At Dunkeld, the Tay takes a long sweep eastward, until at the meeting with the Isla at Meikleour it forms a great elbow and resumes its southward flow. The Murthly estate, which belongs to the owner of Grandtully, occupies the south bank of the river along this portion of its course. From the earliest times royalty, like romance and poetry, has had the good taste to frequent these scenes. The wraiths of Neil Gow, the famous fiddler, and of the Highland caterans hanged in the "eerie hollow" of the Stare Dam, dispute with the ghost of Macbeth the honour of being the familiar spirits of Birnam Hill, once again magnificently clothed with wood. In Auchtergaven is the birthplace of Robert Nicol, the "Peasant Poet;" and here also stood the "Auld House of Nairne," which recalls the name of Caroline Oliphant, Baroness Nairne, the laureate of Jacobite song, and which, like her ancestral home in Strathearn--the "Auld House of Gask"--gave shelter to Prince Charlie. At the Royal Castle of Kinclaven, now a neglected ruin, many a Scottish Sovereign, from the time of Malcolm Ceanmohr and Queen Margaret, had solaced themselves after the chase or battle, before it was captured and recaptured, rebuilt and demolished, in the days of Wallace and Bruce. The northern bank of the Tay is equally rich in scenic beauty and historical associations. Between the grounds of Delvine and Meikleour, and opposite the "Bloody Inches"--believed to preserve the memory of the spot where Redner Lodbrog, the Norse viking and skald, was beaten back to his ships--the important Roman station of Tulina, now Invertuthil, is supposed to have stood. Meikleour the Marchioness of Lansdowne has inherited from her ancestors the Mercers, descendants of a warlike Provost of Perth in the fourteenth century. The village is one of the quaintest and most charming of Scottish hamlets; and the great "beech hedge," ninety feet high, is among the many arboricultural marvels in the valley of the Tay. Hidden from sight among hills and woods, like many other lakes and famous sites of this district, is the Loch of Clunie, with its island castle, the hunting seat of kings and place of rest and retirement of bishops in the old days. The Lunan drains from it into the Isla; but to trace the Isla would be to write pages of description and history concerning Glenardle and Glenshee, Stormont and Strathmore, the slopes of the Sidlaws and the passes through the Grampians into Braemar. We should have to give some idea of the beauties collected about Bridge of Cally, Craighall, and Blairgowrie on the Ericht; to visit the "Reekie Linn," the "Slugs of Auchrannie," and Lintrathen on the Isla; to seek the sites, mythical or otherwise, of Agricola's victory over Galgacus and of Macbeth's defeat by Macduff near Dunsinane Hill; and to speak of what makes Glamis and Airlie and Inverqueich, Alyth and Meigle and Coupar, and the rest of the country lying along the borders of Perth and Angus, memorable and attractive.