Edward was now in the prime of life, yet he was drawing very heavily upon his constitutional powers. Sleeping out of doors nightly, whether the weather was fair or foul, subjected him to many attacks of cold and rheumatism. Yet he had no sooner recovered, than he was out again at his nightly work. He was still as wild a bird-nester as he had ever been in his youth. He would go to any distance or to any place, to find a bird or a bird’s nest that was new to him. He would run up a tree like a squirrel, and come down again with the birds or the nest.
He would also walk or climb up a precipice when a nest was to be had. Of course he had many falls. But what of that, if the object was gained? The most dangerous fall that he ever had was at Tarlair. The circumstance may be described, as a specimen of the dangers which Edward ran in his pursuit of Natural History. The author went to see the place, and was afraid to look down into the chasm amongst the rocks into which the Naturalist had fallen.
TARLAIR.
The little valley of Tarlair is about three miles east of Banff. It is not far from Macduff. The road to Tarlair is along the bare bluff coast; and when you reach the top of a lofty point, you see beneath you a green grassy valley indenting the rocks. At the inner end of the valley is a little well-house, where inland people come during summer-time, to drink the mineral waters.[36] Eastward of Tarlair the rocky cliffs ascend higher and higher,—rising to their loftiest height in the almost perpendicular cliff of Gamrie Mohr.
TARLAIR
The place at which Edward met with his accident, occurred at the projecting point of the valley above mentioned, where the rocks begin to ascend. Not far from the mouth of the valley there is, in the face of the rock, a very large, high, and wide-mouthed cave or chasm, fronting the sea. The back wall of the cave, as well as the sides, contain a number of strange-like openings, and fantastical projections, one of which is called “the pulpit.” Edward often sat in the cave, and also slept in it; but he never preached in it, though he several times brought down sea-gulls and hoodie-crows with his gun. The bottom of the cave is thickly covered with stones and boulders thrown in by the sea, which, in storms, dashes with great fury into its innermost recesses.
In the roof, and near the front of the cave, a few martens build their nests every season. As Edward was coming home one morning from his night’s work, and while he was walking under the cliff, intending to come out at Tarlair, he observed one of the martens flying out of the cave, and shot it. Instead of dropping at his feet, it fell on the top of the cliff. How was he to get at the bird? He might have gone round a considerable way, and thus reached the top of the rock. But this would have involved the loss of considerable time; and he was anxious to get home to his work.
ASCENDS A PRECIPICE.