that Smyton forgot to 'lift the bread' at his first service following his victory in maintaining the possession of the Secession church in Kilmaurs. Robert Burns must have heard him preach and commented in a letter to Margaret Chalmers in 1787 that "The whining cant of love, except in real passion, and by a masterly hand, is to me as insufferable as the preaching cant of Old Smeaton, Whig minister at Kilmaurs.". Tour, Kirklands and Pathfoot The Abbot of Kelso granted part of these 'Lands of Touer' to David Cuninghame of Robertland in 1532. The property stayed in the Robertland family and their descendants until 1841, when Robert Parker Adam purchased the lands and rebuilt the Mansion House in the old English style. Tour (Tower in 1820) has an ice house. A copper alloy flanged axehead was found by a metal-detectorist in a ploughed field near Tour House in 1991. It is now in the Glasgow Kelvinside Museum. William Cathcart had the property in 1820 with a rental value of £126 4s 10d Robertson. At NS414406 an old inhabitant in 1912, backed by other reliable informants, stated that in his grandfather's time there were a few thatched cottages, forming a small hamlet called Pathfoot, near the vicarage tower; the site now forms part of the Tour plantation, which extends W to the railway viaducts over the Carmel Water. All traces of Pathfoot have long ago disappeared. The Darien affair The Darien Company was an attempt by the Scots to set up a trading colony in America in the late 1690s, however the opposition from England and elsewhere was so great that the attempt failed with huge losses and great financial implications for the country and for individuals. Half of the whole circulating capital of Scotland was subscribed and mostly lost. In Cunninghame some examples of losses are Major James Cunninghame of Aiket (£200), Sir William Cunninghame of Cunninghamhead (£1000), Sir Archibald Mure of Thorntoun (£1000), William Watson of Tour (£150) and James Thomson of Hill in Kilmaurs (£100). Knockenlaw Mound and the De Soulis family This mound, called Knockinglaw on the 1896 OS, still exists in very poor condition, near Little Onthank. It was a tumulus in which urns had been found. It had a powder magazine built into it at one stage and was eventually effectively removed altogether. It is involved in one of the versions of the stories