The archæology and prehistoric annals of ScotlandWilson, Daniel, Sir
History
The archæology and prehistoric annals of Scotland
Wilson, Daniel, Sir
Scotland -- Antiquities
Nearly at the same time as the latest disclosures in the valley of the
Clyde, workmen cutting a drain on the farm of Kinaven, Aberdeenshire,
discovered another ancient boat of the same form as most of those
previously described, and measuring eleven feet long, by nearly four
broad. It is hewn out of the solid oak, with pointed stem, and at the
stern a projection formed in the piece, and pierced with an eye, as
if to attach a mooring cable. Like the Glasgow canoes, it is rudely
finished, and exhibits the rough marks of the instrument with which
it was reduced to shape. It lay imbedded in the moss, at a depth of
five feet, at the head of a small ravine; and near it were found
the stumps and roots of several large oaks. The nearest stream, the
Ythan, is several miles off, and the sea is distant many more. A few
years previous to this discovery, a similar canoe, of still smaller
dimensions, was dug up in the moss of Drumduan, in the same county. It
is described as quite entire, and neatly formed out of a single block
of oak; but being left exposed, it was broken by the rude handling of
some idle herd-boys.[47]
Such are a few examples of the aboriginal fleets of ancient Caledonia,
found at different dates, and in various localities, yet agreeing
wonderfully in every essential element of comparison. With them might
also be noted the frequent discovery in bogs, or in alluvial strata,
of trees felled by artificial means, and accompanied with relics of
the most primitive arts. In 1830, for example, workmen engaged in
constructing a sewer in Church Street, Inverness, found at a depth
of fourteen feet below the surface, in a stratum of stiff blue clay,
numerous large trunks of fossil oak; and along with these several
deer's horns, one of which, bearing unmistakable marks of artificial
cutting, is now deposited in the Museum of the Society of Antiquaries
of Scotland.[48] Here surely is common ground for the antiquary and
the geologist. The rude harpoon left beside the bones of the stranded
whale, far up in the alluvial valley of the Forth: the oaken querne,
the wheel and the arrow-heads: the boats beneath the City Cross of
Glasgow, the centre of a busy population for the last thousand years:
the primitive ship, as we may almost term the huge canoe on the
banks of the Carron: and the tiny craft just found near the waters
of the Ythan--all speak, in no doubtful language, of the presence
of a human population, at a period when the geographical features
of the country, and the relative levels of land and sea, must have
differed very remarkably from what we know of them at the earliest
ascertained epoch of definite history. They point to a time within the
historic era, when the ocean tides ebbed and flowed over the carse of
Stirling, at a depth sufficient to admit of the gambols of the whale,
where now a child might ford the brawling stream; and when the broad
estuary of the Clyde flung its waves to the shore, not far from the
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