TORRES TO FOCHABERS. 107 



thirty to forty polled cows, which they are crossing 

 with Young Hiawatha,, a fifty-guinea purchase from 

 Mr. Geddes. Mr. Brown used to be an exhibitor at 

 the Highland Society, and won, among other prizes 

 at Inverness in 1846, one for the best pair of Angus 

 oxen. The road wound round some curious heather 

 knolls, and the long beech hedges and the Gordon 

 tartan, green with a single yellow stripe, soon showed 

 that Fochabers was nigh. The late Duke of Rich- 

 mond used to tell with great glee how, when other 

 officers indulged in gaudy papers, he lined his tent at 

 Aldershott with tartan during his stay there with the 

 Sussex militia, and how he proved himself the canny 

 Scot by untacking it and carrying it back to Good- 

 wood with him, to " serve in the next campaign." 



But here is the rolling Spey at last ! Fifty miles 

 up its stream near Kinrara lies Jane Duchess of 

 Gordon, with those beautiful eyes turned even in 

 death towards the Cairngorm, and those lips for ever 

 mute, whose kiss raised the 92nd regiment, when 

 the Gordon tartan ruled from Fochabers to Fort 

 Augustus, and away to Badenoch and Lochaber. The 

 river was still low, and the farmers were earnestly 

 watching for the deep flush on its sandstone cliffs, which 

 forebodes abundance of rain. It is said that on one 

 side the cliffs run under the Moray Frith to Brora, 

 while Southward they die gradually away into the 

 chain of everlasting hills, Ben Rinness, Ben Aigan 

 (hill of the eagle), Knock More, and Muldearie, 

 up whose bonnie brown sides the plough and the 



