summer resort, but its banks form the richest alluvial agricultural land in the county—
A mile o’ Don’s worth twa o’ Dee
Except for salmon, stone and tree.
This old couplet is so far correct. The Dee is a great salmon river, providing more first-class salmon angling than any other river of Scotland, while the Don, though owing to its muddy bottom a stream excellent beyond measure and unsurpassed for brown trout, is not now, partly owing to obstruction and pollution, a great salmon river. But the agricultural land on Donside, which for the most part is rich deep loam, about Kintore, Inverurie and the vale of Alford is much more kindly to the farmer than the light gravelly soil of Deeside, which is so apt to be burnt up in a droughty summer. In the matter of stone, things have changed since the couplet took shape. The granite quarries of Donside are now superior to any on the Dee; but the trees of Deeside still hold their own, the Scots firs of Ballochbuie forest, west of Balmoral, being the finest specimens of their kind in the north.
The nether-Don has been utilised for more than a century as a driving power for paper and wool mills. Of these there is a regular succession for several miles of the river’s course, from Bucksburn to within a mile of Old Aberdeen. After heavy rains or a spring thaw the lower reaches of the river, especially from Kintore downwards, are apt to be flooded, and in spite of embankments which have been erected along the river’s course, few years pass without serious damage being done to the
Fir Trees at Braemar
crops in low-lying fields. Some parts of Donside scenery, notably at Monymusk (called Paradise), and at Seaton House just below the Cathedral of Old Aberdeen, and before the river passes through the single Gothic arch of the ancient and historical bridge of Balgownie, are very fine—wooded and picturesque, and beloved of more than one famous artist.
The next river is the Ythan, which, rising in the low hills of the Culsalmond district and flowing through the parish of Auchterless and past the charming hamlet of Fyvie, creeps somewhat sluggishly through Methlick and Lord Aberdeen’s estates to Ellon. A few miles below Ellon it forms a large tidal estuary four miles in length—a notable haunt of sea-trout, the most notable on the east coast. The river is only 37 miles long. It is slow and winding with deep pools and few rushing streams; moreover its waters have never the clear, sparkling quality of the silvery Dee. Yet at Fyvie and at Gight it has picturesque reaches that redeem it from a uniformity of tameness.
The Ugie, a small stream of 20 miles in length, is the only other river worthy of mention. It joins the sea north of the town of Peterhead. In character it closely resembles the Ythan, having the same kind of deep pools and the same sedge-grown banks.