The article produced no results. The suggestion about the Cross trod upon the toes of some person of local influence, and the idea of its restoration was soon stamped out. The Drinking Fountain also remains to be erected.
KJÖKKEN-MÖDDING.
Edward was more successful in his investigations of the Kjökken-mödding at Boyndie,—a much more interesting piece of antiquity. Kitchen-middens, or refuse heaps, have been discovered in large numbers along the shores of the Danish islands. Not less than a hundred and fifty have already been found in Denmark. They consist chiefly of castaway shells,—of the oyster, mussel, cockle, and periwinkle,—intermixed with the bones of quadrupeds, birds, and fish. Some of them also contain fragments of pottery and burnt clay, and rude implements of stone and bone, which have evidently been dropped by those who took their meals in the vicinity of the heaps, or who have thrown them away as useless.
These shell-mounds vary in height, in breadth, and in length. They are from three to ten feet high, and sometimes extend to a thousand feet in length, while they vary from a hundred to two hundred feet in width. It is evident, from these remains, that some pre-historic people were accustomed to live along the sea-shore, or to frequent it when food failed them in the interior, and live upon molluscs and fish. That they ventured out to sea in canoes hollowed out of the trunk of a single tree (such as are occasionally found in Danish peat-bogs) is obvious, from the fact that the bony relics of deep-sea fish, such as the cod, the herring, and the skate, are occasionally found in the shell-heaps. No remains of any agricultural produce, nor of domesticated animals (excepting the dog), have been found in them; so that it is probable that the people who then occupied the land, were exclusively hunters and fishers, and that they knew nothing of pastoral or agricultural pursuits.
THE LAPPS OR FINNS.
Who these ancient people were, has been the subject of much conjecture. It is not improbable that they were Lapps or Esquimaux. The most ancient skulls which have been found in Denmark, near the shell-mounds, are small and round, indicating the small stature of the people. Sir Charles Lyell says that they bear a considerable resemblance to those of the modern Laplanders. It is probable that a great part of Europe was originally peopled by Lapps; and that they were driven north by the incoming of a more civilised race from the east. There are still remnants of the Lapps in the island of Malmön, off the coast of Sweden, in North Connaught and the island of Aran in Ireland, in the island of Lewis off the western coast of Scotland, and in several of the Shetland Islands.[57]
When the discoveries in Denmark came to light, and were republished in this country, investigations began to be made as to the existence of similar shell-mounds on the British coast. We do not know whether the first investigations were made along the shores of the Moray Firth; but they are the first of which we have any account. Numerous shell-heaps had long been observed along the coast. They were raised above the level of the highest tides; and the impression which prevailed was, that they had been collected there at some early period by an eddy of the ocean. The shelly deposits were also adduced in proof of a raised sea-margin.
KITCHEN-MIDDEN AT BOYNDIE.
The Kitchen-midden at Boyndie, near Banff, had long been known as a famous place for shells. Hence, probably, its name of Shelly-bush. About forty years since, Edward’s attention was drawn to it by a man who had picked up shells from it when a boy. Edward set it down in his mind as an old sea-margin, and although often passing it in his journeys by the sea-side, he never thought of it as anything else. When Professor Macgillivray, of Aberdeen, was walking with Edward along the Links, about the year 1850, the latter pointed out to him the shell-bank. The Professor remarked, that it did not look like any other raised beach that he had ever seen.
Years passed; but what with cart-wheels going over it, and rude hands picking at it, the shells and bones which it contained at length became more clearly exposed. Still it was held to be but an ancient sea-beach. Then came the news from Denmark about the Kitchen-middens. A paper by Mr. (now Sir John) Lubbock, appeared in the Natural History Review for October 1861, which had the effect of directing the attention of Archæologists to the subject. “Macgillivray’s remark,” says Edward, “instantly flashed upon me. I looked at the Shelly-bush shells in our collection, and compared them with the raised beaches of King Edward, and Gamrie. I saw the difference in a moment, and smiled at my own stupidity. Away I went to the Bush, and the happy result was, that before I returned, I had the inexpressible delight of ascertaining that the old sea-beach was neither more nor less than a veritable Kitchen-midden.”