The great floods of 1829--those floods of which Sir Thomas Dick Lauder is the chronicler--wrought sad havoc here. A bridge spanned the stream at a height of thirty feet. The river, rising three feet higher, swept it away. We must turn to the annals of Strathspey to test the full havoc of the flood fiend, yet it wrought no mean ruin here. I pick out one or two cases. Near Inverey the rising water attacked six houses, destroying each in turn until all the inhabitants were huddled round the hearthstone of the last. Here the water burst in, forcing the poor people to take refuge on a knoll, where, without shelter, and in mortal terror for their lives, they crouched shivering through the night. There is a waterfall on the Quoich, near where it joins the larger river. This was spanned by a bridge so firmly bound to the rocks as to be (it was hoped) immovable. The flood struck it, and it was torn away, with tons of the adjacent rocks. It seemed, indeed, to those who lived through that terrible time, as if the very structure of the earth was breaking in pieces. The days were black with the ever-falling sheets of heavy rain; the nights were vivid with the ever-flashing lightning; whilst day and night alike the wind roared with demoniacal fury. The waters hidden in the bowels of hills and rocks burst forth, leaving great fissures and scars, which remain as a monument of the Titanic forces at work. Shocks of earthquake happened again and again. "I felt the earth hobblin' under me," said a peasant graphically. Many thought the end of all things was at hand. Yet it was in less sensational ravages that the flood wrought its most cruel havoc. The poor man's cottage left a hopeless ruin, the fertile field left a sandy waste--such were the most lamentable signs of its power. Human effort was powerless against it. What could be done with a flood which rose, as was noted at Ballater, not less than one foot in ten minutes? The ravages made have long ago been repaired. At Linn of Dee there is now a handsome white granite bridge, which was opened by the Queen as long ago as the year 1857. [Illustration: LOCHNAGAR.]