Spey

Spey, a river of Scotland, rising at an altitude of 1500 feet above sea-level and running 107 miles north-eastward through or along the boundary of Inverness, Elgin, and Banff shires, until it falls into the Moray Firth at Kingston between Lossiemouth and Portknockie. The Dulhain and Avon are its principal tributaries. The salmon-fisheries, belonging to the Duke of Richmond, at its mouth, above which comparatively few fish penetrate, have a yearly value of from £8000 to £10,000; else the Spey is almost without value, nor can it generally be called a picturesque stream. It has the swiftest current of all the large rivers in Britain, and is subject to sudden and violent freshets, resulting at times in disastrous inundations. See Sir Thomas Dick Lander's Moray Floods (1830); and A. E. Knox, Autumns on the Spey (1882).