Ordnance gazetteer of Scotland

SPEY
shifts, a process rendered particularly easy during floods
by the loose nature of the shingle of which the bottom
and sides are composed. The shingle is constantly
being moved down the river, and it is probably from
boulders thus carried down that the great gravel ridges
to the W of the mouth of the river have been formed.
From the large extent and high-lying character of the
sources of the Spey itself, as well as of its principal
tributaries, the river is subject to sudden and heavy
freshets. The greatest was that of 1829, the damage
done by which was enormous. There is a graphic
description of the after appearances all along the course
of the river from Kingussie downwards, in Sir Thomas
Dick Lauder's Account of the Moray Floods. In winter
and spring large masses of ice are carried down by the
river, but from the rapidity of the current it is seldom
that any portion of the lower part of the river is frozen
completely over, though this certainly happened near
the mouth in 1854. At Kingussie, Fochabers, and else-
where there are beautifully marked river terraces.
As regards scenery, Macculloch places the Spey — and
probably rightly — below all the great branches of theTay,
the Forth, the Dee, the Isla, and the Earn. The course,
from the source to about the mouth of Glen Truim, lies
through an upland glen with nothing of grandeur or
even picturesqueness about it, the base from which the
surrounding hills rise being too far above sea-level to
allow of their height telling with full force. From
about Cluny Castle downwards trees begin to make
their appearance along the lower heights, skirting the
valley, and though some portions between this and Loch
Insh are still bleak-looking, the general appearance of
the country decidedly improves, though even about
Kingussie and Belleville it can hardly be said, notwith-
standing the fine mountain screens, to be pretty or
picturesque. About Loch Insh still further improve-
ment takes place, and the Queen, who passed it on the
way from Balmoral to Grantown in 1860, speaks of the
loch itself as ' lovely . . . though not a wild lake,
quite the contrary ; no high rocks, but woods and blue
hills as a background.' From this onward by Kinrara,
Loch Alvie, and Aviemore, there is more wood, that on
the E extending to a height of 1500 feet, and forming
part of the great Rothiemurehus and Glen More Forests.
'Though many splendid landscapes, ' says Dr Macculloch,
in one of the few grudging paragraphs he gives to the
beauties of the Spey, ' are obtained along the roadside
between Aviemore and Kinrara, constituted by the far-
extended fir-woods of Rothiemurehus, the ridge of Cairn-
gorm, the birch-clad hill of Kinrara, and by the variety
of the broken, bold and woody banks of the Spey, no one
can form an adequate idea of the beauties of this tract,
without spending days in investigating what is concealed
from an ordinary and passing view. By far the larger
proportion of this scenery also is found near to the river,
and far from the road; and the most singular portions of
it lie on the east side of the water, and far beyond it, in
places seldom trodden and scarcely known. This, too,
is a country hitherto undescribed, and therefore unseen
by the mass of travellers; though among the most
engaging parts of the Highlands, as it is the most
singular : since there is nothing with which it can be
compared, or to which, indeed, it can be said to bear
the slightest resemblance. Much of this depends on
the peculiar forms and distribution of the ground and
of the mountains, and still more on the character of
the wood, which is always fir and birch ; the latter, in
particular, assuming a consequence in the landscape,
which renders the absence of all other trees insensible;
and which is seen nowhere in the same perfection, ex-
cept at Blair, and for a short space along the course of
the Tummel. Of this particular class of beauty Kinrara
is itself the chief seat; yielding to very few situations
in Scotland for that species of ornament which, while
it is the produce of Nature, seems to have been guided
by art. A succession of continuous birch forest cover-
ing its rocky hill and its lower grrunds, intermixed
with open glades, irregular clumps, and scattered trees,
combines the discordant characters of wild mountain
SPEYMOUTH
landscape and of ornamental park scenery. The Spey,
here a quick and clear stream, is ornamented by trees in
every possible combination, and the banks beyond, ris-
ing into irregular, rocky, and wooded hills, everywhere
rich with an endless profusion of objects, and as they
gradually ascend, displaying the dark sweeping forests
of fir that skirt the bases of the farther mountains,
which terminate the view by their bold outlines. To
wander along the opposite banks is to riot in a profusion
of landscape, always various and always new: river
scenery, of a character unknown elsewhere, and a spacious
valley crowded with objects and profuse of wood. ' From
Aviemore — close to which are the beautiful birch-clad
crags of Upper Craigellachie — downwards the banks are
often very bleak and bare, but at many points where
they are well wooded — and this is not now so rarely the
case as it once was — the scenery is good, more particu-
larly about Boat of Garten, where the great Abernethy
Forest stretches away to the E, and farther down about
Aberlour and Lower Craigellachie, and from this almost
all the way down to Fochabers. From Craigellachie
downwards there are a series of fine fertile haughs
chiefly on the W side of the river. At Ruthven, a short
way above Kingussie, a three-span, cylindrical piered,
steel bridge was built across the Spey in 1894.
