IO JOHN DUNCAN, WEAVER AND BOTANIST. 



sound and signification. Then within two miles of the 

 town, prptected by its almost inaccessible precipices 

 seawards, and its guarded portal landwards, rose the 

 magnificent ruins of the Castle of Dunnottar, which form one 

 of the grandest and most striking sea-pieces in Scotland, 

 rich as the land is in such scenes. 



This remarkable coast was the constant haunt of John 

 Duncan in his early years, and few surpassed him in 

 adventurous courage and power of scaling a cliff. As he 

 expressed it himself, " I had a terrible faculty o' climbin'. 

 I was wonderfu' venturesome ; awfu' fine at the fit (foot) ; 

 and fear never cam' on 'me." Dunnottar itself was the 

 chosen scene of countless scrambles, which strangely never 

 issued in accident, though pursued under conditions that, 

 to the unaccustomed, would be gruesome and appalling. 

 He and his companions used to approach the castle both 

 by sea and land, and to them it was simple cowardice to 

 enter by the prosaic gateway, then, as now, under lock and 

 key. They must climb the seemingly inaccessible cliffs 

 near the end of the headland, only reached by boat ; or 

 clamber in by Wallace's Hole, a small window on the south 

 side in the portal wall, now closed up but then open to the 

 venturous, by means of which the champion of his country 

 once gallantly wrested the castle from English hands. 

 This loophole Johnnie was always the first of the band to 

 reach, when he would haul up his more timorous companions. 

 Tripping over the rubbish which then filled the now empty 

 room behind, they would range "roond and roond aboot 

 like cats," as he said, through the whole interior. They 

 entered every room, explored every dungeon, seated 

 themselves on the topmost turrets, till they were sated 



