148 FIELD NOTES FOR THE YEAR. 



the water did not reach to our knees. The day was hot and 

 the air heavy and oppressive ; and although we had not had 

 a drop of rain, we heard loud thunder during the whole 

 morning, and saw heavy black clouds hanging in the west, 

 over the mountains through which the river runs. After 

 idling about some time and shooting a few rabbits, &c., we 

 went towards a small cottage built on the highest part of the 

 island, in order to speak to the people who inhabited it. 

 Whilst standing close to the door, we heard a sudden scream 

 from a woman at work in the little plot of garden, and 

 looking round we at once saw the cause. The river, as the 

 woman emphatically expressed it, was " coming down." Over 

 a wide space of sand and shingle interspersed with patches of 

 broom and furze, where a few moments before we had been 

 hunting rabbits, there now came rushing down a wall of 

 muddy water, carrying with it turf, stones, and trees, rolling 

 over and over and uprooting every bush which opposed it. 

 Several of the trees must have come some miles down the 

 river, being large Scotch firs, with their branches, stems, and 

 roots, the latter frequently still carrying in their twisted 

 fibres great masses of the rocks on which they had grown. 

 The water was coming down like a wall of several feet high, 

 sweeping everything before it ; and in far less time than I 

 have taken to describe it, we were surrounded on all sides 

 with its muddy torrent. Independently of the risk of being 

 crushed to death by the floating and rolling trees, its rapidity 

 was so great that the strongest swimmer could not have 

 crossed it. 



On came the flood, narrowing our little island every 

 instant, by undermining and washing away the bank on 

 which the cottage stood. Nevertheless I anticipated no more 

 inconvenience than perhaps having to pass the night where 

 we were : for the building had stood all the torrents of the 

 Findhorn since the great flood of 1829, although its inhabitants 

 had more than once been cut off from any communication 

 with the mainland for several days together. But the water 

 was already higher than it had ever been since that flood, and 

 the women of the house were weeping in despair, their terrors 

 being augmented by a prophecy which had lately been 

 uttered by an old hag in the neighbourhood, to the effect that 

 all the country within six miles of the coast should be 

 swallowed up by floods during the last week of this very 

 July. So strong an effect had this prediction on the minds 



