NIMRO&S NORTHERN TOUR. 261 



-as I ever met with in my travels. He is also a capital customer 

 to the Captain, having that year paid him a thousand pounds for 

 grass only on the Ury domain, besides having at that time two 

 hundred sheep eating his turnips. But what a noble farm must 

 that of Ury be to admit of all this, after the quantity of stock 

 which the Captain keeps on it of his own ; and at this very time, 

 besides his hundred neat cattle, he had 400 Leicester ewes, and 

 800 sheep of various sorts, eating turnips. 



We dined at the good old fashioned hour of two, and as we 

 were not called upon to go to Stonehaven to take the coach till 

 six, we had plenty of time for chat. As may be supposed, 

 business was now and then alluded to, and amongst the many 

 questions I put to Mr. Williamson, was his opinion of Lord 

 Kintore's black ox, which was purchased by one of his fraternity 

 at Aberdeen, for a hundred pounds, or guineas, and whose por- 

 trait, from a painting by Cooper, was given to me by his lordship 

 when at Keith Hall. He told me the meat was of the finest 

 colour and quality, beautifully " marbled" as the term is ; also, 

 that the roasting parts fetched two shillings per pound and the 

 "boiling ones one shilling ; that the fat on the sirloins was six 

 inches in depth, and on the rumps nine, and the total dead 

 weight including offal was 28771135. ! So much for Aberdeen- 

 shire, its good farming, and its beef. Then the mention of Lord 

 Kintore's name started Mr. Williamson on another tack. Speak- 

 ing of him as keeping his fox-hounds, and spending almost all his 

 income in the county whence it is derived, he finished his remarks 

 with the following striking sentence : " These are the men," 

 said he, " who, if they ask anything of their country, must have 

 it" The name of another nobleman was introduced the late 

 Lord Kennedy, who was a near neighbour of the Captain's, and 

 with whom I had the honour of a slight acquaintance myself. 

 To attempt to produce a rival to the Captain in walking matches 

 would be absurd no man but himself having, I believe, yet 

 walked a hundred and ten miles in nineteen hours and a half; 

 but the following account of a match undertaken and performed 

 by Lord Kennedy may be relied upon, as I had it from an eye- 

 witness : " A match was made for 5000 a side, at Black Hall, 

 Aberdeenshire, the seat of Mr. Farquharson, at eight o'clock in 

 the evening, after dinner, between Lord Kennedy and Colonel, 

 now Sir Leith, Hay, to go on foot to Inverness. The morning 

 had been employed in riding to a snipe-bog, sixteen miles 

 distant, where three guns bagged fifty-two couples of snipes and 

 -eighteen of wild ducks. They started immediately. Kennedy 

 went across the hills and reached Inverness in thirty hours. 

 Hay followed the high road and arrived about four hours later 



