XX in RIVER SCENERY 213 



the elegant fern and crowned with juniper, which grows to a 

 very great size, twisting its branches and fantastic roots in the 

 quaintest forms and shapes imaginable over the surface of the 

 rocks. The lovely weeping-birch is everywhere, and about 

 Coulmony are groves of magnificent beech and other forest- 

 trees. On the opposite side are the wooded hills and heights 

 of Relugas, a spot combining every description of beauty. The 

 Findhorn here receives the tributary waters of the Divie, a burn, 

 or rather river, not much inferior in size and beauty to the main 

 river. Hemmed in by the same kind of birch-grown banks 

 and precipitous rocks, every angle of the Findhorn river presents 

 a new view and new beauty, and at last one cannot restrain the 

 exclamation of " Surely there is no other river in the world so 

 beautiful." At Logic the view of the course of the river, and 

 the distance seen far up the glen till it is gradually lost in a 

 succession of purple mountains, is worth a halt of some time to 

 enjoy. The steep banks opposite Logic, clothed with every 

 variety of wood, are lovely, and give a new variety to the scene 

 as we enter on the forests of Darnaway and Altyre. The wood- 

 pigeon cooes and breeds in every nook and corner of the woods, 

 and towards evening the groves seem alive with the song of 

 blackbirds and thrushes, varied now by the crow of the cock 

 pheasant, as he suns himself in all his glittering beauty on the 

 dry and sheltered banks of the river. 



Still for many miles is the river shut in by extensive woods 

 and overhung by splendid fir, larch, and other trees, while the 

 nearly perpendicular rocks are clothed with the birch and the 

 ladylike bird-cherry, the holly and bright-berried mountain-ash 

 growing out of every niche and cleft, and clinging by their 

 serpent-like roots to the bare face of the rock ; while in the 

 dark, damp recesses of the stone grow several most lovely 

 varieties of pale green ferns and other plants. In the more 

 sunny places you meet with the wild strawberry and purple 

 foxglove, the latter shooting up in graceful pyramids of flower. 

 Between Logic and Sluie are some of the highest rocks on the 

 river, and from several hundred feet above it you can look 

 straight down into the deep pools and foaming eddies below 

 you. At a particular gorge, where the river rushes through 

 a passage of very few feet in width, you will invariably see an 

 old salmon-fisher perched on a point of rock, with his eye 



