I have gone over less than a dozen miles of the valley of the Dee, which was the Dean’s Deeside.  I think the manners and popular thought, as well as the language of that little district, were peculiar, and fitted to catch the attention of an eager student of human nature and character.  Deeside, in its wider acceptance, of course includes the great city at its mouth, and the picturesque mountains of Mar near the source of the river, where the Queen has now set her mark of favour on the land.  I beg to distinguish Deeside—­the Dean’s Deeside—­lying between these.  The city of Aberdeen, with its trade and manufacture and wealth, with its University and schools, and some tradition of the antique metropolis, has established, as she had good right, habits and language of her own, not to be mistaken, but almost confined to her own walls.  On the other hand, the mountains of Mar, where lie the springs of the Dee, where tower Lochnagar and Benmacdhui, are inhabited by a race of shepherds and hunters, speaking a different language, differing in manners from the Dean’s friends, who dwelt from the Hill of Fair to Ashintillie, where hardly a Gaelic name occurs among the peasantry.

The little cluster of mansions which I have mentioned lies, I think, wholly within the parish of Banchory-Ternan.  Following the river down from that parish, the next place of any importance is the old manor-house of Durris, some half-dozen miles lower, and on the right bank of the river.  It is a place of some interest to lawyers for having given rise to one of the leading cases on the law of entail, which settled points that had formerly been doubtful, all in favour of the strict entail.  The victim in that case, ejected by the heir of entail, was John Innes, who had sold his property in Moray to invest the produce in the great barony of Durris.  The new tenant, believing himself almost proprietor, built a comfortable house under the walls of the old castle, and in that house was born the writer of these notes.  I do not feel myself severed by any disgusts from the country of my youth where I spent my best years, or at least the years of most enjoyment.  It was then a wild moor, with some natural beauty, a picturesque den leading from the house to the noble river, wooded with native birch and scrubby oak, with some tall larches and magnificent horse-chestnuts, and even a few immemorial Spanish chestnuts planted by the old Peterboroughs, now all gone.  Along that river bank were some of the broadest haughs with which I am acquainted, and some of the best salmon streams, then woods and sheep pastures and a dozen miles of heather hills—­up to Cairn-monearn and Kerloach—­giving the best grouse-shooting in the country.  It is in truth a charming water-side even in the eyes of a critical old man, or of a tourist in search of the picturesque; but for a boy who lived there, shot, and fished there, while all the houses round were the dwellings of cousins and friends, while game was not yet let for hire, it was a place to win that boy’s heart, and I loved it very heartily.  We were the nearest neighbours on one side of that cluster of residences of the Burnetts and Douglases and Russells which I have tried to describe.  We were all very good friends, and thus the Dean and I were early acquainted.