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The blue waters of Loch Muich come in sight with bare precipitous hills round; a little wood clothes the mouth of the pass and the loch, and helps to shelter Alt-na-Ginthasach. The hut is now the Prince of Wales's small shooting-lodge.
All the people in attendance on the small party were the Queen's maid, Miss Dawson's maid, Prince Albert's German valet, a footman, and Macdonald, together with the old couple, John Gordon and his wife. After luncheon the visitors went to Loch Muich a name which has been interpreted "darkness" or "sorrow" and got into a large boat with four rowers, while a smaller boat followed, having a net.
Her Majesty and Prince Albert went on the 16th of September for their customary two days' stay by Loch Muich, though they had been startled in the morning by a newspaper report of the death of the Duke of Wellington at Walmer. But the rumour had arisen so often during these many years that nobody believed it, now that it was true.
Although his sixth cousin on the mother's side, as he returned one night from a wedding, had seen the Men of Peace hunting on the sides of Ben Muich Dhui, dressed in green, and with silver-mounted bridles to their horses which jingled as they rode; and though Rory the fiddler having gone to play at a christening did never come home, but crossing a hill near Brockburn in a mist was seduced into a Shian or fairy turret, where, as all decent bodies well believe, he is playing still in spite, I say, of the wise saws and experience of all his neighbours, Brockburn remained obstinately incredulous.
The Queen sums up the position: "One cannot think of this country without 'the Duke, our immortal hero." Her Majesty hastened down on foot to the head of Loch Muich, and rode back in the rain to Alt-na-Giuthasach to write to Lord Derby and Lord Charles Wellesley, who had been with his father in his last hours. She wrote mournfully in her journal: "We shall soon stand sadly alone.
The whole is set between the wooded hills of Pannanich and Craigendarroch, the last-named from the oak wood which crowns its summit. The Prince of Wales's house, Birkhall, stands back from the road on a green eminence with the mountain rising behind, and in front the river Muich running down to join the Dee.
Loch Muich may be desolation itself when the heather and bracken are sere, when the lowering sky breathes nothing save gloom, and chill mist-wreaths creep round its precipices; but when the air is buoyant in its tingling sharpness, when the dappled white clouds are reflected in water blue, not leaden, and there is enough sunshine to cast intermittent shadows on the hillsides and the loch, though a transient darkness and a patter of raindrops vary the scene, it has its day and way of blossoming.
I shall leave this on Friday for Braemar else I should have to appear at another Balmoral ball and on Saturday proceed to Keir, where I spend Sunday with Stirling, who is very sorry you are not of the party. Birk Hall, September 5th. The day kept its promise, and was fair to the end. We drove up this glen, which is Glen Muich, to the loch which terminates it, about six miles off.
"Burns," the Girnoch and the Muich, trot by turns along with us, singing their stories, half blythe, half plaintive. Once or twice a lowly farmhouse has a few grass or oat-fields spread out round it, with the solitude of the hills beyond.