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.