what is usually, though not perhaps quite correctly, called a submarine forest. After heavy gales masses of peat are cast on the beach. The same deposit extends along the valley already described. At various localities in the western portion of it peat has been cut, within the memory of those still living, in such quantities as to leave no doubt of its former abundance in the immediate neighbourhood of the headland. But besides the restrictions on its use, now commonly imposed by proprietors of the soil, and the greatly increased consumpt of coal, natural causes have led to the disuse of peat as an article of fuel by the people of the district. During the spring and summer months, the prevailing west and south-west winds fill the air with clouds of fine sand from the dunes on the coast from as far west as Culbin. Mounds of such drift may be seen on Roseisle Hill after a storm, and there are knolls of sand covered with grass half way between Burghead and Newton. The whole surface of the valley shares in this shower of sand, unfailing for some centuries past and unceasing during many months of the year. The peat has thus become buried to a considerable depth in places where it once formed the surface of the ground. In this way also the disappearance of the Outlat loch is easily explained.*

Along the whole southern sea-board of the Moray Firth, from Rattray Head on the east to Inverness on the west, Burghead was the only natural harbour; and it could be taken with almost every wind that blew. In consequence of this advantage we find it at a very early period an important fortress.

* In the silting up of the eastern half of the valley, these clouds of sand drift as well as the washing down of the land on all sides of Loch Spynie have no doubt greatly aided. But another agent has been at work. The Rev. Dr. Gordon, whose extensive knowledge of the natural history and antiquities of the North, accumulated during a long and honoured life, has been most ungrudgingly imparted to me whenever asked for, writes: “My idea is that "Spynie 'fiord' was made a lagoon, or gradually shut off from the main body of the sea "by the north-east storms driving the loose shingle before them, and forming those far"spreading ridges that run from the Spey westwards all the way up the Firth, but are most "strongly marked near Lossiemouth. This process, which I have watched in company "both with Sir Charles Lyell and Sir Andrew Ramsay, is still going on. At several places "the ridges, which vary in height, are generally several feet above high water mark; "and were this barrier removed between the mouth of the Spey and the Lossie, the tide "would again run up to the Palace of Spynie, as it did through the canal in 1829, when the "sluice at Lossiemouth gave way."

.1

General Roy in his Military Antiquities of the Romans in North Britain, misled by the now discredited forgery, De Situ Britannia, identified it as the Ptoroton of that treatise, which is described as having been a Roman town, and the capital of a so-called Roman province of Vespasiana.* Naturally enough, in one who was not a classical scholar, he took Ptoroton to be a Latinised form of the IITeрwτòv σтратóπedov (Alata Castra,† the Winged Camp) of the Alexandrian geographer, Cl. Ptolemaeus,‡ which had previously been set down at places so far apart as Edinburgh and Tain. But there is not the slightest indication in Ptolemy, that the Winged Camp had any connection with the Romans, nor does history afford the least countenance to the idea that they had any permanent settlements in the north. A tribe which Ptolemy names the Ovakoμάyoɩ (Vacomagi), is said to have occupied a territory that, roughly speaking, stretched from the Spey on the east, to the Beauly Firth on the west, and as far south as the Grampian mountains and the sources of the Tay. They had four towns or strongholds-Bannatia,§ Tamia, the Winged Camp, and Tuesis. Of these the Camp must have been the most important; for in Ptolemy's description of the map of the British Isles, one of a set sometimes appended to his Geography, the Winged Camp is one of four places in the mainland of Albion, whose solstitial day and distance west from Alexandria in hours are given the others being London, York, and a town called Caturactonium. From the latitude and longitude assigned to it, the Winged Camp must, however, if any dependence is to be placed on these, have stood-if not indeed on the promontory-at no great distance from it. Accordingly, Dr. W. F. Skene, while rejecting Roy's theory as untenable, still claims Burghead as the site of the ancient Vacomagan Camp or town; and Prof. Müller, the latest editor of Ptolemy, gives it as a possible site, though he suggests Findhorn, nine miles to the south and west, as an alternative one.** A full consideration of the whole question raises issues, the

* Roy's Military Antiquities of the Romans in North Britain, pp. 131-32: London, 1793. + Pinnata Castra,-Müller. Cl. Ptol. Geog., Lib. ii. Cap. 3, §8.

§ In the names of these towns the text of Prof. Müller, of Göttingen, has been followed. Cl. Ptol. Geog. Lib. viii., Cap. 2, §9.

¶ Skene, Celtic Scotland, vol. 1, p. 74: Edinburgh, 1876.

** Müller, Cl. Ptol. Geog. vol. 1., p. 93: Paris, 1883.

discussion of which cannot now be attempted.

It must suffice to say that the Cluny Hills, Forres, or the Doune Hill of Relugas, near the junction of the Divie and the Findhorn, are sites either of which seems to fulfil more exactly than Burghead the necessary conditions.

If we turn to our early Scottish chroniclers, where we may reasonably expect to get some information on the point, we shall look in vain for a satisfactory answer to the question-When and under what circumstances did Burghead become a stronghold? And all the local historians have in their notices of it either overlooked or misread the greater part of the fragmentary materials that were available for their purpose, presenting us with a record that is either incomplete or misleading. Nor will its antiquities, as usually explained, afford us a much surer guide. It is only by comparing what we can gather from all possible sources, and by dealing inferentially with the whole, that we can hope to arrive at any trustworthy conclusions regarding various difficulties that are sure to arise in any independent study of the history and antiquities of the place.

In a communication read before the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland in June 1861, and published in Vol. IV. of their Proceedings,* I reviewed somewhat exhaustively all that up to that time had been written on Burghead, giving, at the same time, a full account of its military antiquities and endeavouring to trace their bearing on its probable history. Renewed consideration of the subject after the lapse of so many years, has confirmed me in most of the opinions that were then advanced. Some of the inferences drawn from the result of excavations made at the time, would now be expressed in less confident terms, or merely stated as probable. But there seems no reason for departing from the main conclusions then arrived at. Apart from the fortifications, little was said of the antiquities, except what was necessary in describing them. It was pointed out that the fragments of sculptured crosses, found in or near the old burying-ground, known from time immemorial as the Chapel-yard, showed that Burghead had been in early times the site of a Christian church. Some addition may now, it is believed, be made to what was then stated under this head, and reasons can be

* Pro. Soc. of Antiq. of Scot., vol. iv., pp. 321-369: Edinburgh, 1863.