124 JOHN DUNCAN, WEAVER AND BOTANIST. 



just described, John Duncan had already sojourned on its 

 northern face, in Tullynessle. He now settled down for 

 some years at its opposite extremity on the south-east, in 

 the parish of Tough,* under the slopes of Corennie Forest. 

 He took up his abode at a hamlet called Nether Edin- 

 durno, or shortly Netherton, at the entrance to the policies 

 of the mansion of Whitehouse. It lies underneath Cairn 

 William and the Hill of Tillyfourie, close by where the 

 Whitehouse station now stands on the Alford Valley Rail- 

 way. His new place of residence was immediately at the 

 west side of the Benachie range, on the eastern shoulders of 

 which he had spent many years near the woods of Paradise ; 

 and it was within easy distance of the two passes through 

 these hills to his old haunts and Aberdeen, the one 

 traversed by the Don at Castle Forbes, and the other, at a 

 later time, by the railway at Tillyfourie. 



Netherton, now represented by one house, was then a 

 considerable hamlet with eight or nine families, and the 

 centre of a large district, with its schoolmaster, innkeeper, 

 tailor, shoemaker, smith, carpenter, weaver, and postman, 

 and also with its neighbouring aristocracy in the mansions 

 of Whitehouse and Tonley.j It was situated on the great 

 highway from Alford to Aberdeen, being twenty-three 

 miles from the city, and a busy traffic then enlivened it, 

 now drained off by the railway, which was not completed 

 till 1859, twenty-three years after John Duncan first settled 

 there, and ten years after he had left it. It was a delightful 

 dwelling-place, near the well-wooded mountains to the east 

 and south, which commanded an expansive prospect over 



* Pronounced Tooch, with the guttural ch. 

 f Emphasized on the second syllable. 



