CHAPTER VII.
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."