118 AT THE SIGN OF THE STOCK YARD INN 



Well might the surveyor tremble by reason of them 

 for the safety of the Old Bridge. His bull Champion 

 was cut up for refreshments at one of his sales, 

 and when he thought there might be some mistake 

 about the arrival of the regular beef supplies, he 

 had twelve geese killed and spitted on an ashet 

 before the fire. He would have his rounds of beef 

 of a certain circumference, and it was because he 

 despaired of finding a bullock of the regulation size 

 that he made Champion stand proxy." 



Confirmatory of all this is McGoMBiE's assertion 

 that "his horses were the strongest and his fields 

 the largest in the country. He once said that he 

 'did not like a field in which the cattle could see 

 one another every day.' ' 



The estate of Ury proper comprised about 4,000 

 acres, of which the Captain had about 400 acres in 

 his personal control. It was naturally a poor, sterile 

 soil, littered with the stony debris of the ancient 

 glaciers from the Grampians; but his father at 

 prodigious outlay of labor had reduced, by the free 

 use of lime and the culture of roots, 200 acres to 

 a good state of fertility. Two hundred more were 

 reclaimed from the heather and 1,200 acres planted 

 to timber! At such a cost did these pioneer North- 

 of-Scotland farmers make productive lands of their 

 ancestral barrens. 



