DEER IN BADENOCH. 101 



quantity, Brae-feshie, about fifteen, Gaick, about thirty, 

 Drumnachder, twenty-five, Benalder, fifty, and Lochtreig, 

 sixty ; in all about two hundred and twenty square miles. 



" The whole of this vast tract was not solely appropriated 

 for breeding deer, for tenants were allowed to erect shiel- 

 ings on the confines of the forest, and their cattle were 

 permitted to pasture as far as they chose during the day, 

 but they were bound to bring them back to the shielings 

 in the evenings ; and such as were left in the forest over 

 night were liable to be poinded. 



" These regulations answered very well between Huntly 

 and his tenants, but they made an opening for small 

 proprietors, who held in fee from the Gordon family, to 

 make encroachments, and in course of time to acquire a 

 property to which they had not the smallest legal title. 



" In other respects, rights were more rigidly adhered to ; 

 for the old forest laws, which were exceedingly severe, 

 Avere enforced to the utmost in this district; mutilation, 

 and even death, were resorted to. It is upon record, that 

 Donald of Keppoch, hanged one of his own clan, in order to 

 appease Cluny Macpherson for depredations committed in 

 the forest of Benalder; and it is a known fact, that another 

 person, called John Our (John the swarthy), had an eye 

 put out, and his right arm amputated, for a similar offence ; 

 and it is also said, that he even killed deer afterwards, in 

 that mutilated condition. 



" No alteration took place in these forests till after the 

 Kebellion of 1745, when the whole was let for grazing, 

 with the exception of Gaick, which the Duke of Gordon 

 continued as a deer forest until about the year 1788, when 

 it was let as a sheep walk, and continued so until 1816, 

 when the late Duke of Gordon (then Marquis of Huntly) 

 re-established it ; and it is now rented by Sir Joseph 

 Radcliffe. But in consequence of cattle being admitted to 

 summer grazing, the present number of deer, as I am 

 informed, is not great ; probably not more than between 

 two or three hundred. The deer in this forest are small, 

 and chiefly hinds; but, in all the other named forests, it 

 was not uncommon to kill harts that weighed twenty-four 

 stone, and even up to twenty-seven, imperial weight. 



