of a cowhouse alone remained-the whole crop was gone-so were six acres of arable land, and all the rest was ruined by deep deposits of sand and gravel. The poor tenants removed to the farm of Knochandhu. The house stood about twenty yards from the edge of a haugh, 100 feet high above the Findhorn. But the "appendix flood," of the 27th, finding the base of this lofty bank already scarified, attacked, undermined, and tumbled it down in enormous masses, with a noise like volleys of artillery -so that the house, though not hurl ed over, had to be deserted, standing as it now did, on the edge of a red, raw, perpendicular precipice a hun dred feet high. Lord Cawdor's loss is estimated at L.6000-and many poor people were reduced to utter want and ruin. The Findhorn then attacked the old military bridge at Dulsie, which consists of one bold and lofty arch of 46 feet, spanning the yawning chasm. The Findhorn attacked him in close column, with all his forces-having risen en masse forty feet above his usual level. But though invaded to within three feet of his key-stone, the old veteran stood fast, and repulsed the enemy, or rather suffered him to make his escape along the foundations of his piers. The Findhorn was here reinforced by the Drumlochan Burn, in its ordinary state hardly sufficient to keep a saw-mill going, but now a column of water ten feet deep by forty in breadth. Its very branches were mighty-and carried away two bridges of twenty feet span. The Findhorn, swollen with so many furious auxiliaries, now resolved to sweep away the magnificent bridge of Ferness. It was built of solid granite by the Parliamentary Commissioners, consisting of three arches of thirty-six, fifty-five, and thirty feet span, and founded on the solid rock. But Sir Thomas's fine description of this attack must be given unabridged:

"It went on to rise in this way till about 7 o'clock, when the haugh on the right bank was covered, and the arches were not only completely filled, but the water was level with the top of the parapet, 27 feet above the ordinary level; and, indeed, if a few yards of the parapets towards the left and highest bank had not appeared, no one could have sus

pected that there was a bridge there at all. Grouped with some cottages and some other trees, at a point about 150 yards above the bridge, grew one of the most beautiful ashes I ever beheld. It had a tall triple stem, supporting a perfect grove of foliage. The largest of its three divisions was 12 feet in circumference, the next 7 feet, and the smallest about 7 feet.

This noble tree was

covered to a considerable height by the water; but the gardener had no apprehension for its safety, when all at once it ber of its branches by the very force and fell with a fearful crash, breaking a numweight with which they struck the surface of the water, and throwing up the agitated element to a great height. Down it went out of sight, with an enormous bank of gravel, torn away and retained by the long and multiplied reticulations of its roots. As it got rid of a part of this dead weight, and rapidly approached the bridge, its branches rose for a moment, with great majesty, some 40 or 50 feet above the water, and fell backwards, in such a manner as to bring the root forward. In an instant it was sucked into the vortex of the centre arch. The

branches and smaller limbs were ground to pieces with a noise like thunder, mingled with that of the explosions of gunpowder. For three or four minutes it stuck, groaning and bellowing' as if below the lower side of the bridge, shorn from torture, and then appeared darting subsided, the bridge of Ferness, to the of its mighty honours. When the river astonishment of every one, emerged from the flood, with no other damage than the loss of a part of its southern wing-walls and road-way, estimated at about L.100. But the preservation of the arches and the body of the bridge, must ever occasion it to be regarded as a miracle of masonry."

The flood now reached the Re

lugas property-and here ripped up an old tragic secret:

where the public road now runs, it was "At one place, immediately above carried past Cumin's Cairn, rising on the verge of a steeply inclined bank of 70 or 80 feet high. This heap of stones was raised over the body of a man of the name of Cumin, who, having hanged himself in his barn in the beginning of the 18th century, that is to say, about 100 years before the time I now speak of, was buried on the march, according to the custom observed with suicides. moment the ditch was opened down the face of the bank, it collected the water of every shower of rain; and, being thereby

The

converted into a teinporary cataract, a gully of immense magnitude was cut in the alluvial matter in the course of a year or two. The bottom of this soon formed

itself into an inclined plane, of above 100 yards in length, after which the water ceased to have any effect on it. This sufficiently illustrates the law governing all streams in their operations on the face of the earth, which have all a tendency, by deepening one place and filling up another, to reduce their channels to inclined planes.

After a flood, which brought down a good deal of the loose material on the sides of the gully, a boy, tending cattle, observed something like long red hair streaming in the breeze, near the top of the broken bank. On climbing up to investigate the matter, what was his horror and dread when he discovered that the hair was attached to a ghastly human head! He fled home in terror, and the people crowded out to see the wonder. There they found the corpse of Cumin, so entire, that if any one could have known him alive, he must have perfectly recognised his features. The head protruded horizontally from the bank, and the exudation from the body had tinged the sand beneath it of a black colour, to a considerable depth. The cause of the preservation of the body was manifestly the dry ferruginous sand it was buried in. The rope was found about his neck, and attached to the fatal beam. During the night following the discovery of the body, the man's descendants carried all off, and buried them in the churchyard of Edenkillie."

