The northeast coast of Scotland is pacific in climate, as compared with the Atlantic storminess that rules the sea-girt land on the west.
Montrose, which has twenty places in America named after it, lying at the mouth of the river South Esk, is attractive because of its splendid golf and cricket grounds. It is historically interesting, on account of the checkered fortunes of its dukes and earls. On its face we discern a Netherlands influence, for the old architecture reminds us of Dutch towns. Indeed, this may be said of many east coast places, though in Holland the architecture is all brick. In Scotland it is almost wholly stone.
So much land at Montrose is left bare at low tide that it seems a waste to have it lie unused by any living thing but gulls and fishes. Once, expert dyke-makers were brought from Holland to embank and enclose the area thus left dry at ebb tide; but when nearly completed their work was destroyed in a few hours by a terrible storm setting in from the east.
It was from Montrose that Sir James Douglas embarked for the Holy Land in 1330, with the heart of King Robert the Bruce. Its people were Jacobites in 1745, when “Bonnie Prince Charlie” made the town his headquarters and Captain David Ferrier captured His Majesty’s sloop-of-war Hazard. Montrose boasts also of being the first place in Scotland where the Greek language was taught and where Andrew Melville, the Reformer, received his education.
Stone Haven we found a lively place in summer, because of its sea-bathing. This town has had a history. Not far away are the ruins of Dunottar Castle, which, perched on a rock overhanging the sea, was in ancient times probably impregnable. Even when the castle surrendered to the English army, it was because of famine, and not from weakness of the garrison. It covers three acres, which are now left in the gloom of desolation. The iron rings and bolts, that held the culprits for security or for torture, still witness to the barbarous methods of our ancestors.
Out at sea we caught a glimpse of the Bell Rock Light House, which rises one hundred and twelve feet above water level. It is often literally buried in foam and spray to the very top, even during ground swells, when there is no wind. Sometimes the pressure of the waves is equivalent to nearly three tons to the square foot. In one instance, at a height of eighty-six feet, an iron ladder was wrenched from its fastenings and washed round to the other side. At times, stones, more than two tons in weight, have been cast up from the deeper water upon the reef.
Aberdeen is popularly called the “Granite City,” because many of its dwellings and public buildings are built from the native rock. Yet for the vision and fulfilment, one must see the place, not only in the purple light of the setting sun and in the ordinary hours of the day, but also after a heavy rain, which not only has washed the air, but has cleansed the house-fronts. Then Aberdeen is, indeed, the “Silver City by the Sea.” One may see how well the name is bestowed, for then the stately public structures and private dwellings gleam pure and white under the brilliant sunshine.
Despite the heavy annual rainfall, the Granite City is not only the most prosperous, but one of the healthiest in Scotland. For three hundred years its delvers have been quarrying the durable gray granite, which, when cut and polished, is, to the extent of a quarter of a million tons, exported to all parts of the world. Nearly a hundred firms are engaged in the industry. The process of putting a lustre upon this very hard stone, though known to the Egyptians, seems to have been lost for thousands of years. When recovered in Aberdeen, about 1818, it became the chief source of the town’s prosperity. Then Scotland’s rocky base was transmuted into new values, as of gold mines, which the Aberdeenians have found in both sea and land, for Aberdeen’s greatest source of wealth is in her sea power.
Twenty-five millions of dollars worth of food are extracted annually through the fisheries in the deeper waters, which have been improved, first by the method of beam trawling, begun in 1882, and then by the steam line fishing in 1889. Trains loaded with nourishment from the great deep are despatched to London daily, and the fish market is a lively place.
