The next morning the Queen and the Prince, with their children, took their first drive round the beautiful road, then just completed, which bears her name, and, encircling Arthur's Seat, is the goal of every stranger visiting Edinburgh, affording as it does in miniature an excellent idea of Scotch scenery. On this occasion the party alighted and climbed to the top of the hill, rejoicing in the view. "You see the beautiful town, with the Calton Hill, and the bay with the island of Inchkeith stretching out before you, and the Bass Rock quite in the distance, rising behind the coast…. The view when we gained the carriage hear Dunsappie Loch, quite a small lake, overhung by a crag, with the sea in the distance, is extremely pretty…. The air was delicious."
In the course of the forenoon the Prince laid the foundation stone of the Scotch National Gallery, and made his first speech (which was an undoubted success) before one of those Edinburgh audiences, noted for their fastidiousness and critical faculty. The afternoon drive was by the beautiful Scott monument, the finest modern ornament of the city, Donaldson's Hospital, the High Street, and the Canongate, and the lower part of the Queen's Drive, which encloses the Queen's Park. "A beautiful park indeed," she wrote, "with such a view, and such mountain scenery in the midst of it."
In the evening there was assembled such a circle as had not been gathered in royal old Holyrood since poor Prince Charlie kept brief state there. Her Majesty wrote in her journal, "The Buccleuchs, the Roxburghs, the Mortons, Lord Roseberry, Principal Lee, the Belhavens, and the Lord Justice General, dined with us. Everybody so pleased at our living at my old palace." The talk seems to have been, as was fitting, on old times and the unfortunate Queen Mary, the heroine of Holyrood. Sir Theodore Martin thinks it may have been in remembrance of this evening that Lord Belhaven, on his death, left a bequest to the Queen "of a cabinet which had been brought by Queen Mary from France, and given by her to the Regent Mar, from whom it passed into the family of Lord Belhaven." The cabinet contains a lock of Queen Mary's golden hair, and a purse worked by her.
On the following day the royal party left Holyrood and travelled to Balmoral. The Queen, with the Prince and her children, and the Duchess of Kent, with her son and grandson, were at the great gala of the district, the Braemar gathering, where the honour of her Majesty's presence is always eagerly craved.
Another amusement was the leistering, or spearing, of salmon in the Dee. Captain Forbes of Newe, and from forty to fifty of his clan, on their return to Strathdon from the Braemar gathering, were attracted by the fishing to the river's edge, when they were carried over the water on the backs of the Queen's men, who volunteered the service, "Macdonald, at their head, carrying Captain Forbes on his back." The courteous act, which was quite spontaneous, charmed the Queen and the Prince. The latter in writing to Germany gave further details of the incident. "Our people in the Highlands are altogether primitive, true-hearted and without guile…. Yesterday the Forbeses of Strath Don passed through here. When they came to the Dee our people (of Strath Dee) offered to carry them across the river, and did so, whereupon they drank to the health of Victoria and the inmates of Balmoral in whisky (schnapps), but as there was no cup to be had, their chief, Captain Forbes, pulled off his shoe, and he and his fifty men drank out of it."
The Forbeses got permission to march through the grounds of Balmoral, "the pipers going, in front. They stopped and cheered three times three, throwing up their bonnets." The Queen describes the characteristic demonstration, and she then mentions listening with pleasure "to the distant shouts and the sound of the pibroch."
There were two drawbacks to the peace and happiness of Balmoral this year. The one was occasioned by an unforeseen vexatious occurrence, and the complications which arose from it. General Haynau, the Austrian officer whose brutalities to the conquered and to women during the Hungarian war had aroused detestation in England, happened to visit London, and was attacked by the men in Barclay's brewery. Austria remonstrated, and Lord Palmerston made a rash reply, which had to be recalled.
The other care which darkened the Balmoral horizon in 1850 was the growing certainty of a fatal termination to the illness of the Queen of the Belgians. Immediately after the Court returned to Osborne the blow fell. Queen Louise died at Ostend on the 11th of October, 1850. She was only in her thirty-ninth year, not more than eight years older than Queen Victoria. She was the second daughter of Louis Philippe, Princess Marie having been the elder sister.