The Findhorn, though, during the flood, well entitled to the cognomen of "The Bridge-Destroyer," 'was yet, like Wellington at Burgos, often repulsed. He rose thirty-one feet against the bridge of Daltlich, a fine bold arch of eighty-two feet span, and forty-four from parapet to ordinary water-level, springing from the rock-but after a whole day and night's cannonade, he was fain to sheer off from that impregnable position. He now approached the Haugh of Randolph-vulgarly called Rannoch. And although the opening at Randolph's Bridge extends as the rocks rise upwards, till the width is perhaps not less than seventy or eighty feet above, yet from the sudden turn the river takes as it enters this passage, the stream was so checked in its progress, that the flood actually rose over the very top of the rocks, forty-six feet above the usual

height, and inundated the level part of Rannoch-haugh that lies over them, to the depth of four feet, making a total perpendicular rise at this point of no less than fifty feet!

"

Leaving the Bridge-Destroyer" in his full-swollen pride and wrath at Randolph's Bridge, let us accompany Sir Thomas while, according to the arrangement proposed in his preliminary chapter, he describes the ravages of the river Divie, which falls into the Findhorn immediately below the house of Relugas. The Divie has its origin in the hills dividing the district of Braemoray from that of Strathspey, and is formed by the combination of many small streams. Its scenery, for a stretch of six or seven miles below the spot where it leaps into the glen in a wild waterfall, to its junction with the Findhorn, is exquisitely beautiful. Mr Cumming Bruce's estate of Dunphail stretches nearly to its upper extremity five or six miles above the fall-and he had a range of small farms all along its course, the haugh lands of which were entirely swept away by the flood. It carried away a beau tiful bridge of one arch which had been there for nearly a century. It broke quite over the parapet; yet still the arch stood till about a quarter of an hour afterwards, when some very large trees came down with the stream, stuck within it for a time, and the pressure accumulating above, it was carried off en masse, and actually hurried for some distance down the river, before it went to pieces and sunk.

11

The Dorback which joins the Divie, comes from the wild lake of Lochindorbe, remarkable for the extensive ruins of its insulated castle, and has many tributary burns. One of its branches destroyed a bridge on the Grantown road, and another tore down the bridge of Dava, swept away the garden of the inn, and the whole crop and soil attached to it. The Dorback itself was far from being idle on this great occasion. He, utterly annihilated the whole of the low lands of Lord Moray's estate of Braemoray, and converted the green slo pes of the hills into naked precipi ces. The damage done on Mr Cumming Bruce's part of the Dorback is of the same character and comparative extent. At the Ess, or waterfall of the Dorback, where the river runs

through a ravine, thirty feet wide, the flood was twenty feet high-a towering altitude for a rivulet which, in ordinary seasons, you may wade at a hundred fords-knee-deep. Lower down, the deluge of rain performed a curious achievement. It so soaked and saturated about an acre of wood on the face of a bank, 100 feet high, that the whole mass, with slopes and terraces covered with birch and alder-trees, gave way at once, threw itself headlong down, and bounded across the Dorback, blocking up the waters in that tremendous flood.

"William Macdonald, the farmer of Easter Tillyglens, witnessed this pheno menon. He told me that it fell wi' a sort o' a dumb sound,' which, though somewhat of a contradiction in terms, will yet convey the true meaning better than any more correct expression. As tonished and confounded, Macdonald remained gazing. The bottom of the valley is here some 200 yards or more wide, and the flood nearly filled it. The stoppage was not so great, therefore, as altogether to arrest the progress of the stream. But this sudden obstacle created an accumulation of water behind it, which went on increasing for nearly an hour, till, becoming too powerful to be longer resisted, the enormous dam began to yield, and was swept off at once, and hurled onwards like a floating island. But this was not all; for while Macdonald was standing, lost in wonderment, to behold his farm thus sailing off to the ocean by acres at a time, better than half an acre more of it rent itself away from its native hill, and descended at once, with a whole grove of trees on it, to the river, where it rested most accurately on its natural base. The flood immediately assailed this, and carried off the greater part of it piecemeal. Part of it yet remains, however, with the trees growing on it, in the upright position, after having travelled through a horizontal distance of 60 or 70 yards, with a perpendicular descent of not less than 60 feet."

