Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, August 1847. Various
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decide which of these mountains has the honour of being the highest land in the United Kingdom. Competition has of late run very close between them; and the last accounts had shown Ben Muich Dhui only some twenty feet or so a-head. We freely confess that we back Ben Muich Dhui in this contest. It is true that Ben Nevis is in all respects a highly meritorious hill. We must do justice to his manly civility and good humour. We have found many a crabbed little crag more difficult of access; and, for his height, we scarcely know another mountain, of which it is so easy to reach the top. He stands majestic and alone, his own spurs more nearly rivalling him than any of the neighbouring hills. Rising straight from the sea, his whole height and magnificent proportions are before us at once, and the view from the summit has an unrivalled expanse. Still there are stronger charms about the great centre of the Cairngorm range. Surrounded by his peers, he stands apart from the every-day world in mysterious grandeur. The depth and remoteness of the solitude, the huge mural precipices, the deep chasms between the rocks, the waterfalls of unknown height, the hoary remains of the primeval forest, the fields of snow, and the deep black lakes at the foot of the precipices, are full of such associations of awe, and grandeur, and mystery, as no other scenery in Britain is capable of arousing. The recollections of these things inclined us still to favour Ben Muich Dhui; and before separating from these hermits of her Majesty's ordnance, we earnestly requested, if they had any influence in the matter, that they would "find" for our favourite, to which we shall now introduce our readers.
Our public are certainly not amenable to the charge of neglecting what is worth seeing, because it is distant and inaccessible. On the top of the Righi, where people go to behold the sun rise over the Alps, we have seen the English congregated in crowds on the wooden bench erected for that purpose, making it look like a race-course stand, and carrying on a bang-up sort of conversation—
Right against the eastern gate
Where the great sun begins his state,—
as if it were a starting-post, and they were laying bets on the events of the day. The Schwartzwald, the Saxon Schweitz, nay, even the wild Norrska Fiellen, swarm with British tourists; and we are credibly informed that loud cries of "boots" and "waiter," with expostulations against the quality of the bottled porter and the airing of the beds, may be heard not far from Mount Sinai. Yet, in the centre of our own island there is a group of scenery, as unlike the rest of the country as if we had travelled to another hemisphere to see it—as grand and beautiful as the objects which our tourists cross half the globe to behold—which is scarcely known to those who profess to say that they have visited every thing that is worth seeing in their own country. The answer to this will probably be, that railway travelling has brought the extremities of Europe together—that Switzerland is but four days from London—that it is as easy to get to Chamouni as to Braemar—and that the scenery of the Alps must be finer than any thing to be seen in Scotland. Even this broad proposition may be questioned. It was with no small pride that one night, after a hard walk from Martigny to Chamouni, we heard a distinguished Englishman, who has been able to compare with each other the finest things both physical and mental which the world has produced, and whose friendly face greeted us as we emerged from the dark valley into a brilliantly lighted hotel—stand up for old Scotland, and question if there were any thing, even in the gorgeous vale of Chamouni itself, to excel our purple mountains and narrow glens. But if we should be disposed to give the preference to the Alps, on that principle of politeness, which actuated an Aberdeen fisherman, who had found his way under the dome of St Paul's, to exclaim—"Weel, that jist maks a perfect feel o' the Kirk o' Fitty"—we think there is something inexpressibly interesting in beholding, in the middle of this busy island of steam-engines and railways, of printing machines and spinning jennies, one wide district where nature is still as supremely lord of all—where man feels as much separated from all traces of the workmanship of his fellows, as in the forests of Missouri, or the upper gorges of the Himalayas. But it is not true that the Cairngorm range of mountains is a distant place to tourists. It is in the very centre of their haunts. They swarm in the valleys of the Spey and the Tay, at Laggan, Blair Athol, and Braemar, and want but enterprise or originality enough to direct their steps out of the beaten paths which have formed, since Scottish