84 JOHN DUNCAN, WEAVER AND BOTANIST. 



pre-diluvial days ? To poor John, the Adamic ban, like the 

 bitter herbs of Culpepper, became a blessing, and the best 

 antidote to rankling sorrows. 



When he left the banks of the Don, after residing near 

 Monymusk for some years, he travelled farther north, by the 

 great road that skirts the east side of Benachie, on to the 

 banks of the Ythan, to a carding-mill at Rothie and a wool 

 mill at Fyvie, where weaving was carried on. There also 

 he was in a beautiful neighbourhood, for he seems always to 

 have settled at places remarkable for natural attractions. 

 There he frequented numerous scenes of loveliness and 

 grandeur in wood, water, rock and keep : the wild den of 

 Rothie ; the ruins of Formartine Castle, on the precipice 

 overhanging the struggling Ythan ; the Braes of Gight, the 

 patrimony of Miss Gordon, Byron's mother ; the villages 

 round Fyvie, with the old churchyard where lies " Tiftie's 

 bonnie Annie," of ballad broken-heartedness ; the site of the 

 Mill o' Tiftie, where she lived with her cruel kindred ; and 

 the big baronial Castle of Fyvie, with its interesting story, 

 of which John got a copy altogether a region of great 

 natural beauty, poetry, and romance. 



Here John made the acquaintance of a worthy man, 

 George Caughrie, then gardener at Rothie Norman, 

 through whom he increased his acquaintance with plants, 

 and whom he used to visit in after life. All his days, he 

 made a point of gaining the friendship of gardeners 

 wherever he went. They worked amongst the plants he 

 now increasingly loved ; they also furnished him the means 

 of obtaining herbs not indigenous to Britain, but required in 

 his widening pharmacopoeia, and of practising his predilec- 

 tion for garden work, in which he used much to engage, 



