THE SCOTCH FIR, OR PINE. 371 



the neighbourhood of Loch Sloy, a tract of woods, neatly 

 twenty miles in extent, was consumed for the same 

 purpose ; and at a later period a considerable part of the 

 forests adjoining Lochiel was laid waste by the soldiers of 

 Oliver Cromwell in their attempts to subdue the Clan 

 Cameron. It is not above eighty years since Glen Urcha 

 was divested of a superb forest of Firs some miles in 

 extent. The timber was bought by a company of Irish 

 adventurers, who paid at the rate of sixpence a tree for 

 such as would now have been valued at five guineas. 

 After having felled the whole of the forest, the purchasers 

 became bankrupt and dispersed ; the overseer of the 

 workmen was hanged at Inverary for assassinating one of 

 his men ; the laird never received the purchase-money of 

 his timber, and a considerable number of the trees were 

 left upon the spot where they fell, or by the shores of 

 Loch Awe, whither they had been carried for conveyance, 

 and gradually consumed by the action of the weather. 

 The mosses where the ancient forests formerly stood are 

 filled with the short stumps of trees still standing where 

 they grew. Age has rendered them almost rotten to 

 the core, and the rains and decay have cleared them of 

 the soil ; yet their wasted stumps and the fangs of their 

 roots retain their original shape. Abundance of similar 

 remains are to be seen in other parts of the Highlands, 

 sometimes interspersed with living and flourishing trees, 

 but surrounded on all sides by the shattered stumps, fallen 

 trunks, and blasted limbs of a departed forest. ^ 



A like fate has overtaken the forest of Glenmore, once 

 famous for the size and age of its timber, whose magnifi- 

 cent Pines clothed one of the romautic glens between the 

 Cairngorum range and the river Spey. This noble forest 

 was purchased of the Duke of Gordon in 1783, and fur 

 nished materials for building no less than forty-one sail of 

 ships, including a frigate of one thousand and fifty tons. 

 A specimen of timber from one of these trees, preserved in 



J. H. Allan's " Last Deer of Eeann Doran." 



