Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

We now propose another excursion--our last on the present occasion--to the sources of the Dee. We place our wanderer again at the Linn of Dee. As he proceeds up the stream, the banks become flatter, and the valleys wider and less interesting, until after some miles--we really cannot say how many--the river turns somewhat northwards, and the banks become more close and rocky. At this spot there is a fine waterfall, which, in the midst of a desert, has contrived to surround itself with a not unbecoming clump of trees. The waters are divided into two; the Geusachan burn joining the stream from the west. At last the conical peak of Cairn Toul appears over-topping all the surrounding heights; and then, a rent intervening, we approach and soon walk under the great mural precipice of Brae Riach, which we have already surveyed to so much advantage from the top of Ben Muich Dhui. We are here in the spot which to us, of all this group of scenery, appears to be the most remarkable, as being so unlike any other part of Scotland, or any place we have seen elsewhere. The narrowness of the glen and the height of its walled sides are felt in the constrained attitude in which we look up on either side to the top, as if we were surveying some object of interest in a tenth story window of our own High Street. This same narrowness imparts a sensation as if one could not breathe freely. If we compare this defile to another of the grandest mountain passes in Scotland--to Glencoe, we find a marked difference between them. The scene of the great tragedy, grand and impressive as it is, has no such narrow walled defiles. The mountains are high, but they are of the sugar-loaf shape--abrupt, but never one mass of precipice from top to bottom. Cairn Toul resembles these hills, though it is considerably more precipitous: but Brae Riach is as unlike them as a tower is distinct from a dome. In this narrow glen we could tell of sunsets and sunrises, not accompanied by such disagreeable associations as those we have recorded in Glen Avon. Picture the very hottest day of a hot year. The journey in the wide burning glen up from the Linn of Dee has been accomplished only with the aid of sundry plunges in the deep, cold pools, which the stream has filled with water fresh from the inner chambers of the mountains. The moment we enter the narrow part of the glen, though the sun is still pretty far up in the heavens, we are in twilight gloom. We have no notice of his leaving the earth, save the gradual darkening of all things around us. Then the moon is up, but we have no further consciousness of his presence, save that the sharp peak of Cairn Toul shows its outline more clearly even than by daylight; and a lovely roof of light-blue, faintly studded with stars, contrasts with the dark sides of our rocky chamber. In such a time, when one has mounted so far above the level of the waters that they only make a distant murmur--when there is not a breath of wind stirring any thing--it is strange with how many mysterious voices the mountain yet speaks. Sometimes there is a monotonous and continuous rumble as if some huge stone, many miles off, were loosened from its position, and tumbling from rock to rock. Then comes a loud distinct report as if a rock had been split; and faint echoes of strange wailings touch the ear, as if this solemn desert were frequented at night by animals as little known to the inhabitants of our island as the uncouth wilds in which they live. But let not the wanderer indulge in thoughts of this description beyond the bounds of a pleasant imaginativeness. Let him take it for granted, that neither cayman nor rattlesnake will disturb his rest; and having pitched on a dry spot, let him pluck a large quantity of heather, making up a portion of it in bundles, and setting them on end closely packed together with the flower uppermost, while he reserves the rest to heap over himself. It is such a bed as a prince has seldom the good fortune to take his rest on; and if the wanderer have a good conscience, and the night be fine, he will sleep far more soundly than if he were packed on the floor of a bothy, with ten Highlanders who every now and then are giving their shoulders nervous jerks against the heather stumps, or scratching the very skin off their wrists. When he awakens, he finds himself nearer to the top of Ben Muich Dhui than he had probably supposed, and the ascent is straight and simple. He may be there to see the sun rise, a sight which has its own peculiar glories, though most people prefer seeing the event from some solitary hill, which, like Ben Nevis, Shehallion, or the Righi, stands alone, and looks round on a distant panorama of mountains.

To return to the Dee.--The river divides again, one stream coming tumbling down through the cleft between Cairn Toul and Brae Riach, called the Garchary Burn. The other, less precipitously inclined, comes from between Brae Riach and Ben Mulch Dhul, and is called the Larig. Like the Nile and the Niger, the Dee is a river of a disputed source. As we shall presently find, the right of the Garchary to that distinction is strongly maintained by pretty high authority; but we are ourselves inclined to adopt the Larig, not only because it appeared to us to contain a greater volume of water, but because it is more in the line of the glen, and, though rough enough, is not so desperately flighty as the Garchary, and does not join it in those great leaps which, however surprising and worthy of admiration they may be in themselves, are not quite consistent with the calm dignity of a river destined to pass close to two universities. Following then the Larig over rocks and rough stones, among which it chafes and foams, we reach a sort of barrier of stones laid together by the hand of nature with the regularity of an artificial breakwater. As we pass over this barrier, a hollow rumbling is heard beneath; for the stream, at least at ordinary times, finds its way in many rills deep down among the stones. When we reach the top of the bank we are on the edge of a circular basin, abrupt and deep, but full of water so exquisitely clear that the pebbly bottom is every where visible. Here the various springs, passing by their own peculiar conduit-pipes from the centre of the mountain, meet together, and east up their waters into the round basin--one can see the surface disturbed by the force of their gushing. Soon after passing these "wells of Dee," we are at the head of the pass of Cairngorm, and join the waters which run to the Spey. A path leads through the woods of Rothiemurchus to Aviemore, on which the nearest house is, or used to be, that of a widow named Mackenzie, who in that wide solitude extends her hospitality to the wayfarer. Blessings on her! may her stoup never be dry, or her aumry empty. It is needless to tell the traveller, that by this route he may approach the scenery of the Cairngorm hills from Laggan, Rannoch, and other places near Spey side.

