11 



self little space to speak of the other objects of 

 interest that lie in and around it. And, in endeavouring 

 to adhere to the strict confines of known or ascertain- 

 able history, I have refrained from many speculations 

 which the place and its peculiarities suggest. No one, 

 however, who has stood looking over the wide plain from 

 Kellas to the sea, no one, more particularly, who has crossed 

 the wild Mannoch hill by its broken and forsaken road, 

 can avoid the "thick-coming fancies " that lead him back 

 into the vaguer and remoter past. Was this the track of 

 Roman legions marching due northward to the sea ? Was 

 that dim promontory that stretches into the blue firth the 

 Taurodunum of Ptolemy ? Did the purple-sailed Phoe- 

 nician galleys ride at anchor, once, down yonder, while the 

 Sidonian mariners lit their altars on the hill ? In later 

 times, did the flames of the sun-god Mithras rise from the 

 mysterious mound where the " clavie " is still lit on New 

 Year's Eve ? There are solid grounds for all these con- 

 jectures. Here, at Foths, are traces of Roman entrench- 

 ments — have we not all wondered at the "bull-stones" of 

 Burghead or Torrietown ? and have we not peered into 

 that strange temple, bath, or well that carries us back to 

 the time of the Antonines, when bulls were sacrificed in 

 underground sanctuaries on the Mithraic festival of the 

 New Year ? * At Shogle there are remains of a Danish 

 Camp, and we may supply the unwritten records of many 

 an early year with the constant tale of conflict in which 

 Roman and Pict. and Viking and Maormor, strove fiercely 

 and long for the soil beneath our feet. Moreover, it was 

 in a smith's hut " near Elgin " that Macbeth, the most 

 celebrated of all the Maormors of Moray, goaded on by 



"• See Dr. Mitchell's " Vacation Notes" in Vol. X. of the Proceedings of the 

 Society of Antiquaries, and the suggestion he mentions as having been made by 

 Dr. Grigor, Nairn, of the Mithraic character of the remains at Burghead. 



