202 A SCOTTISH BLOOD-FEUD 



anywhere else can such fine timber be found so near an 

 exposed seaboard. Silver firs, with a girth of fifteen feet 

 at five feet from the ground, run up to a height of one 

 hundred and twenty feet a long start over some of the 

 newer Californian species, which, however, are making a 

 good stern chase of it while oak and beech and other 

 deciduous trees furnish greenwood glades like those of 

 Berkshire, yet within sound of the thunder of the tide. 



The terraces are rich with those flowers and shrubs 

 which revel in the moist warmth of the west coast, and 

 the walls are thickly clothed with myrtles, camellia, 

 lemon-verbena, fuchsia, and escallonia a garniture not 

 more strangely in contrast with the warlike armament 

 of the place than social life of this day is at variance 

 with the times recalled by the name of Kennedy in the 

 south-west of Scotland. For this castle of Culzean, at 

 one time but the tower of a scion of that family, has 

 been for two centuries the principal seat of a race whose 

 sway was at one time far more dreaded in Carrick and 

 Western Galloway than that of the monarch himself. 

 One has only to turn to the records of the Kennedys, 

 Lords of Cassilis, to realise through what troubles the 

 people of Scotland have passed to present security. 



The family of Kennedy, like many other great Scottish 

 houses, first came into prominence when Robert Bruce 

 established himself on the throne and rewarded with 

 broad lands and feudal rank those who had been faithful 

 to his cause. Unlike most of these, the Kennedys were 

 not of Norman descent, but of Celtic blood, descendants 

 of the Pictish or Scottish Cinaedh. Nevertheless, this 

 honourable outset might not have availed to preserve 

 a heritage to the name, for royal favour of old was as 



