THE Monadh-liath mountains are an elongated group of lofty and rugged heights, running in a line parallel to the Gleann Mor Na h-Albainn, in the centre of the southern division of Inverness-shire.

They rest on a dreary, heathy moor, are comparatively flowing in their outlines, unbroken in their declivities, and free from very rugged and jagged precipices. They embosom extensive glens, the feeding places of shaggy cattle; there are great slopes on which flocks of sheep pasture, and they contain dreary solitudes where only the grouse and the ptarmigan, the roe and the red deer, are to be found.

Far, far and high upon those mountains, on the side of one of its vast slopes, in a hollow more green than brown, a little burnie commences its existence in a spongy bit of brown ground, covered over with plants bearing white flowers-the Cannach of similar scenes. At first, says one of the best of word painters of his day, you can see nothing of a rill—it is only a slyke. But a little way onward the slyke begins to assume the form and movements of a rill, and you may see it stealing along under the covering grass, in a thread so slender that the fairies might step over it at night and never know it was there.

It is indeed a wild solitude, and few signs of living things are to be seen therein, save perhaps a hoody crow or two that come here now and then to have a little quiet conversation with their neighbours on the subject-matter of braxy, dead lambs, and suchlike windfalls. A very infant is the burnie as yet, and very much more like a sleeping than a waking infant; you might lay your ear down to it without hearing sounds greater than the murmurings through the roots of the grass, like the breathings of a baby in the cradle, and like the baby also giving an occasional flashing glance at the sun-ray which steals down to see how it is getting on.

By and bye, however, it begins to grow, and first crows in audible murmurs, then becomes more noisy and more active, and leaps over the little pebbles that lie in its way, as if it had acquired a taste for fun, and were determined to indulge it.

As it increases in strength, it increases it antics, but all this time it is enjoying itself its "leefie lane," like many another baby born and brought up in the wee cot house of its shepherd parents, under the shadow of some great mountain, or on the banks of some lonely lake-far, far away from human ken. There is not a soul at hand to witness its pranks; the very rushes that grow by the little stream get leave to grow as long as they will, nor are they tortured and plaited into rashen whips, and caps, and buckies-there is not a bairn within ten miles to pull them.

Our burnie flows on in solitude till it has formed its little stream path and has reached the base of a knoll on which was once a herd's house

a green and sheltered spot. People lived in it for years, and were well acquainted with our burnie at this stage of its course; but they have long since left the place, some of them and their descendants crossed the ocean,

and have made a home for themselves in other lands, and the seniors lie in the green graveyard far down the valley.

Regardless of these changes, the burnie goes on in many windings and turnings among the hills, quite happy in its companionless journey, hopping and jumping as it goes, and occasionally breaking out into a little song, though there is not a single bird to reply by an answering carrolfor we are yet far above the regions of birds and bushes-shining bright in the sunshine; there is not a single speck to dim its pnrity-the very pebbles are purely clean along its margin. How well happiness and purity go together. Such is the infancy of our burnie.

But infancy is but a passing stage with burnies as well as bairns, and our burnie must leave these Alpine solitudes and come into society, although at the expense of its purity and innocence. Bushes begin to appear along its banks, and one of the first is an old thorn, with the earth worn away from its roots by the sheep rubbing themselves against its bark. The ferns grow more luxuriantly round the little green haughs, and when the braes are rather steep for the sheep to feed and lie upon, the primroses star the spots with bright bunches, and the little green meadows are spangled with gowans.

Turning the corner, behold a herd's house. It is the eldest hope of the family who is laving the waters of the burnie upon the clothes that are bleaching on the grass, and thus putting a portion of its watery treasure to their first economic use; two younger children, a little further down, have cut a side channel through which flows a tiny rill, on which they are busy erecting a toy mill wheel.

The house a wee, wee cot house-has one little window in the end directed to the burn, and therein sits a cat, winking with listless satisfaction under the glow of the summer scene. There, too, sits a curched grandame working her stocking, rejoicing in the genial warmth which seldom comes so far up the glen, thinking, it may be, of the days when she was full of young life, or of the trials she has undergone since then, or the sad memories of family years which she has since then laid in the auld kirk-yard.

