ALEXANDER GORDON, THE ANTIQUARY. 19 



with incident and cliaracter derived from, this unlikely source, there 

 can be no question. It is indeed very much in the actual words of 

 Gordon's learned argument, though in a more condensed form than 

 suited the ample page of his folio, that the Antiquary holds forth 

 to Lovel on the disputed site of Agricola's victory. " As for our 

 Scottish antiquaries," says Gordon, " they are so divided that some 

 will have it to be in the shire of Angus, or in the Mearns ; some at 

 the Blair of Athol in Perthshire, or Ardoch in Strathallan ; and 

 others at TnnerpefFery :" and so the solemn old folio, formal, tall and 

 lean as its learned author, proceeds as it were in stately amplifica- 

 tion of the very words listened to by Lovel on the Kaim of Kin- 

 prunes. And " now, after all this discussion," continued the Laird 

 of Monkbarns, with one of his slyest and most complacent looks, 

 "what would you think, Mr. Lovel — I say, what would you think, 

 if the memorable scene of conflict should happen to be on the very 

 spot called the Kaim^of Kinprunes 1 " — or, as his genuine prototype, 

 Sandy Gordon, would have it, at Galdachan, in Strathern. He has 

 combated his opponents in detail, and now he proceeds : " From all 

 which I am of opinion that the real place where the battle was 

 fought, at the Mons Grampius, is, as I have already asserted, in 

 Strathern, the famous Glacialis lerne of which Claudius the poet 

 afterwards makes so much mention." For is there not Agricola's 

 camp visible there to all men, with distinct agger and fossa, porta 

 decumana, prsetorium, and all else 1 'Tis ti'ue, a part of the square 

 is washed away by the Ruchel, a torrent that there joins the river 

 Ern. But what of that, when the identification can be clinched in 

 this unanswerable fashion : " The situation of the ground," says 

 Gordon, "is so very exact with the description given by Tacitus, 

 that in all my travels through Britain I never beheld anything with 

 more pleasure, it being directly at the foot of the Grampian Hills ; 

 besides there are the colles, or small rising grounds on which the 

 Caledonians were placed before the battle, and also the high hill on 

 which the body of the Caledonian army lay, and from which they 

 came down upon the Romans. Nor is it difiicult, on viewing this 

 ground, to guess at the place where the covinarii, or charioteers, 

 stood. In fime, to an antiquary, this is a ravishing scene." And so 

 he closes his argument beyond possible assault, with this crowning 

 evidence : " Galgachus's name still remains on this ground ; tor the 

 moor is called to this day Galdachan, or Galgachan Eossmoref" 



