CHAPTER XIII. 



SETTLEMENT AT NETHERTON, AND VILLAGE 

 LIFE THERE. 



JOHN DUNCAN was now to take up his more or less 

 permanent residence in a district where his life was destined 

 to pass through a transformation that sweetened and 

 elevated it the pleasant Vale of Alford. In the early 

 summer of 1836, the year of Coleridge's death and of the 

 emancipation of slaves on all British soil, John made the 

 acquaintance of Charles Black, the chief friend of his life, 

 and began his stricter scientific studies. 



After the Don has gathered its many waters from the 

 great mountains in the west of Aberdeen, crowned by the 

 big Ben Macdhui, and has become a full-grown stream, it 

 enters the expansion of its valley, called the Vale or Howe 

 of Alford. This wide basin has evidently been the bed of 

 an ancient lake, from which the Don had issued at the 

 narrow and picturesque gorge below Castle Forbes, and 

 which has laid down the materials for its present cultivated 

 beauty. The Vale is a broad hollow plain, through which 

 wanders the clear stream of the Don, warmly embosomed 

 by low rounded hills, prettily varied with wood, water, and 

 field ; guarded, on the east, by the peaked Benachie, and 



