iding along a black moor, in sight of vast mountains, the castle,
a plain massive white house, appears in view. It is seated on an
eminence above a plain watered by the Gary, called, by Pennant, "an
outrageous stream, which laves and rushes along vast beds of gravel on
the valley below."

The approach to Blair Castle winds up a very steep and high hill, and
through a great birch wood, forming a most picturesque scene, from the
pendent form of the boughs waving with the wind from the bottom to the
utmost summits of the mountains. On attaining the top, a view of the
beautiful little Straith, fertile and wooded, with the river in the
middle, delights the beholder. The stream, after meandering in various
circles, suddenly swells into a lake that fills the vale from side to
side; this lake is about three miles long, and retains the name of the
river.

When Prince Charles visited Blair, it was a fortified house, and capable
of holding out a siege afterwards against his adherents. Its height was
consequently lowered, but the inside has been finished with care by the
ducal owner. The environs of this beautiful place are thus described by
the graphic pen of Pennant,[56] whose description of them, having been
written in 1769, is more likely to apply to the state in which it was
when Prince Charles beheld it, than that of any more modern traveller.

"The Duke of Athoel's estate is very extensive, and the country
populous; while vassalage existed, the chieftain could raise two or
three thousand fighting-men, and leave sufficient at home to take care
of the ground. The forests, or rather chases, (for they are quite
naked,) are very extensive, and feed vast numbers of stags, which range
at certain times of the year in herds of five hundred. Some grow to a
great size. The hunting of these animals was formerly after the manner
of an Eastern monarch. Thousands of vassals surrounded a great tract of
country, and drove the deer to the spot where the chieftains were
stationed, who shot them at their leisure.

"Near the house is a fine walk surrounding a very deep glen, finely
wooded, but in dry weather deficient in water at the bottom; but on the
side of the walk on the rock is a small crystalline fountain, inhabited
at that time by a pair of Naiads, in the form of golden fish.

"In a spruce-fir was a hang-nest of some unknown bird, suspended at the
four corners to the boughs; it was open at top an inch and a half in
diameter, and two