Floods. 213 



gleaming, are all alike then, and have no shallows; a dull 

 uniformity of dark umber depths then prevails, and wipes 

 out the more attractive marks ; all are robbed of their 

 more distinguishing beauties and characteristic traits. 



Nevertheless some of our painters have painted 

 splended pictures of rivers in spate when the greeny 

 ordered beauty of the bank or margin was lost in 

 a roaring brown sea, and when all resources of 

 the pencil had to be applied to render the whirl and 

 wild gurgling dash of brown water, leaping, passing 

 here and there into foam-covered swirling eddies. 

 One picture we remember of Mr. Peter Graham, 

 masterly in the general effect as in details, and another, 

 if we remember rightly, from the easel of Mr. J. R. 

 Macdonald, R.S.A., and still another from that of 

 Mr. W. Mactaggart, R.S.A. 



And floods have left their mark in literature too. 

 The great flood on the Spey, which wrecked a valley, 

 and was almost as memorable for wonderful and rom- 

 antic escapes as for the lives lost, has received 

 worthy commemoration. Few that have read it will 

 ever forget Sir Thomas Dick Lauder's thrilling and 

 faithful pictures, or the yet more wonderful effects 

 which Dr. George Macdonald gains from his highly 

 poetical and dramatic presentation of the phenomena 

 in his novel of "Sir Gibbie," which would have a 

 permanent value were it for this feature alone. 



It is this great change, sometimes very sudden, 

 which was in the mind of the writer of that famous 

 song, "The Flowers of the Forest," when this fine 

 verse was penned — 



" I've seen the morning with gold the hills adorning, 

 And the red storm roaring before the parting day ; 

 I've seen Tweed's siller streams, glistening on the sunny beams, 

 Grow drumlie and dark as they rolled on their way." 