How full the North Sea is of these trawlers those know who have seen them and kept pace with the efforts of philanthropists to minister to the needs of the men on board the ships. In recent years we have learned, moreover, how soon, in time of war, these toilers of the deep are called upon to show their courage as well as their industry, and have thus realized the danger ever surrounding these modest heroes. The Russian Baltic fleet, in 1904, which was full of officers nervous about the existence of Admiral Togo’s torpedo boats,—supposed to be alert and active, seven thousand miles away from home,—fired into the Scotch trawlers and shed blood. How happy we were to see our British brethren keep cool! Instead of rushing immediately into war, like barbarians and savages, John Bull and the Muscovite came to an amicable understanding. In the world-war of 1914–16, the trawlers have not only caught fish, but in their new capacity, as mine-sweepers, have kept the North Sea measurably free from “the hell hounds of the deep,” besides themselves suffering awful devastation of life and property from hostile aeroplanes and submarines.
An amusing glimpse into the life of the town in mediæval days, when its people lived in that other world of thought, which in northern Europe has utterly passed away, is given in the public records. For example, as showing the status of the crafts and guilds, to which the labor unions of Great Britain have succeeded, the Aberdeen Council register has the following:—
“It was found by the old lovable custom and rite of the burgh, that in the honor of God and the Blessed Virgin Mary, the craftsmen of the same, in their best array kept and adorned the Procession from Candlemas yearly.”
The ordinance declares also that “they shall in order to the offering in the Play [miracle or pageant] pass two and two, together, socially: first the fleshers, barbers, bakers, shoemakers, skinners, coopers, wrights, hatmakers and bonnet makers together; then the fullers, dyers, weavers, tailors, goldsmiths, blacksmiths, and hammer men; and the craftsmen shall furnish the pageants; the shoemakers, the messenger; the weavers and fillers, Simeon; the smiths and goldsmiths, the three kings of Cologne; the dyers, the Emperor; the masons, the three Knights; the tailors, Our Lady, St. Bride, and St. Helen; and the skinners, the two Bishops; the two of each craft to pass with the pageant that they furnish, to keep their gear.” Each craft, by long custom, became identified with certain characters in the procession. Eleven shillings was the fine against those who failed to do their part.
To the north and west of Aberdeen lies Elgin, which has in its name so many associations of classic and Oriental lands, in addition to those with the Timepiece City in Illinois.
The eighth Earl of Elgin (1811–63), James Bruce, was great both in America and Asia. He served not only as Governor of Jamaica, but also as Viceroy and Governor-General of Canada. His warm relations with the United States and his conciliatory treatment—in spite of the mob pelting his carriage with stones—of those who suffered in the troubles of 1837, were not at first appreciated. “He rewarded the rebels for their rebellion,” as the then fiery Mr. Gladstone declared in Parliament. Yet it was the efforts of this Lord Elgin, with those of our Millard Fillmore in Congress, that gave permanent effect to that provision in the Treaty of Ghent, which, for a hundred years, has secured, between two great friendly nations, a peaceful frontier, three thousand miles long.
It was Thomas Bruce (1766–1841), the father of this Lord Elgin, who secured the sculptures in marble from Athens, which are now in the British Museum.
In India, George Bruce, another Earl of Elgin, enabled a handful of white men, fighting for civilization against fearful odds, to break the back of the Sepoy Mutiny, in 1857, even before British reinforcements arrived. In China, James Bruce negotiated the Treaty of Tientsin. In Japan, he followed up the work initiated by the Americans, President Millard Fillmore, Commodore Perry, and Townsend Harris, using their interpreters and profiting by their precedents. He thus inaugurated British influence in the most progressive country of Asia.
While Elgin returned to England, his brother George and the allied forces attempted to proceed to Peking with the ratified treaty. In front of the Taku forts, built at the mouth of the Pei-ho, they were fired on and the flotilla of British gunboats was nearly destroyed, on the 25th of June, 1859. Then it was that our own Commodore Tatnall, technically violating neutrality, came to the aid of the British, not only to offer his surgeons for the scores of wounded that lay on the decks of the shattered ships, but to blink at his boat’s crew of American sailors, as they served the one British gun on the flagship that was left unhurt.
Later on, he lent the aid of his boats to land detachments, which turned the Chinese defences from the rear. Tatnall gained world-wide reputation by his declaring that “Blood is thicker than water.” This phrase, now international, in its original form, was an old Scottish proverb, and as used by Sir Walter Scott more than once, it reads, “Blood is warmer than water.”
says Scott in his introduction to Canto VI of “Marmion.”
