CHAPTER VI. 



THE DON. 



ANGLING SEASON : February llth to October 31st. 

 NETTING SEASON : February llth to August 26th. 



District Fishery Board sits in Aberdeen. Clerks, Messrs. Wilsone & Duffus, Advocates, 

 7 Golden Square, Aberdeen. 



THE Don is an ideal trouting river, and should by nature be also a 

 first-rate salmon river. Owing chiefly, however, to manufactories of 

 great importance which have sprung up and become well established 

 along its banks, the king of fishes does not get a very good chance. 

 Our interests are, of course, all on the side of the salmon, our broad 

 contention being that there is room both for the manufactories and 

 for the salmon, and that the former need not be so conducted as to 

 injure the latter. 



The Don rises away on the ridge which separates Carn Ealasaid 

 and Ben Avon, close to the point where the river Avon emerges from 

 Glen Avon and turns sharp to the north to join the Spey. The 

 divide is an interesting one, for it appears that in conformity with 

 the geological axis of the country the Avon at one time flowed 

 on to form the Don. It is one of those complications of erosion 

 which have played tricks in the formation of many parts of Scot- 

 land. The Don from its source to the sea has a course of about 

 seventy miles. As far as Alford, which is practically the upper 

 half of the river, the channel is carved out through steep and often 

 well- wooded hills, the character being that of a Highland river. A 

 few miles below Alford this gives place to a gentler, and presently 

 to a flat, surrounding, and the river, by the time Inverurie is reached, 

 winds through meadow land with earthy banks. At Kintore and 

 for several miles further on, the Don is like a river in some fertile 

 English county ; the margins of the river are weedy, and sedge-grown 

 islands occur here and there, where water-hens and coots bob about. 



