THE QUEEN'S VISIT TO THE WESTERN ISLANDS OP SCOTLAND AND STAY AT
ARDVERIKIE.
On the 11th of August her Majesty and Prince Albert, with the Prince
of Wales, the Princess Royal, and the Prince of Leiningen, attended by
a numerous suite, left Osborne in the royal yacht for Scotland. They
followed a new route and succeeded, in spite of the fogs in the
Channel, in reaching the Scilly Isles. The voyage, to begin with, was
not a pleasant one. There had been a rough swell on the sea as well as
fogs off shore. The children, and especially the Queen, on this
occasion suffered from sea-sickness. However, her Majesty landed on
the tiny island of St. Mary's.
As the royal party approached Wales the sea became calmer and the
sailing enjoyable. The yacht and its companions lay in the great
harbour of Milford Haven, under the reddish-brown cliffs. Prince
Albert and the Prince of Leiningen went to Pembroke, while the Queen
sat on the deck and sketched.
On a beautiful Sunday the Queen sailed through the Menai Straits in
the _Fairy_, when the sight of "Snowdon rising splendidly in the
middle of the fields and woods was glorious." The "grand old Castle of
Caernarvon" attracted attention; so did Plas Newydd, where her Majesty
had spent six weeks, when she had visited Wales as Princess Victoria,
in one of her girlish excursions with the Duchess of Kent. The Isle of
Man, with the town of Douglas, surmounted by bold hills and cliffs, a
castle and a lighthouse, looked abundantly picturesque, but the
landing there was reserved for the return of the voyagers, though it
was on this occasion that a tripping Manxman described Prince Albert,
in a local newspaper, as leading the Prince Regent by the hand; a slip
which drew from the Prince the gay rejoinder that "usually one has a
regent for an infant, but in Man it seems to be precisely the
reverse."
The Mull of Galloway was the first Scotch land that was sighted, and
just before entering Loch Ryan the huge rock, Ailsa Craig, with its
moving clouds of sea-fowl, rose to view.
Arran and Goatfell, Bute and the Bay of Rothesay, were alike hailed
with delight. But the islands were left behind for the moment, till
more was seen of the Clyde, and Greenock, of sugar-refining and boat-
building fame, was reached. It was her Majesty's first visit to the
west coast of Scotland, and Glasgow poured "down the water" her
magistrates, her rich merchants, her stalwart craftsmen, her swarms
from the Gorbels and the Saut Market, the Candle-rigs and the Guse-
dibs. Multitudes lined the quays. No less than forty steamers over-
filled with passengers struggled zealously in the wake of royalty.
"Amidst boats and ships of every description moving in all
directions," the little _Fairy_ cut its way through, bound for
Dumbarton.
On the Queen's return to Greenock she sailed past Roseneath, and
followed the windings of Loch Long, getting a good view of the
Cobbler, the rugged mountain which bears a fantastic resemblance to a
man mending a shoe. At the top of the loch, Ben Lomond came in sight.
"There was no sun, and twice a little mist; but still it was
beautiful," wrote the Queen.
On "a bright fresh morning" in August, when the hills were just
"slightly tipped with clouds," the Queen sailed through the Kyles of
Bute, that loveliest channel between overtopping mountains, and
entered Loch Fyne, another fine arm of the sea, of herring celebrity.
A Highland welcome awaited the Queen at the little landing-place of
Inverary, made gay and fragrant with heather. Old friends, whom she
was honouring by her presence, waited to receive her, the Duke and
Duchess of Argyle--the latter the eldest daughter of the Duchess of
Sutherland, who was also present with her son, Lord Stafford, her
unmarred daughter, Lady Caroline Leveson-Gower, and her son-in-law and
second daughter, Lord and Lady Blantyre. An innocent warder stood in
front of the old feudal keep. In the course of the Queen's visit to
Germany she had made the acquaintance, without dreaming of what lay
concealed in the skirts of time, of one of her future sons-in-law in a
fine little boy of eight years. Now her Majesty was to be introduced,
without a suspicion of what would be the result of the introduction,
to the coming husband of another daughter still unborn. Here is the
Queen's description of the son and heir of the house of Argyle, who
was yet to win a princess for his bride. "Outside, stood the Marquis
of Lorne, just two years old--a dear, white, fat, fair little fellow,
with reddish hair but very delicate features, like both his mother and
father; he is such a merry, independent little child. He had a black
velvet dress and jacket, with a 'sporran,' scarf, and Highland
bonnet."