Lord Elgin was sent again to China to demand apology, the execution of the treaty, and an indemnity from the Chinese. Then took place that awful sacking of the Imperial Summer Palace, by which the accumulations of art and taste for centuries were given over to the British and French common soldiers for plunder and devastation. The purpose in view was that the punishment for perfidy should fall, not on the common people, but immediately and personally on the faithless rulers. When, later, Elgin was sent as Viceroy and Governor-General of India,—the first appointed directly by the Crown,—he showed wonderful energy, firmness, and dignity, but died in the midst of his labors.
The last, or ninth, Earl of Elgin was Viceroy of India from 1894 to 1899, and in 1905–8 was Secretary of State for the Colonies in the Cabinet of Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman, where he was somewhat overshadowed by his brilliant under-secretary, Winston Churchill, of whom we heard in 1916, in a soldier’s uniform. Elgin retired from the Cabinet when Mr. Asquith became Prime Minister.
Elgin, like most other similarly vertebrated Scottish towns, consists of a backbone, the High Street, from which numerous ribs or alleys diverge. This principal highway contains the ancient buildings and extends about a mile from east to west, though its uniformity is broken by the parish church, which obtrudes into the causeway. The town has long been famous for its schools, while of all the Scottish cathedrals, except that in Glasgow, this at Elgin is the most magnificent and certainly the most ornate. One of the most imposing ruins in the kingdom, it has great interest for the architect. It was founded in 1224, during the reign of Alexander II, who also gave the town its charter. “Proud” Edward I stayed at the castle twice, and the building was destroyed immediately after national independence had been reasserted at Bannockburn, in order that the memory of his visits might be blotted out. The hill on which the castle stood was re-named the “Lady Hill.” On the scanty ruins of the castle now stands a fluted column surmounted by a statue of the fifth Duke of Gordon.
Elgin has had a surfeit of history, with the unhappiness therefrom accruing. Ravaged, burned, plundered, and rebuilt, the place survived all degrees of devastation, to settle down into a sleepy cathedral town for generations, until touched by the spirit of the nineteenth century which has swept away much of its picturesqueness. So often had it been fired and robbed that when, in 1402, Alexander, Lord of the Isles, burned the town, he, the canny Scot, for a consideration, spared the cathedral. The Elginers, acting on the principle of “small favors thankfully received,” erected the “Little Cross”—so named to distinguish it from the “Muckle,” or “Market Cross,” which was restored in 1888.
In the vestibule connecting the chapter house with the choir, a poor, half-crazy creature, a soldier’s widow, named Marjorie Anderson, took up her quarters in 1748. She made her infant’s cradle of the stone basin or niche, in which the priest formerly washed the chalice after administering communion; that is, in the “piscina,”—named after the ancient fishpond attached to a Roman villa,—and she lived on charity. In time, her baby boy, grown to manhood, joined the army, and went to India. He rose to be major-general and amassed a fortune, amounting to what would now be a half-million dollars, and with this he endowed the Elgin Institution, which is called after its benefactor. The Anderson Institution for the Education of Youth and the support of Old Age in Elgin has also a romantic story of origins.
Nothing could kill Elgin. It might well take for its motto, “iterum,”—again. The “Garden of Scotland,” with its fine climate, cheap living, and good schools, rose into prosperity, especially since many of her former sons have been generous to their mother. In 1903, Mr. G. A. Cooper presented his native town with a public park of forty-two acres containing lakes, which represent, on a miniature scale, the British Isles. The public library occupies what was once the mansion of the Grant family.
There is a church at Birnie, not far away to the southwest, built in 1150, which is believed to be the oldest house of public worship still in use in Scotland. Here is preserved an old Celtic altar bell of hammered iron. Such is the odor of sanctity of this ancient edifice that there is a local saying that “To be thrice prayed for in the kirk of Birnie will either mend or end you.”