390 THE SALMON RIVERS OF SCOTLAND 



is Pickimaw Island, so called, no doubt, from the nesting of 

 black-headed gulls. The history of the early inhabitants of 

 this region seems to be matter of uncertainty. Chalmers 

 makes Balliol Castle the scene of the death of King Alpin of 

 Dalriada in 741, which Skene believes to have occurred on the 

 eastern shore of Loch Ryan. A sister of Robert the Bruce 

 seems to have lived here, having become the wife of Seaton, 

 the lord of these parts. In 1826 nine " dug-out " canoes were 

 found sunk in the loch near the Castle Island. Two of them 

 used to be preserved in small pools just below the outlet from 

 the loch on the left bank, and were to be easily seen. One of 

 these, if I remember correctly, was fully 20 feet long. It is 

 now, I believe, in Glasgow Museum. Loch Doon is a capital 

 trouting loch, but does not yield many salmon, since early 

 running fish do not readily enter the loch owing to the rough 

 ascent necessary. 



About a hundred years ago the outflow of the river from the 

 loch was sluiced, and a great barrier of rock tunnelled by Earl 

 Cassillis and Mr. Macadam of Craigengillan. The level of the 

 loch was thereby lowered, and an attempt made to regulate 

 the flow of water to the river. Two sluices were constructed, 

 each 6 feet wide and 6 feet 8 inches high, and each sluice 

 communicated with a rock tunnel 66 feet long. One sluice 

 was kept open all the year round ; the other, which was at a 

 different level, was seldom opened. I believe this to be the 

 earliest operation of the kind in Scotland, and not anywhere 

 repeated till the " sixties," when Mr. Hutchinson, the tenant of 

 Soval in the Lewis, began operations of a similar kind, if on a 

 much smaller scale, by damming up his " Loch Dismal," 1 after 

 the manner he had seen practised on the Costello, in Ireland. 



At Loch Doon outlet, as originally formed, the rush of waters 

 through the tunnels was found to be too great, and, during 

 floods, the sluices could not be reached. In 1885 extensive 

 alterations were made, and became, instead of a tunnel 66 feet 

 long, the principal salmon pass 155 feet long. The upper end 

 of this pass is level for a distance of 17 feet, and is in tunnel, 

 since it passes below the road. The remainder is an open rock 

 cutting, with a gradient of practically 1 in 20. If the object, 

 however, was to get salmon into Loch Doon early, the real 

 i Vide p. 308. 