Whisking blithely past this outpost of civilisation, the burnie suddenly falls into a deep ravine, where it gets into a dreadful passion at finding itself confined between steep banks. It kicks, and flings, and fumes, and splutters, and gets into a dreadful fury, first dashing up one side with a splash, and then on the other with a whish, then hits some big stone with a hiss and then another, jumps madly over the heads of some, and goes poking under the ribs of others that are too big to be so dealt with. In fact, it is like many another scene of youthful violence, while it lasts, which fortunately is not very long; for, by and bye, it steals calmly out in an open rivulet between green banks, as gently as if nothing had happened, and were rather ashamed of its pranks. It has now come to the place where farm steadings and plantations begin looking onward in its course. Thatched roofs are seen at different points in the surrounding landscape; oldfashioned country wives begin to put it to use in bleaching their clothes on its banks, and there are some nice haughs on which, dotting them, are numerous cocks of meadow hay, and now and then, skipping the stream,

a follower of Isaac Walton, when our burnie is now not merely a burn, but is known as the "Findhorn" river, with a very bad character for rising in great floods occasionally, carrying off haycocks, bleachings, and whatever other trifle it can lay hold of. It has begun to show symptoms of earning for itself, by capricious changes of its channel, the character, which it afterwards fully bears out, of being a river not to be trusted to, and being a great friend to the lawyers, by shifting the boundaries of litigious lairds—lairds who have more mouey than brains, or at least not as many brains as would make them understand to give and take peacefully.

In its journey to the lower country, it runs to a considerable extent parallel with the river and strath of Nairn. Struggling on through many opposing barriers of granite rock, it rushes through narrow gorges with boiling and tumultuous currents, now reposing its still waters in some round sweeping dark pool, and anon patiently, but assiduously, wearing its way through the dark red sandstone cliffs which jut out from its channel, or rauge in layer above layer, forming high barriers on its banks, while plants and shrubs, and lofty trees, crown and encompass the steep heights, and finely contrast their variegated green with the deep red of the cliffs on which they grow. Here, in some overshadowed dells, the sun with difficulty penetrates and finds the solitary eyries of the eagle or the falcon, with the dwellings of the congregated heron, thickly perched among the trees, while the ascending salmon rest by dozens during the summer's noon-day heat in the deep dark pools beneath. As the stream winds towards the sea, its course becomes less interrupted and boisterous. It now sweeps along fertile meadows and wooded copses, till at last, all opposition giving way, it flows out into a broad, still, placid sheet of water, meeting the tides of the ocean half way up the smooth and sandy bay of "Findhorn."

On its romantic banks are situated a succession of gentlemen's seats, among many others, Altyre, Logie, Relugas, Dunphail, Kincorth, Tannachy, and Darnaway, or Tarnaway, the ancient sylvan retreat and hunting hall of the famous Randolph, Earl of Moray, and now the northern seat of his noble descendants. South of the Brodie station on the Highland Railway, in the lower fringe of the Darnaway oak and pine forest, which extends for many miles inland, and is the remains of the old Caledonian forest, concealed from view, though not two miles distant, is the Castle of Darnaway, famous in the history of the country and in the traditions of the neighbourhood as the home of a family, almost the kings of the district of Moray, and occupying at one time a most important position in the historical records of the country. Had it fortuned to an Englishman, twenty-five or thirty years ago, to visit the county of Elgin, he could not have failed to hear of the Earl of Moray's forest of Tarnaway, which then stretched for miles along the banks of this grand Highland stream-the Findhorn-in all the untrimmed luxuriance which he could have expected in going to wait on the Duke of Arden. He would have been further surprised to hear of two brothers entirely realising the old ballad ideas of gallant young huntsmen-superb figures attired in the ancient dress of the country, and full of chivalric feeling-who, giving up the common pursuits of the world, spent most of their days in following

the deer through this pathless wild. Men of an old time they seemed to be; of frames more robust than what belong to men now-a-days, and with a hardihood which appeared to make them superior to all personal exposure and fatigue. At the same time they possessed cultivated minds, and no small skill in many of the most elegant accomplishments. This is their description of the locality:

"Few knew what Tarnaway was in those days-almost untrodden, except by the deer, the roe, the fox, and the pine-martin. Its green dells filled with lilies of the valley, its banks covered with wild hyacinths, primroses, and pyrolas, and its deep thickets clothed with every species of woodland luxuriance, in blossoms, grass, moss, and timber of every kind, growing with the magnificence and solitude of an aboriginal wilderness, a world of unknown beauty and silent loneliness, broken only by the sough of the pines, the hum of the water, the hoarse bell of the buck, the long wild cry of the fox, the shriek of the heron, or the strange, mysterious tap of the northern wood-pecker, For ten years we knew every dell, and bank, and thicket, and, excepting the foresters and keepers, during the early part of that time, we can only remember to have met two or three old wives, who came to crack sticks or shear grass, and one old man to cut hazels for making baskets. If a new forester ventured in to the deep bosom of the wood alone, it was a chance that, like one of King Arthur's errant-knights, he took a tree to his host for that night, unless he might hear the roar of the Findhorn, and, on reaching the banks, could follow its course out of the woods before the fail of light. One old wife, who had wandered for a day and night, we discovered at the foot of a tree, where at last she had sat down in despair, like poor old Jenny Mackintosh, who, venturing into the forest of Rothiemurchas to gather pine cones, never came out again. Three years afterwards she was found sitting at the foot of a great pine, on the skirt of the Braeriach, her wasted hands resting on her knees, and her head bent down on her withered fingers. The tatters of her dress still clung to the dry bones, like the lichen upon the old trees, except some shreds of her plaid, which were in the raven's nest on Craig-dhubh, and a lock of her grey hair that was under the young eagles in the eyrie of Loch-an-Eilean.

