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.