There is never a place more rock-bound, more broken into fantastic shapes, and worn daily and increasingly by the waves, than this east coast. Neither Biarritz nor Brittany nor Nova Scotia is more broken or more thunderous in resentment. I have not seen the Magellan straits.
One is constantly conscious of fish on this east coast. The railroads form the Great East Fish route. I have been coming up in the night from London and had to hold my breath until we passed these swift fish trains which have the right of way to the metropolitan market. A little south of Aberdeen is the village of Findon; whence finnan haddie.
Dunnottar
The rocks which were my goal were those just below Stonehaven. At Stonehaven the French had landed supplies for the Forty Five—as from Montrose, a few miles farther down the coast, King James had sailed after the failure of the Fifteen. Fishing vessels lay idly in the narrow harbour, their tall masts no doubt come "frae Norroway o'er the faem," since the trees on the east coast have not increased from that day when Dr. Johnson found the sight of a tree here equal to that of a horse in Venice.
Dunnottar stands on a great crag of this coast, against which the sea has beaten angrily since time and the coast began, against which it moans and whines at low tide, and then, come high tide, rushes thunderously in to see what havoc it can work once more.
DUNNOTTAR CASTLE.
Dunnottar is impregnable. I cannot believe that sixteen inch guns—is it seventeen, now?—would make impression on this great red crag. I know they would; after Liege and Namur one knows that modern guns can outlaw any impregnability of the past. But I do not believe.
The road from Stonehaven runs for two miles over level country, and then, suddenly, the edge breaks in a sheer cliff.