The grounds themselves are well worthy of examination, but the castle hall, 90 feet in length, and 35 feet broad, is inferior to none in Scotland, and resembles much the Parliament house of Edinburgh; the walls rise to a height of 35 feet, and a carved roof of solid black oak, divided by compartments, forms the arched ceiling; a suitable fire-place, that would roast a stalled ox; an enormous table, and some carved chairs, still garnish this hall, though the modern apartments in front of it ill correspond with its Gothic character. Here Mary, Queen of Scots, held her court in 1564. Among the pictures is one of the Bonnie Earl of Moray, and also a portrait of Queen Mary, disguised, by way of a frolic, in boy's clothes, in long scarlet stockings, black velvet coat, black kilt, white sleeves, and a high ruff. The present hall was preceded by a hunting lodge, erected in the fourteenth century, by Randolph, first Earl of Moray, the nephew, friend, and companion of Robert the Bruce, and Regent of Scotland, during the minority of David II., but it was not

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the Earl's chief country residence, as in the charter of erection of the earldom, the Castle of Elgin, "Manerium de Elgyn," is appointed "pro capitali mansione comitatus Moravice." It appears also, from the charter of Robert III. to Thomas le Graunt, son of Jno. le Graunt, dated 1390 (Regist. No. 22, p, 473), that there was an older royal Castle of Tarnaway, which was previously in the keeping of the Cummings, and afterwards of the Grants, and, in fact, the Cumming family-Earls of March seem to have been introduced from Forfarshire as the great instrument for exterminating, or at least suppressing the early insurrections of the Clan Chattan, who were thus in all probability the aboriginal inhabitants of Moray. The lately published work on the " Name of Cawdor" shows likewise that the present magnificent hall was erected under the auspices, if not at the cost, of King James II. of Scotland. After the suppression of the Douglas rebellion, the King turned his attention to establishing order and authority in the North, especially in the Earldom of Moray. He took up his residence sometimes at Inverness, sometime at Elgin, held Justice Courts, and transacted state business. He felt also the fascination of the country, and took means to enjoy it. Mr Innes, the editor of the Cawdor Annual, says "The Castle of Lochindorbh, a formidable Norman fortress, in a woodland loch which had been fortified against his authority by Douglas, King James doomed to destruction, and employed the Thane of Cawdor to demolish it. But he chose Darnaway for his own hunting seat, as old Thomas Randolph had done a century before, and completed the extensive repairs and new erections which the Earl had begun. The massive beams of oak and solid structure of the roof described in those accounts are still in part recognisable in the great hall of Darnaway, which popular tradition, ever leaning towards a fabulous antiquity, ascribes to Earl Randolph, but which is certainly of this period. Here, for two years the King enjoyed the sports of the chase; great territories, on both sides of the river, were thrown out of cultivation for the sport, and tenants sat free of rent while their lands were waste. What was the manner of the hunting, we are not informed. The sport of hawking, indeed, might well be enjoyed on the river bank at Darnaway, but hawking could not require a whole district to be laid waste. The fox was not of old esteemed a beast of chase in Scotland, nor perhaps, so early, in England. There is no doubt the King's chief game was the red-deer, the natives of those hills, and it is probable that the hart was shot with arrows, and hunted down with the old rough grey-hound, still known among us as the deerhound, and until lately in Ireland as the wolf dog, with such help of slower dogs of surer scent, as the country could afford, for the English "hound" was hardly known in old Scotland. But riding up to hounds, or riding at all, must Lave been very partially used among the peat mosses, and rocks of the upper valley of the Findhorn."

The Earldom of Moray was conferred by King Robert the Bruce upon Sir Thomas Randolph, son of Lady Isabel Bruce, the eldest daughter of Robert, Earl of Carrick, by Thomas Randolph, Lord of Strathnith. This Earldom, along with many goodly heritages, lands, and baronies, was the guerdon of the services so gallantly performed by Randolph in the service of his uncle, King Robert the Bruce, and it remained in the Randolph family until 1455, when the then Earl of Moray was attainted "for