The Castle of Dunnottar--now the stately and magnificent ruin thus feebly sketched--stands on an isolated rock two hundred feet perpendicular, washed on three sides by the sea, and on the other separated from the adjacent land by a wide and deep chasm, from which by a gate in the wall, nearly forty feet high, there is an entrance to the fortress. Leading upwards from this gate there is a long steep passage, partly arched over, and formerly secured by two drawbridges, the grooves for which are still visible. At the inner end of this passage is another gate, opening into the castle area, which is enclosed by a wall, and occupied by buildings of various epochs. But of all the buildings on this rock the chapel is the most ancient, and there is reason to believe that it originally served as the parish church of Dunnottar. The Castle, or the peninsular rock on which it stands, makes its first appearance in Scottish history during the wars of Bruce and Baliol, when, it is alleged by some modern authorities, the castle was erected by Sir William Keith as a place of safety for himself and friends. According to Blind Harry and Hector Boece, Dunnottar was surprised and taken by Sir William Wallace in 1297, and the Blind Historian relates that Dunnottar was occupied by four thousand English troops, who had fled before the victorious arms of the Liberator; and that when Wallace made the onslaught, as many of them as the church would contain took shelter there, in the hope that consecrated ground would not be violated by their slaughter; but, says the bard,-- "Wallace on fyre gart set all haistely, Brynt up the kyrk and all that was thairin." In the year 1336 Dunnottar was fortified and garrisoned by Edward III.; but immediately after his departure for England it was attacked and carried by the gallant Sir Andrew Moray, who destroyed the fortifications of the Castle, so that it might not again afford ready protection to an enemy. [Illustration: STONEHAVEN.] STONEHAVEN. "The flocks are white upon the moor, The forest's filled with deer; There's industry at every door, And shipping at the pier." Stonehaven, like Aberdeen, has its old town and its new; but "with this distinction, that of the latter, the new town is the older of the two." The old town of Stonehaven, or Steenhive as it was formerly written, was built on _feus_ granted by the "Earls Marischal," by one of whom it was erected into a burg of barony. The new town, or "Links of Arduthie," is separated from the old town by a brook, called the water of Carron, and is built upon the estate of the patriotic Mr. Barclay Allardyce, of Ury. It is the county-town; and hither, in 1660, the sheriff-court was removed from Kincardine by Act of Parliament.