The Dorback then destroyed the beautiful meal-mill and carding-mill of Dunphail. The whole family, consisting of the miller, a most meritorious and ingenious, and what is far better, religious young man, William Sutherland-a boy his brother -the assistant miller-a lad, and a servant girl, found themselves surrounded by the flood. As they were engaged in family worship, down

came the river suddenly upon them, pouring into the house both by the doors and windows. But here we must quote the miller's own impressive account of the affair:

I ran,' said the miller, to the bed where my little brother lay; and, snatchmeal-mill, the floor of which was elevated ing him up, I carried him out to the and dry, and I kindled a fire on the bricks to keep him and the lass warm. By this time, the cattle were up to the bellies in water in the byre; and I ran to throw straw bundles under them and the pigs, to raise them, to prevent their being drowned. I had hardly returned to the house, when the south gable, which had the current beating against it, fell inwards on the other room, and I was instantly obliged to knock out that window in the north gable, to let the water escape, otherwise we must have perished where we About five o'clock, I observed my neighbours John Grant and his wife standing on the bank in front. The distance between us was not thirty yards, yet I could not make them hear for the fearsome roar of the water, which was now quite tremendous. Large trees were constantly coming down and striking against the carding-mill. The look up

were.

the water was awful. It seemed as if a sea was coming down upon us, with terrible waves, tossing themselves into the air, much higher than the houses. I saw Grant's wife go up the bank, and she re turned some time afterwards with four men. We watched them consulting together, and our hopes rose high; but when we saw them leave the place without making any attempt to save us, we thought that all hope for us in this world was gone. Willingly would I have given all I had, or might expect to possess, to have planted but the soles of my feet, and those of my companions, on yon bit green sod, then still untouched by the waters. Every moment we expected the crazed walls of the house to yield, and to bury us in their ruins, or that we and it together should be swept away. We began to prepare

us.

ourselves for the fate that seemed to await I thank Almighty God that supported me in that hour of trial. I felt calm and collected, and my assistant was no less so. My little brother, too, said he was na feared; but the woman and the lad were frantic, and did nothing but shriek and wring their hands.

"While we were in this situation, we suddenly saw about sixty people coming down the bank, and our hopes revived. The four men had gone to raise the country, and they now appeared with ropes,

All our attention was fixed on their motions. They drove a post into the ground, and threw the end of a thick rope across to me. This we fixed to a strong beam, and jammed it within the front window, whilst they on the bank made fast the other end of it to the post. A smaller rope was thrown over, This I fastened round the boy's waist, and he was dragged through the water to the bank, supporting himself all the way on the larger rope, that was stretched between the window and the post. The lass lost her hold, and was taken out half drowned; but, thank Providence! we were all saved. By six o'clock in the evening, the water had so fallen, that I made my way in to give pro

All

vender to the beasts. I then found that the whole Dorback had come over from the west side of the valley, and cut a new course close at the back of the mills. the mill-leads were cut entirely away. A deep ravine was dug out between the houses and the bank-their foundations were undermined in that direction-the machinery destroyed—the gables next the river carried away-and all, even the very ground, so ruined, that it is quite impossible ever to have mills here again,'"

So much for the exploits of the Dorback before he joined the Divie;

and now a few words more of the

Divie before he joins the Findhorn and then a few pages, perhaps more, of the "Bridge-Destroyer," before he joins the Sea.

We grieve to say, that the Divie shewed himself by his conduct to his excellent benefactor and benefactress, Mr and Mrs Cumming Bruce, a monster of ingratitude. The new house of Dunphail, then partly inhabited, and on the eve of being finished at the time of the floods, is one of the happiest efforts of Mr Playfair's classical taste. It stands on a wide lawn, 50 feet from the verge of a bank in front, at the base of which there is an old channel, where there was little water except in floods, and 600 feet from the proper and ordinary course of the river that runs along the steep and wooded bank bounding the valley to the west. The intermediate space was occupied by a broad, green, and partially wood ed island of some acres in extent. On the evening of the 3d, the Divie rose so as to carry away two handsome wooden bridges, and, an embankment at the upper end of the island having given way, a mighty torrent poured towards the house. Mr Cumming Bruce prevailed on his

wife and daughter to leave Dunphail, for the house of a friend. Before doing so, about six in the evening, their anxiety had been extremely excited for the fate of a favourite old pony, then at pasture in the island. Though the house of Dunphail itself was about to be in jeopardy, their feeling hearts felt for old Dobbin.

"As the spot had never been flooded in the memory of man, no one thought of removing him until it was too late. When the embankment gave way, and the patches of green gradually diminished, Dobbin, now in his twenty-seventh year, and in shape something like a 74 gun-ship cut down to a frigate, was seen galloping about in great alarm, as the wreck of roots and trees floated past him, and as the last spot of grass disappeared, he was given up for lost. At this moment he made a desperate effort to cross the stream under the house,-was turned head over heels by its force-rose again, with his head up the river-made boldly up against it, but was again borne down and turned over-every one believed him gone, when, rising once more, and setting down the waste of water, he crossed both torrents, and landed safely on the

opposite bank."

