PHYSICAL FEATURES. 



129 



right of way. All the Carn District, at least all the low level 

 moors and the mosses on the foothills of Glenlivet, Deveron, and 

 elsewhere, contain innumerable stocks of pine ; and large trunks 

 are often revealed whilst the people are cutting their peats. Long 

 ago the people of the glens, who were more numerous then than 

 now, pursued the * good old-fashioned plan ' of helping themselves 

 freely to the timber as they now do to the peat. There were also 

 many smuggling bothies hidden away among the pine-woods, or 

 far up among the head-waters of the Kymah and Ladder Burns of 

 Livet, all of which drew their supplies of wood from Abernethy 

 forests. This dates back from within the present century, down to 

 comparatively recent times.^ 



We can instance other items of interest which may serve to 

 illustrate the subject. About 1847, the Carr Bridge district on the 

 Dulnan was splendidly wooded with grand old Scots fir, but 

 has since been ravished by saw-mills, and — one good feature — 

 replaced by new plantations by the Countess of Seafield. At 

 the date of 1891, the area of young and old pines on the Strath- 

 spey estates was about 50,000 acres. 



We find that the great forests were continuous from Kingussie 

 (Gael, caen-guisthach = the head of the pine-woods) down through 

 almost the whole valley of the Spey to Aberlour and Lower 

 Craigellachie. In other words, the whole area of Strathspey (so 

 called) was one vast stretch of pine-forest. Beyond the confines 

 of the valley, between these points, pines stretched up the now 

 bare sides of Ben Aiagan, and the Convals, and over into the valley 

 of the Deveron, even to its sources among the hills of the Cam 

 Districts, and extended far eastward over * blars ' and mosses of the 

 lower reaches of Deveron, and over the next watershed again into 

 Dee. In width the forest tract occupied the whole Spey valley and 

 the valleys of its tributary streams, from Tromie and Feshie in 

 Lower Badenoch, Druie, Dorbock, Nethy, and Dulnan down to the 

 bright Avon at Ballindalloch. Over the watersheds of Spey the old 

 forests stretched into the Findhorn valley, and even to the shores 



1 For upwards of sixty years a revenue was taken off the Abernethy forest 

 tracts before the York Building Company's lease began. Vide A Survey of the 

 Province of Moray, 1798, p. 269. 



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