THE HISTORY OF GLENMORE FOREST, 89 



The memorial plank is 5 ft. 5 ins. in width at the butt end 

 and 4 ft. 4 ins. at the top, and is of a rich brown colour. Sir 

 Herbert Maxwell states (1914) that " The top of the magnificent 

 tree lies where it was cut off, more than 100 years ago on the hill 

 above Glenmore Lodge about 1400 feet above the sea, and is 

 still hard and sound, 3 feet in diameter where it was cut off . . . 

 the snows and rains of a century have made little impression on 

 the bones of this giant." 



Sir Thomas Dick Lauder graphically gives us his impressions 

 of the change in the appearance of the wild region of Glenmore 

 effected by the felling of the primeval woods. He also notes 

 the first appearance of the present forest : — 



"The forests of Glenmore and Rothiemurcus, though belong- 

 ing to different estates, were so united as to form in reality one 

 continuous forest, and they are now equally denuded of all their 

 finest timber. We remember this, a region of such wildness 

 where its calm silent lakes were for ever reflecting from their 

 dark bosoms the endless forests of pine which rose distance after 

 distance over the broken sides of their minor hills and more 

 lofty mountains, and where the scenes we wandered through 

 were such as the florid imagination of a poet might fancy but 

 could not describe. Alas ! the numerous lakes and the hills 

 and the mountains are yet there, but the forests shall no more 

 bewilder the imagination of the stranger till time shall give the 

 same aged forms to those younglings which are everywhere 

 springing up in the room of their ancestors. The Glenmore 

 forest is fast replenishing itself. Nothing could be more 

 savagely picturesque than that solitary scene when we visited 

 it some years ago. At that time many gigantic skeletons of 

 trees about 20 feet in circumference, but which had been so far 

 decayed at the time the forest was felled as to be unfit for timber, 

 had been left standing, most of them in prominent situations, 

 their bark in a large measure gone, many of them without leaves, 

 and catching a pale unearthly looking light upon their gr^jj 

 trunks and bare arms which were stretched forth towards the 

 sky, as if in the act of conjuring up the storm which was 

 gathering in the bosom of the mountains, and which was about 

 to burst forth at their call." 



The next reference we have to the young forest is that 

 appearing in the New Statistical Account of Scotland (1845), 

 where it is stated that the progress of the new growth in Glenmore 



