2. General Characteristics.
Town House, Old Aberdeen
Town House, Old Aberdeen
The county is almost purely agricultural. It has always enjoyed a certain measure of maritime activity and of recent years the fishing industry, especially at Aberdeen, has made immense progress, but as a whole the area is a well-cultivated district. Round the coast and on all the lower levels tillage is the rule. In the interior the level of the land rises rapidly, and ploughed fieldsgive place to desolate moors and bare mountain heights in which agriculture is an impossible industry. The surface of the lowland parts, now in regular cultivation, was originally very rough and rock-strewn. It was covered with erratic blocks of stone, gneiss and granite (locally called “heathens”), left by the melting of the ice fields which overspread all the north-east of Scotland during the Ice Age. These stones have been cleared from the fields and utilised as boundary walls. Some idea of the extraordinary energy and excessive labour necessary to clear the land for tillage may be gathered from a glance at the “consumption” dyke at Kingswells, some five miles from Aberdeen. This solid rampart stretches like a great break-water across nearly half a mile of country, through a dip to the south of the Brimmond Hill. It is five or six feet in height and twenty to thirty in breadth and contains thousands of tons of troublesome boulders gathered from the surrounding slopes. The disposal of these blocks was a serious problem. It has been solved by this rampart. In other parts the stones were built up into enclosing walls and now serve the double purpose of enclosing the fields and providing a certain amount of shelter for crops and cattle. The slopes of the Brimmond Hill are in certain parts still uncleared and the appearance of these areas helps us to realise what this section of the country looked like before the enterprising agriculturist braced himself to prepare the surface for the use of the plough.
Consumption Dyke at Kingswells
Consumption Dyke at Kingswells
The soil, except in the alluvial deposits on the banks of the Don and the Ythan, is not of great natural fertility,yet by the exceptional industry of the inhabitants and their enterprise as a farming community it has been raised to a high degree of productiveness. The county now enjoys a well but hard earned reputation for progressive agriculture. Notably so in regard to cattle-breeding. It is the home of a breed of cattle called Aberdeenshire, black and polled, but it is just as famous for its strain of shorthorns which have been bred with skill and insight for more than a century. In spite, then, of its inferior soil, its wayward climate and its northern latitude, the inborn stubbornness and determination of its people havemade it a great and prosperous agricultural region and only those who on a September day have seen from the top of Benachie the undulating plains of Buchan glittering golden in the sun can realise what a transformation has been effected on a barren and stony land by the industry of man.
The most easterly of the Scottish counties, it abuts like a prominent shoulder into the North Sea. It has, therefore, a considerable sea-board partly flat and sandy, partly rocky and precipitous. The population of the numerous villages dotted along this coast used in time past to devote themselves to fishing, but the tendency of recent years has been to concentrate this industry in the larger towns, Fraserburgh, Peterhead and Aberdeen.
Other industries there are few. Next to agriculture and fishing comes granite, which is the only mineral worthy of mention found in the county. It is the prevailing rock of the district and is quarried to a considerable extent in various parts. A large part of the population earn their living by this industry, and Aberdeen granite, like Aberdeen beef and Aberdeen fish, is a well-known product and travels far. Paper and wool are also manufactured but only on a moderate scale.
There is only one other general feature of the county that deserves mention and that is its attractiveness as a health resort. The banks of the Dee, more especially in its upper regions, is a much frequented holiday haunt; and every summer and autumn Braemar, Ballater and Aboyne are crowded with visitors from all parts of the country. The late Queen Victoria no doubt gave the
The Punch Bowl, Linn of Quoich, Braemar
The Punch Bowl, Linn of Quoich, Braemar
impetus to this fashion. Her majesty at an early period of her reign bought the estate of Balmoral, half-way between Ballater and Braemar, and having built a royal castle there made it her practice to reside for a large part of every year amongst the Deeside hills. Apart from this royal advertisement the high altitude of the district, and its dry, bracing climate, as well as its romantic mountain scenery, have proved permanently attractive. Here are Loch-na-gar (sung by Byron), Ben-Macdhui, Brae-riach, Ben-na-Buird, Ben-Avon and other Bens, all of them 4000, or nearly 4000, feet above sea-level, and all of them imposing and impressive in their bold and massive forms. These mountains supply elements of grandeur which exercise a fascination upon people who habitually live in a flat country, and Braemar is not likely to lose its merited popularity.