CHAPTER XXVIII 



THE DON 



Rises one thousand six hundred and forty feet above sea-level in a 

 peat moss in the high hills joining Ben Avon on the Aberdeenshire 

 border. It drains five hundred square miles, and after a run of 

 upwards of seventy miles, falls into the German Ocean a little more 

 than two miles to the north of Dee mouth, in which short distance 

 there are now twenty bag-nets and thirteen stake-nets at work, which 

 is a very large increase on the number that worked there in 1850 ; and 

 in my humble opinion no nets should be allowed to be fixed between 

 the mouths of rivers running into the sea quite close to each other. 



It is not very easy to deal with the Don as a salmon river, 

 for there are so many conflicting interests that in discussing them it 

 becomes impossible to please everybody. Its existing value as a 

 salmon anghng river is hardly worth mentioning at any point 

 above about twentj' miles from the sea. At ilonymusk, for instance, 

 in the eleven miles of fine water that belong to the estate, up to the 

 17th of August in season 1899 not a single fish had been caught ! 

 Cruives, dykes, dams, and pollutions are rife in the lower reaches, 

 and the manufactories abstract such large quantities of water from 

 the river that, except in times of hea\-y floods, none pass over the 

 dams, and the fish are hopelessly bottled up below. There is, 

 however, no reason that the river should not be as famous for its 

 salmon as it is for its trout. If the cruives of the Don could but be 

 opened up and some limit placed on the quantity of water that 

 a mill or factory might legally take from the river, then probably 

 the spring angling would speedily become worth having. These 

 cruives of the Don are described in the Reports of the Fishery 

 Board as the most destructive in Scotland, and as giving the owners 

 a virtual monopoly of the river. 



There are dams at Kettock's Mills, Persley, Stoneywood, and 

 Mugiemoss, and numerous paper mills and bleaching works, etc., 

 empty their refuse into the river. All these matters were men- 

 tioned and complained of by the Fisherj^ Board as long ago as 1871, 

 while the upper owners have addressed endless complaints to the 

 Secretary' of State, but all to no purpose, for these obstructions and 

 pollutions still exist. In 1888 the river watchers commenced to 

 catch the autumn salmon congregated below Mugiemoss dam and 

 conveyed them in water carts to the river above it ; and in 1889, 

 900 fish were so moved up stream. The intakes of the mill lades 



