motion of the little boat, that was now so crowded as very much to impede the rowers.  They crossed the first two streams, and finally drew up for the last and dreadful trial.  There the frail bark was again whirled down; and notwithstanding all their exertions, the stern just touched the wall.  The prow however was in stiller water; one desperate pull,—she sprang forward in safety, and a few more strokes of the oar landed the poor people amongst fifty or sixty of their assembled friends.  After mutual greetings and embraces, and many tears of gratitude, old Kerr related his simple story.  “Seeing their retreat cut off by the flood, they attempted to wade ashore.  But the nearer the shore, the deeper and more powerful was the current.  The moment was awful.  The torrent increased on all sides, and night, dark night, was spread over them.  The stream began to be too deep for the niece, a girl of twelve years of age,—she lost heart and began to

sink.  At this alarming crisis Kerr seized the trembling girl, and placed her on his back, and shoulder to shoulder with his wife, he providentially, but with the greatest difficulty, regained his own house.  Between eight and nine o’clock he groped his way, and led his wife and niece up into the garret.  He could not tell how long they remained there, but supposed it might be till about two o’clock next morning, when the roof began to fail.  To avoid being crushed to death, he worked anxiously till he drove down the partition separating them from the adjoining house.  Fortunately for him it was composed of wood and clay, and a partial failure he found in it very much facilitated his operations.  Having made their way good, they remained there till about eight o’clock in the morning, when the strength of the water without became so great that it bent inwards the bolt of the lock of the house-door, till it had no greater hold of the staple than the eighth-part of an inch.  Aware, that if the door should give way the back wall of the house would be swept down by the rush of the water inwards, and that they would be crushed to atoms, he rummaged the garret and fortunately found a bit of board and a few nails;

and standing on the stairs, he placed one end of it against the door and the other on the hatch, forming the entrance to the garret, and so nailed it firmly down.  At last the roof of the second house began to crack over their heads, and Kerr forced a way for himself and his companions through the thatch as has been already told.”

Poor Funns and his family were not yet rescued from their little island; and the boat was declared to be too small and weak for so desperate a voyage.  It was therefore determined to row to a spot where a larger boat was moored.  To effect this, they were compelled to act precisely as they had done in proceeding to rescue the Kerrs.  But unfortunately, on entering the third stream, they permitted the boat to glide down with it, in the hope that it would carry them in safety through the gate of the field, and across the road into that beyond it.  In this, however, they were mistaken, and the boat was swamped.  Fortunately for them, they were carried into smooth water, and by wading shoulder deep they reached the large boat.

Having secured the small boat, they attempted to drag the large one through the gateway against the stream; but it soon filled with water and

swamped, and, in spite of all their exertions, they found it impossible to get it up.  The small boat was now all they had to trust to, and this was next caught by the strong stream and overwhelmed in a moment; and had not the men, most providentially, caught and clung to a haycock that happened to be floating past, they must have been lost.  They were carried along till it stuck on some young alder trees, when each of them grasped a bough, and the haycock sailed away, leaving them among the weak and brittle branches.  They had been here about two hours, when one of the men being unable to hold on longer by the boughs, let himself gently down into the water with the hope of finding bottom; when, to his surprise, he found that the small boat had actually drifted to the root of the very tree to which they had been carried.  Some salmon nets and ropes had also, by the strangest accident, been lodged there.  The man contrived to pull up one of these with his foot, and making a noose, and slipping it on his great toe, he descended once more, and managed to fix the rope round the stern of the boat, which was then safely hauled up, the oars, being fixed to the side, being also saved.  The boat was returned to Mr.

Suter’s and fresh manned, when it proceeded to a house occupied by a family of the name of Cumin, consisting of an old couple, their daughter, and grandson.  By the time they reached the cottage, its western side was entirely gone, and the boat was pushed in at the gap.  Not a sound was heard within, and they suspected that all were drowned; but, on looking through a hole in a

partition, they discovered the unhappy inmates roosted, like fowls, on the beams of the roof.  They were, one by one, transferred safely to the boat, half dead with cold; and melancholy to relate, the old man’s mind, being too much enfeebled to withstand the agonizing apprehensions he had suffered, was now utterly deranged.

The poor Funns’ were still the last to be relieved.  They and their cattle were clustered on their little speck of land; and the poor quadrupeds, being chilled by standing so long in the water, were continually pressing inwards on them.  It was between six and seven o’clock, the weather was clearer, and the waters were subsiding.  The task being the most difficult of all, none but the most skilful rowers were allowed to undertake it.  One wide inundation stretched from Monro’s house to the tiny spot where Funns and his family were; and five tremendously tumultuous streams raged through it with elevated waves.  The moment they dashed into the first of them they were whirled down for a great way; but having once got through it, they pulled up in the quieter water beyond, to prepare for the next; and in doing so, Sergeant Grant stood in the prow, and with a long

rope, the end of which was fixed to the boat, and wherever he thought he had footing, he sprang out and dragged them up.  The rest followed his example, and in this way they were enabled to start afresh with a sufficient advantage, and they crossed all the outer streams in the same manner.  The last they encountered, being towards the middle of the flood, was fearful, and carried them very far down.  But Funns himself, overjoyed to behold them, waded towards them, and gave them his best help to drag up the boat again.  Glad was he to see his wife and children safely set in the boat.  The perils of their return were not few; but they were at length happily landed.

These examples will suffice to show the nature and extent of the great floods of Moray.  The inundation covered a space of something more than twenty miles in the Plain of Forres, and, as it was expressively remarked by one of the sufferers, “Before these floods was the Garden of Eden and behind them a desolate wilderness.”  And how often did the beautiful expression of the Psalmist occur to them: “The floods