The loch itself is of little consequence, being entirely artificial, and was first formed in 1828 to supply the mills at Kilmarnock with water; but a little beyond, a few yards into the parish of Fenwick, is the venerable house which has been the abode of the Howie family for so many centuries (since 1178), and where they still retain all the primitive, pious, and pastoral habits which distinguished their Waldensian ancestry. This house during the times of persecution frequently afforded an asylum to those who, for conscience sake, were obliged to flee from their homes, to men like Cargill, Peden, Richard Cameron, and Captain Paton, which rendered it so obnoxious that it was twelve times plundered, and the inmates forced to take refuge in the barren moors around. Indeed, standing on Ballagioch we can see the homes of not a few who can trace their connection with ancestors who suffered in the “killing times.” And not far off, at the farm of Duntan, between where we stand and Lochgoin, on the east bank of a stream which goes past the farm, there is a rocky precipice, in the front of which there is a small aperture capable of holding three or four in a stooping position. One person can scarcely enter on hands and feet at a time. Tradition tells us that two Covenanters, chased by dragoons, plunged through the stream in flood, scaled the rock, and hid. The troopers did not venture to follow them, but fired into the cave and went off, probably believing that their intended victims had found a tomb instead of a hiding place. Immediately to the south of us there is Binend Loch, a large sheet of water covering about 50 acres, which would be a perfect paradise for the patrons of the roaring game if it were only a little nearer the haunts of civilisation. A little beyond this is what we in Scotland happily call the watershed—a term that of late years physical geographers have appropriated as expressive of a meaning which no single term in English had conveyed. All around us the ground is mossy, and intersected with sheep drains. Here and there the fresh cuttings disclose trees embedded in the moss, telling of a time when this now treeless country must have been covered with waving forests. The trees are generally hazel, and often they have a foot or several feet of moss beneath them, showing that the moss must have existed anterior to the hazel. It is only when we come to the bottom of the moss that we find the oak and the pine, the remains of the ancient Caledonian forests. We come down on the north side of the hill, and find not far from the farm of Lochcraig the coal measures cropping out, and in the blocks of shale that rise up through the moss are to be found abundance of specimens of the strange flora of the Carboniferous age, the _Sigillaria_, so remarkable for their beautifully sculptured stems, and their not less singular roots, so long described as _Stigmaria_ by the fossil botanist.