Gordon book

The Local Scenery of Fochabers 53
Ordiquish, charming in its placid simplicity as it nears the Spey, but,
away at its source, bv the brown, heathery Hill of Ordiquish, at a spot
called the " Tor Castles," it is majestically rugged and grand. The
chasm of the Burn is at least from 300 to 400 feet in depth, and it is
only about four yards wide in some places. To survey the splendid
array of red crags, the brows of which are tufted with heather, shaggy
grass, or yellow broom, springing hundreds of feet aloft — -red spectres,
their summit as sharp as the arrow of the Indian — -the stillness of
solitude is awe-inspiring, broken only by the curlew's note in the
moss and fell beyond, the whirr of a blackcock, or the flash of a snipe.
The moment is stimulating and heroic. On the moorland close at
hand, embedded in the heather, there is a gigantic stone of great
dimensions. How it came there no man can tell. It is a splendid
resting-place, however, for the weary shepherd boys of Ordiquish, and,
strange to say, it is called "Jean Carr " (a lassie again). Another
half-mile further " up " the Spey and we are at the Burn of Aultdarg,
a more pretentious rivulet than that of Ordiquish. Here, again, we
have the same picturesque and rugged reality. Down, down, hundreds
of feet down, the foam of the bubbling burn, on its journey to the
parent Spey, sings cheerfully. There is music in its murmurings.
" 'Mong moors and mosses monnie, O," we try to track the source of
the stream. Endless seem the scarred peaks and crags. Away in
impenetrable hazel nooks and dens croodles the cushie, and Scotland's
nightingale, the mavis, and the blackbird. From its lair in the
heather springs the mountain hare, and a flock of wild ducks whirrs past.
Hark to the yelp of a fox in the moorland. A half-dozen deer
spring up the ravines lik^ lightning. Here again is the profound
stillness of solitude — the unspeakable something that almost insists
upon our worshipping nature : nature that seems to dwarf every other
circumstance. We are held in thrall by the ancient spell of the
locality, by the traditions of battles fought and won, by the stories of
death struggles on the moor — the hiding-ground of the brave Jacobites,