of ascent, instead of precipitous and inaccessible rocks, the soil, above Kilmont, is shaped into a number of terraces, rising over one another, too regular to admit the supposition that they are the work of nature, yet too great and vast to be ascribed to art: if we may not suppose them to have formed part of some military operations; for they are seen distinctly, and solicit attention across the valley of the Erne, viewed from the Wics of Baigly. Perhaps they were an encampment of the Danes: monuments of whose invasions are every where to be seen in this part of Scotland; as, for instance, the petrified ruins of Danish castles, on the summits of the hills near Abernethey, and in other parts of the Aichils, for the whole extent of Stratherne.

That the Danes were wont to sit down on Moncrieff Hill, certainly a most excellent military station, we know from history.

Among the beautiful scenes presented to the traveller, on coming from the south to the spot above mentioned, next to the Hill of Moncrieff, the castle of Duplin, with the Den, and extensive woods, Moncrieff House, on a rising ground near the bottom of the cliff, the peninsula of the western Rynd, and the eastern Rynd, on the point of land at the conflux of the Erne and the Tay, both of them gentlemen's heads, adorned with a great variety of fruit and forest trees, are conspicuously prominent.

Having descended into the vale of Stratherne, I turned from the great northern and military road to the right, and struck into that which runs eastward

from this by Abernethey and Newburgh to Cupar, in Fife. Where the small river Farg begins to hasten to the plain through the northern slope or roots of the Aichils, the ground is covered with beautiful plantations of various forest trees. Above Aberargie, the hill, which is very steep as well as of very considerable elevation, is covered nearly to the summit with trees of various kinds, planted, according to the old custom, in rows. At the bottom of the hill stands the house of Pottie, a spacious and not inelegant mansion; and near this begins the opening into the dreary glen of Abernethey, the most common pass through the Aichil Hills from Perth to Edinburgh, before the fine northern road, and afterwards the bridge of Perth, invited travellers to go by the Queen's Ferry instead of Kinghorn. Not a house or hut is to be seen in this gloomy gaut between Abernethey and the slope of the road on the southern side of the hills near Strathmiglo, a space of four miles. Here the pretty seat of the late general Skene, alluded to above, now occupied, I understand, by a gentleman of the same name and family, with the neatly inclosed, and well cultivated fields belonging to it, make a pleasing impres sion after so dismal a contrast.

ABERNETHEY.

At the northern extremity of this glen, and at the bottom of a great hill, rising, on the western side, abruptly from the rivulet Nethey, stands ABERNETHLY, the famous capital of the Cis-Grampian

Picts, and the metropolitan see of the christian church in Scotland, before it was translated, after the expulsion of the Ficts, to St. Andrews. These facts are authenticated beyond all doubt by many records, and the concurring voice of all historians; yet is there not any other Pictish monument to be found at Abernethey besides the round tower, or rather column, so often mentioned by antiquarians and travellers. It is hollow in the inside, and without a staircase: it is built of hewn free stone, and tapers towards the top. It seemed to me to be about eighty feet high; but, for an account of its exact dimensions, and a variety of conjectures concerning its use or end, I must refer to the writings of antiquarians.

*

The situation of Abernethey, for the capital of a nation from Scandinavia, was naturally and well chosen. The bay of St. Andrews, and the Frith of Tay, within a mile of which Abernethey is situated, is exactly opposite to the sea that opens an easy communication with Denmark, Sweden, and the west part of Norway, countries with which the Pictish conquerors and colonists would naturally be desirous of keeping up an easy intercourse; not, perhaps, for the purpose of commerce, of which there was very little in those times, but of aid, when necessary, and protection. In the same manner we may presume that our colonies in North America clung closely at first to the mother country. The steep and high hill, almost overhanging the capital, was a natural fortress. The whole plain of Strath

The Scaggerrc, or Cat-gate, through which lies the passage from the German Ocean into the Sound, or entrance of the Baltic.

more, and particularly the Carse of Gowrie and Stratherne, afforded a plentiful store of provisions; and the glen, as well as another passage where Macduff's Cross now stands, between Abernethey and Newburgh, opened an easy communication with Pichtlandia, now called Fife.

The town of Abernethey, seen at a distance, appears like a grove of trees. It consists of one street, with a few narrow alleys, or wynds. It is divided among as many proprietors almost as there are householders, and these, I think, must be about a hundred. Every one has a garden behind his house, narrow, but of great length, sloping northward to the plain, or rising gently on the lowermost parts of the great hill on the south, which they call the Muckle Benn, or Binn. They have also, most of them, some acres of land, from three to five or six, adjoining to the town. The Muckle Binn is common to all the burgesses of Abernethey. It affords pasture for sheep and a few young bullocks. It has been the custom for ages, I suppose, and certainly for many years, for the lairds of Abernethey, in imitation, no doubt, of lords and greater lairds, to decorate their residences with rows of trees, one planted on each side for the whole extent of their gardens; so that, before you enter Abernethey, it looks liker a wood than a town. It is a burgh of barony, holding of the lord of BALVAIRD, an old castle in the neighbouring hills, belonging to the family of Stormont, now Mansfield. Lord Balvaird is one of his titles. In this small village there are not less than three churches, or kirks: the established church, in the yard or

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