Her Majesty lunched at the castle, "the Highland gentlemen standing
with halberts in the room," and returned to the _Fairy_, sailing
down Loch Fyne when the afternoon was at its mellowest, and the long
shadows were falling across the hillsides. At five Lochgilphead was
reached, when Sir John Orde lent his carriage to convey the visitors
to the Crinan Canal. The next day's sail, in beautiful weather still,
was through the clusters of the nearest of the western islands, up the
Sound of Jura, amidst a flotilla of small boats crowned with flags.
Here were fresh islands and mountain peaks, until the strangers were
within hail of Staffa.
It is not always that an approach to this northern marvel of nature is
easy or even practicable; but fortune favours the brave. Her Majesty
has described the landing. "At three we anchored close before Staffa,
and immediately got into the barge, with Charles, the children, and
the rest of our people, and rowed towards the cave. As we rounded the
point the wonderful basaltic formation came into sight. The appearance
it presents is most extraordinary, and when we turned the corner to go
into the renowned Fingal's Cave the effect was splendid, like a great
entrance into a vaulted hall; it looked almost awful as we entered,
and the barge heaved up and down on the swell of the sea. It is very
high, but not longer than two hundred and twenty-seven feet, and
narrower than I expected, being only forty feet wide. The sea is
immensely deep in the cave. The rocks under water were all colours--
pink, blue, and green, which had a most beautiful and varied effect.
It was the first time the British standard, with a queen of Great
Britain and her husband and children, had ever entered Fingal's Cave,
and the men gave three cheers, which sounded very impressive there."
On the following day the Atlantic rains had found the party, though
for the present the affliction was temporary. It poured for three
hours, during which her Majesty drew and painted in her cabin. The
weather cleared in the afternoon; sitting on the deck was again
possible, and Loch Linnhe, Loch Eil, and the entrance to Loch Leven
were not lost.
At Fort William the Queen was to quit the yacht and repair to the
summer quarters of Ardverikie. Before doing so she recorded her regret
that "this delightful voyage and tour among the western lochs and
isles is at an end; they are so beautiful and so full of poetry and
romance, traditions and historical associations."
Rain again, more formidable than before, on Saturday, the 21st of
August. It was amidst a hopeless drenching drizzle, which blots out
the chief features of a landscape, that the Queen went ashore, to find
"a great gathering of Highlanders in their different tartans" met to
do her honour. Frasers, Forbeses, Mackenzies, Grants, replaced
Campbells, Macdonalds, Macdougals, and Macleans. By a wild and lonely
carriage-road, the latter part resembling Glen Tilt, her Majesty
reached her destination.
Ardverikie, which claimed to have been a hunting-seat of Fergus, king
of the Scots, was a shooting lodge belonging to Lord George Bentinck,
rented from him by the Marquis of Abercorn, and lent by the marquis to
the Queen. It has since been burnt down. It was rustic, as a shooting
lodge should be, very much of a large cottage in point of
architecture, the bare walls of the principal rooms characteristically
decorated with rough sketches by Landseer, among them a drawing of
"The Stag at Bay," and the whole house bristling with stags' horns of
great size and perfection. In front of the house lay Loch Laggan,
eight miles in length.
The Queen remained at Ardverikie for four weeks, and doubtless would
have enjoyed the wilds thoroughly, had it not been for the lowest deep
of persistently bad weather, when "it not only rained and blew, but
snowed by way of variety."
Lord Campbell heard and wrote down these particulars of the royal stay
at Ardverikie. "The Queen was greatly delighted with the Highlands in
spite of the bad weather, and was accustomed to sally for a walk in
the midst of a heavy rain, putting a great hood ever her bonnet, and
showing nothing of her features but her eyes. The Prince's invariable
return to luncheon about two o'clock, in spite of grouse-shooting and
deer-stalking, is explained by his voluntary desire to please the
Queen, and by the intense hunger which always assails him at this
hour, when he likes, in German fashion, to make his dinner."
In a continuance of the most dismally unpropitious weather, the Queen
and her children left Ardverikie on the 17th of September, the Prince
having preceded her for a night that he might visit Inverness and the
Caledonian Canal. The storm continued, almost without intermission,
during the whole of the voyage home.