Although not reckoning amongst the grander waterfalls of Scotland, the
cataract on the Garravalt, in the Queen's Forest of Ballochbuie, is
behind few in the picturesque wildness of its surroundings. The name
in Gaelic,--'Garbh-allt'--is characteristic and descriptive,
signifying a rough brook, and our view of the roaring cataract shews
how completely it deserves that name. The entire course of the stream,
from its rise in Cairn Taggart, one of the Loch-na-gar group of hills,
is about five miles, and the linn itself is little more than half a
mile from where the Garravalt joins the Dee. To reach the place,--and
few visitors to the famed district of Deeside will omit to visit
it,--only a slight deviation from the road leading from Crathie and
Balmoral to the Castleton of Braemar is called for, the place where
the road leads off being close beside the Bridge of Invercauld, over
the Dee.
This waterfall, the finest of several in Deeside, has been
enthusiastically praised by every writer. The Queen, in the _Leaves
from the Journal of Our Life in the Highlands_, says, 'From the road
in the wood we walked up to the _Falls of the Garbhalt_, which are
beautiful. The rocks are very grand, and the view from the little
bridge, and also from a seat a little lower down, is very pretty.' Her
Majesty has here indicated the two points of view generally chosen,
namely that from the bridge looking down, and that from below, looking
up the stream, the latter being adopted for our representation. To
say, as one writer has done, that 'the water comes foaming and raging
and toiling down in a manner almost impossible to be described,' is to
abdicate the chief functions of a word painter. The waters come
roaring and rushing down the rocky cleft, hurrying over the blocks and
stones that impede their passage, and creating a noise that is heard
far off,
'Confounding,
Astounding,
Dizzying and deafening the ear with its sound
And so never ending, but always descending
Sound and motion for ever and ever are blending.'
The eye never tires in looking at the lively scene, and the ear drinks
in the murmuring and thundering sound, which has the usual faculty of
swelling and falling, till the mind gets imbued with the idea that the
waters are endowed with the faculty of speech, so that we
involuntarily ask 'what are the wild waves saying?' and linger long at
the spot in the vain hope that the varying syllables of the living
water will yet form themselves into intelligible words. This is not to
be however, and we may turn away to look for a moment at the
picturesque country in which this attractive waterfall is situated.
The steep pine-covered hill is called the Forest of Ballochbuie. Here
again we may turn to the Queen's book, where 'the aspect of the wood
which is called Balloch Buie' is described as 'most lovely.' It is
said that this ground was at one time given to the Farquharsons of
Invercauld, by the Earl of Mar, for a tartan plaid. It is now royal
property, and forms an extensive and valued addition to the forest of
Balmoral, which lies between Ballochbuie and the castle. It was in the
Mar territory, at the Castleton of Braemar, that in 1715 the then Earl
of Mar raised his standard in support of the Chevalier St. George,
whom he had previously, in Glenlivat, proclaimed as King James the
Eighth of Scotland. Here, where 'the gathering pipe on Loch-na-gar'
was heard sounding 'long and sairly,' the inheritor of the crown of
the Stewarts has frequently attended a very different gathering on the
'Braes o' Mar,' when the Duffs, the Farquharsons, and other clans
meet, not for feuds and bloodshed, but for the athletic rivalries of
'tossing the caber' and other native games.