Mr Cumming Bruce returned to Dunphail at ten o'clock, and then the

river had undermined the bank the house stood on to within four paces of the foundation of the kitchen tower,

and at eleven, there were only three At two yards then left to count on. o'clock on Tuesday morning, it came 12 feet within the height of the bank, flowing 16 or 18 feet immediately below, where, in general, the old water-course was dry, and the bank tion of the east-tower. Mr Cumming fell within one yard of the foundaBruce then ordered every one to quit the building, and he and his people to witness the fate of the beautiful took their station at some distance, structure. But at four o'clock the river began to subside, and the house

was saved.

"The ruin and devastation of the place was dreadful. The shrubbery all along

the river side, with its little hill and moss-house, had vanished; two stone and

three wooden bridges were carried off; the beautiful fringe of wood on both sides of the river, with the ground it grew on, were washed to the ocean, together with all those sweet and pastoral projections of the fields, which gave so peaceful and fertile a character to the valley; whilst the once green island, robbed of its groups of

trees, and furrowed by a dozen channels, was covered with large stones, gravel, and torn up roots. The rock in the old channel had been rendered unavailing by the great quantity of gravel brought down, which raised the water over it, so that it acted against the superincumbent mass of mortary gravel that was incapable of resisting it; and thus the house was left in the midst of ruin-like a precious gem, the lustre and effect of which have been destroyed by its setting being injured, and the stone itself left in jeopardy. Dreadful, indeed,' says Mrs Cumming Bruce, feelingly, in a billet written in reply to our enquiries, is the devastation that a few hours have wrought. But we must be thankful that all around us are safe. God's will be done. I daresay we were all too proud of the beauty of our valley, -a beauty which we had not given, and could not take away, but which has vanished in an instant before His sweeping

But we now accompany the worthy Baronet to his own "Relugas," where the Divie acted nearly as wicked a part as at Dunphail. Yet, after all, we believe in our conscience that he could not help it. The man who, when hurried headlong by the force of one single, or twenty united swollen passions, would seek, after spreading irremediable misery far and wide, to palliate his wickedness by the plea that he was no longer a voluntary agent, is suitably answered by an immediate order for his execution. But a river is at the mercy of the marshes of earth and the clouds of heaven, and cannot successfully fight against his Will-o'-wisps and his Stars. We have sometimes seen a stream vainly resisting earth, air, and sky to flood him, and trying to make his escape into bays and nooks -but it would not do-he soon became red, and then raving-mad as well as drumly-and knocking his head against rocks and bridges, rushed howling like a maniac to the sea. On the 3d and 4th of August, the Divie was indeed an object rather of pity than of anger-of poetical wonder and awe, than of moral blame

and condemnation. Sir Thomas, who suffered so sadly from his insanity, compassionately saw his conduct in this light, and for sake of his many virtues, regards him with entire forgiveness.

On

The chief part of the pleasure grounds of Relugas, occupies a peninsula bounded to the east by the Divie, and to the west by the Findhorn. The house stands on a terrace facing the west, in which direction the lawn stretches towards the Findhorn. The south front looks over the garden, extending up the glen of the Divie, and immediately above a wooded bank, which slopes from the garden into an island called the Mill Island, formed by the water led off from the Divie as a mill-stream. This mill-stream ran peacefully along the base of that superbly wooded bank, where trees of all kinds grew to the height of eighty feet, and produced an impenetrable shade. The side of the Mill Island, next the Divie itself, was defended by a spine of wooded rocks, rising abruptly, and terminating at the upper end in a picturesque castellated mass called the Otter's Rock. the Mill Island itself the greatest care was lavished, the peaceful millstream, the lawny grass glades, the winding walks, and the rocky ridges, having all been adorned with all that was most rare, till it was converted into a spot of delightful retirement. At the back of the house, a picturesque conical wooded hill, called the Doune, rises to the eastward. The Divie coming from the south, after skirting the whole length of the Mill Island, strikes against the southern base of the Doune, and then turns off to the eastward at a right angle, immediately above which point the stables and other offices stand, 40 feet perpendicular, and 158 feet ho rizontal from the water's edge, forming two sides of a square correspond ing to the angle of the river. After leaving the offices, the Divie sweeps for a circuit of half a mile round the south, east, and north bases of the Doune, between lofty and rocky banks, luxuriantly wooded with stately timber, and along the mingled lawns and wooded banks that slope towards its stream from the north front of the house, it pursues its course westward to join the Find