The Spey was, in the early period of Scottish history,
the boundary between the province of Moeay and the
Scotia of that time. The first part of the course of the
river lies in the district of Badenoch, from Upper to
Lower Craigellachie is Speyside pure and simple or
Strathspey, and below Lower Craigellachie are the
haughs of Rothes, Dundurcas, Orton, and Dipple.
Strathspey is the home of the Grants, whose motto of
'Stand Fast, Craigellachie,' was taken from the crags
at its upper and lower extremities. It has given name
to a peculiar dance somewhat slower than the reel, and
which is said to have been first practised in the district.
See also the articles on Laggan, Kingussie, Alvie,
Duthil, Abernethy, Cromdale, Knockando, Aberlour,
Rothes, Boharm, Bellie, and Speymouth; Sir Thomas
Dick Lauder's Account of the Moray Floods (1st ed.,
Edinb. 1830; 4th, Elgin, 1873); and Longmuir's Spey-
side (Aberdeen, 1860).
Speymouth, a parish in the extreme NE of Elginshire.
It is bounded NW and N by the parish of Urquhart,
E by the parish of Bellie, S by the parish of Rothes,
and SW by the Teindland district of the parish of
St Andrews-Llanbryd. The boundary all along the E
side is the centre of the course of the Spey; elsewhere
it is almost entirely artificial, though in the NW at
Lunan Wood it follows for J mile the centre of the road
along the valley of the Spey from Garmouth upwards.
The greatest length, from the centre of the Spey a little
below Essil south-south-westward to the top of Findlay's
Seat, is 7§ miles; the average breadth at right angles to
this is about lg mile; and the area is 6352"370 acres,
of which 327 '082 are water. In the N the surface is
low, but rising abruptly almost at once it passes south-
ward in an undulating plateau from 150 to 200 feet
above sea-level, and with a steep bank along the course
of the Spey. Towards the SW it rises still higher,
reaching its greatest height in the SW corner at
Findlay's Seat (861 feet). In the N the steep bank just
mentioned approaches close to the river, but to the SE
at Dipple there is a stretch of fine haugh having an
extreme breadth of about f mile. About half the
parish is moorish, pastoral, or woodland, and about 100
acres along the river are pebbles or bare beach. The
soil of the haugh is fertile alluvium, and that of about
one-half of the rest of the area is a light loam. The
remainder of the parish has a light saudy or gravelly
soil, and the sub-soil all over varies from clay to gravel.
The underlying rock is Old Red Sandstone, and the
beds, which are of a deep red colour, are quarried for
local purposes. The drainage is carried off by the Spey
and a few small rivulets, of which the chief is the Rod
Burn, which crosses the southern part of the parish.
Speymouth was formed in 1731 by the union of the old
parishes of Dipple and Essil and the barony of Garmouth.
1497