touring became fashionable forty years ago, the regular circles in which these creatures revolve. They care not in general to imbibe the glories and the delights of scenery, but confine themselves to the established Lions, which it is good for a man to be able in society to say that he has seen. "Well, I can say I have seen it," says your routine tourist—whereby, if he knew the meaning of his own words, he would be aware that he conveyed to mankind a testimony to his folly in having made any effort to look at that which has produced no impression whatever on his mind, and in looking at which he would not be aware that he saw any thing remarkable, unless the guide-book and the waiter at the inn had certified that it was an object of interest. It is true, that to see our friends the Cairngorm hills, one must walk, and that somewhat stiffly—but this is seldom an obstacle in any place where pedestrianism is not unfashionable. In the Oberland of Switzerland, we have seen green-spectacled, fat, plethoric, gentlemen, fresh from 'Change, wearing blouses and broad straw hats, carrying haversacks on their shoulders, and tall alpenstocks in their hands to facilitate the leaping of the chasms in the glaciers—looking all the time as if the whole were some disagreeable dream, from which they hoped to awaken in their easy-chair in the back office in Crane Alley. No! when personages of this kind adopt the pilgrim's staff, we may be sure that there is a good fund of pedestrianism still unexhausted, could the means of stimulating it be found. But it is high time that we should point out the way to our favourite land of precipices, cataracts, and snow.
We shall suppose the traveller to be at Braemar, which he may have reached by the Deeside road from Aberdeen, or in the direction of Spital of Glenshee through the pass of the Vhrich-vhruich, (have the goodness, reader, to pronounce that aloud,) or from the basin of the Tay by the ancient Highland road through Glen Tilt, and the Ault-Shiloch-Vran. Even the scenery round Braemar is in every way worthy of respect. The hills are fine, there are noble forests of pine and birch, and some good foaming waterfalls; while over all preside in majesty the precipices and snow of Lochin-ye-gair. Still it is farther into the wilderness, at the place where the three counties of Aberdeen, Inverness, and Banff meet, that the traveller must look for the higher class of scenery of which we are sending him in search. As Braemar, however, contains the latest inn that will greet him in his journey, he must remember here to victual himself for the voyage; and, partial as we are to pedestrianism, we think he may as well take a vehicle or a Highland poney as far on his route as either of them can go: it will not long encumber him. The linn of Dee, where the river rushes furiously between two narrow rocks, is generally the most remote object visited by the tourist on Dee-side. There is little apparent inducement to farther progress. He sees before him, about a mile farther on, the last human habitation—a shepherd's cabin, without an inch of cultivated land about it; and he is told that all beyond that is barrenness and desolation, until he reach the valley of the Spey. The pine-trees at the same time decrease in number, the hills become less craggy and abrupt, and the country in general assumes a bleak, bare, windy, bog-and-moor appearance, that is apt to make, one uncomfortable.
Of the various methods of approaching Ben Muich Dhui, the most striking, in our opinion, is one with which we never found any other person so well acquainted as to exchange opinions with us about it. We did once, it is true, coax a friend to attempt that route; he had come so far with us as the edge of the Dee, but disliked crossing it. In the superabundance of our zeal, we offered to carry him over on our shoulders; but when we came to the middle of the stream, it so happened that a foot tripped against a stone, and our friend was very neatly tilted over our head into the water, without our receiving any considerable damage, in our own proper person. He thereafter looked upon us, according to an old Scottish proverb, as "not to ride the water with;" and perhaps he was right. So we proceeded on our journey alone. Our method was to cross right over the line of hills which here bound the edge of the river. Though not precipitous, this bank is very high—certainly not less than a thousand feet. When you reach the top, if the day be clear, the whole Cairngorm range is before you on the other side of the valley, from summit to base, as you may see Mont Blanc from the Col de Balm, or the Jungfrau from the Wengern Alp. From this bird's-eye view, you at once understand that peculiar structure of the group, which makes the valleys so much deeper and narrower, and the precipices so much more frightful, than those of any other