Newport daily independent., 1902-12-30
sMoTHERED BY DRIFTING SAND
.Garden of Moray Now an Absolute Desert, the Names of Its Ham
 let's Forgotten.

Along the coast of Moray, Scotland from Nairn to the Findhorn stretches a series of low hills composed entire ly of sand so fine and so loose that it drifts with every wind. The area cov- cred is about 4,000 acres, the sands extending for some ten miles from east to west and three from north to south.
 Save an occasional seabird wheel ing overhead, not living thing is to be seen, and hardly a blade of grass breaks the yellow monotony of the sand. It is place of absolute waste and desolation, says the Peoples Friend.
 Yet 250 years ago this area was known as ''the Garden of Moray" It was the fairest part of that fair county. The soil was fertile, the climate kindly, and crops were early and luxuriant.
 In the middle of the seventeenth century, according to local author ity, the valued rental of Culbin was larger than that of the neighboring estate of Darnaway, the principal possession of the earl of Moray. Now the lands of Culbin are but a name and memory. Fields, or chards, gardens, dwellings, are alike buried deep under those mountains of sand.
 Early historians record an inunda- ton by the sea of part of Moray early in the twelfth century, when land under cultivation was covered with sand. It does not appear, how ever, that this occurrence worked any 1 serious permanent injury to Culbin.
 But for hundreds of years sand seems to have accumulated on the western borders of the estate car ried thither apparently by a power ful current from other parts of the Moray Firth seaboard. There it lay harmlessly until the latter half of the seventeenth century, when the in- habitants of Culbin, in their igno- rance, brought upon themselves, or at any rate precipitated, the catas- | trophe that drove them from their fields and homes.
 Along the coast to the westward there was at that time big sandhill called in Gaelic Cul-bein, or the Black l hiH-from which, of course, the name "Culbin" is derived The hill was called black because it was covered with a vigorous growth of whins, broom, heather, and bent, which gave stability to the sand, and protected it from the wind.
 This undergrowth the people ruth lessly uprooted for thatching pur- poses, leaving the sand loose and naked, with the result that the west erly winds gradually drove it farther and farther over the adjacent lands.
 When the mischief became apparent the pulling of bent was prohibited by the authorities. but for Culbin this came too late. Nothing could avert it's doom. Gradually the whole es- tate was engulfed
 Sometimes a year or two would elapse without any serious encroach- ment, and then would come violent storm, and in a single night many fields would be absolutely obliterat- ed. Frequently a field plowed during the day was buried during the night, and at the present day one often sees in the valley among the sand hills furrows that were turned up more than 200 years ago,
 In the closing years of the seven teenth century a terrific storm all but overwhelmed the mansion house itself, so that it had soon after wards to be abandoned, and few decades later single farm was all that remained of the once broad and fertile acres of Culbin.
 of even that poor remnant not a wreck now remains. The very names of the hamlets and holdings are as completely forgotten as if they had never been.
 The sand is still moving eastward in great drifts. It's further progress along the coast is arrested by the Findhorn- although the river itself now reaches the sea by a eircuitous course, and at a point two miles east of where it's mouth used to be.
 But the barrier, after all. is only apparent Slowly but surely. the river is being headed eastward, and the village of Findhorn, perehed on an unstable bank of sand and shingle. seems marked out for destruction no less complete than that which over. took Culbin.