It was under cover of the Braemar hunt of 1715, such a gathering as a generation later had Captain Waverley for eye-witness, that Mar hatched the Jacobite rebellion against George I., of which Scott aptly quotes—
The child may rue that is unborn
The hunting of that day.
When the Pretender’s standard was raised at the Castleton, a hollow of rock by the Linn of Quoich, known as “the Earl of Mar’s Punchbowl,” is said to have been filled with several ankers of spirits, gallons of boiling water, and hundredweights of honey, a mighty brew in which to drink success to that unlucky enterprise. In 1745, also, the sons of Mar gave their blood freely to the cause of the Pretender, though this time their lords were rather on the Whig side. Jacobite sentiment remained strong in the district up to our own time. In 1824 was buried at Castleton Peter Grant, who passed for being 110 years old, and probably the last survivor of Culloden. To his dying day he would never drink the Hanoverian king’s health, yet this constancy seems somewhat marred by the fact that, like Dr. Johnson, he accepted a pension from the usurping line. In our time all devotion to memories of Prince Charlie have been transferred to the sovereign lady who here would have lived as a private person, so far as possible, but was sore hindered by the snobbish curiosity that mobbed her even in the village church. Not that Highland loyalty is always enlightened, if we may believe a story told by Mr. George Seton of one Donald explaining to another the meaning of the Queen’s Jubilee: “When ye’re married twenty-five years, that’s your silver wedding; and fifty years is your golden wedding; and if your man’s deid, they ca’ it a Jubilee”!
Braemar, indeed, with its bracing air and glorious mountains, is not for every tourist. Hotels are few and dear; there is little accommodation between cot and castle; ramblers are not made welcome in the deer forests around; and a countryside of illustrious homes cannot be left open to all and sundry. When royalty be in residence, there are no doubt keepers on the watch who have to guard something better than game; and the trespassing stranger may find himself under observation as strict as that of Dartmoor or Portland Island. In the promised elysium of socialism both palaces and prisons may be turned into hydropathics; and Braemar, 1000 feet above the sea, makes a princely health resort, with no want of water. But access to this backwater of travel is itself somewhat prohibitive to the strangers who would scamper over Scotland in six days. The railway from Aberdeen comes no farther up the Dee than Ballater. The direct access to Castleton is that of a long coach drive by the Spittal of Glenshee. Pedestrians have the best of it in rough tramps up Glen Tilt or Glen Clova from the south, or from Aviemore on Speyside, over a pass 2750 feet high, and with a chance of losing their adventurous way in Rothiemurchus Forest, where Messrs. Cook’s coupons are of no avail. Once at the village capital of the district, one can visit most of its lions on pony-back, the Falls of Corriemulzie and of the Garrawalt, the Linn of Dee, Glen Cluny and Glen Callater, and even the top of the mighty Muich Dhui, thus ascended by Queen Victoria. But the Cairngorms show their jewels rather to him who, like