The claims of the Garchary to the leadership are supported by that respectable topographer Dr Skene Keith--probably on account of his own adventurous ascent of that turbulent stream, which we shall give in his own words, merely premising that we suspect he was mistaken in his discovery that the well he saw is called "Well Dee."

"At two o'clock P.M. we set out to climb the mountain, still
keeping in sight of the river. In a few minutes we came to the foot
of a cataract, whose height we found to be one thousand feet, and
which contained about a fourth part of the water of which the
Garchary was now composed. In about half an hour after, we
perceived that the cataract came from a lake in the ridge of the
mountain of Cairn Toul, and that the summit of the mountain was
another thousand feet above the loch, which is called Loch na Youn,
or the Blue Lake. A short time after we saw the Dee (here called
the Garchary from this rocky bed, which signifies in Gaelic _the
rugged quarry_) tumbling in great majesty over the mountain down
another cataract; or as we afterwards found it, a chain of natural
cascades, above thirteen hundred feet high. It was in flood at this
time from the melting of the snow, and the late rains; and what was
most remarkable, an arch of snow covered the narrow glen from which
it tumbled over the rocks. We approached so near to the cataract as
to know that there was no other lake or stream; and then we had to
climb among huge rocks, varying from one to ten tons, and to catch
hold of the stones or fragments that projected, while we ascended
in an angle of seventy or eighty degrees. A little before four
o'clock we got to the top of the mountain, which I knew to be Brae
Riach, or the speckled mountain. Here we found the highest well,
which we afterwards learned was called Well Dee, and other five
copious fountains, which make a considerable stream before they
fall over the precipice. We sat down completely exhausted, at four
o'clock P.M. and drank of the highest well, which we found to be
four thousand and sixty feet above the level of the sea; and whose
fountain was only thirty-five degrees of heat on the 17th of July,
or three degrees above the freezing point. We mixed some good
whisky with this water, and recruited our strength [a very
judicious proceeding.] Then we poured as a libation into the
fountain a little of the excellent whisky which our landlord had
brought along with him [a very foolish proceeding.] After resting
half an hour, we ascended to the top of Brae Riach at five P.M.,
and found it to be four thousand two hundred and eighty feet above
the level of the sea."[9]

We must not bid farewell to this mountain desert without asking attention to a peculiar feature in the hills connected with a disastrous history. In many places the declivities are seamed with trenches some forty or fifty feet deep, appearing as if they were made by a gigantic plough-share which, instead of sand, casts up huge masses of rock on either side, in parallel mounds, like the morains of a glacier. There are many of these furrows on the side of Ben Muich Dhui, nearest to the Dee. Though we had long noticed them, it was not until we happened to be in that district, immediately after the great floods of 1829, that we were forcibly told of the peculiar cause of this appearance. The old furrows were as they had been before--the stones, gray, weather-beaten, and covered with lichen, while heather and wildflowers grew in the interstices. But among them were new scaurs, still like fresh wounds, with the stones showing the sharpness of late fracture, and no herbage covering the blood-red colour of the sand. It was clear from the venerable appearance of the older scaurs, that only at long intervals do the elements produce this formidable effect--at least many years had passed since the last instance before 1829 had occurred. The theory of the phenomenon appeared to be pretty simple. Each spring is a sort of stone cistern, which, through its peculiar duct, sends forth to one part of the surface of the earth the water it receives from another. If, through inordinately heavy falls of rain, there be a great volume of water pressing on the entrance tubes, the expansive force of the water in the cistern increases in that accumulating ratio which is practically exemplified in the hydraulic press, and the whole mass of water bursts forth from the side of the mountain, as if it were a staved barrel, rending rocks, and scattering their shattered fragments around like dust. Hence we may presume arose these fierce pulsations which made the rivers descend wave on wave. What a sight, to have been remembered and thought on ever after, would it have been, had one been present in this workshop of the storm while the work was going on!

Now, reader, before we have done, let us confess that there are many elements that we like to meet with in such things, wherein this little contribution to the knowledge of British local scenery is deficient. Fain would we have given it a more hospitable tone, telling of the excellent cookery at this inn, and the good wines at the next, and the general civility experienced at the third; but we cast ourselves, O generous reader! on your mercy. How could we describe the comforts and luxuries of inns, in a place where there is not a single house--a place which, like the Irish milestone, is "fifteen miles from inny where"?

As to the frequented methods of approach towards the border of the wilderness which we have taken under our especial patronage, we profess not to discuss them, leaving the public in the very competent hands of the Messrs Anderson, whose "Guide to the Highlands and Islands of Scotland" is, in relation to the inhabited districts, and the usual tourists' routes, all-sufficient for its purpose.

FOOTNOTES:

[7] _Edinburgh New Philosophic Journal_, 1831, p. 165.

[8] _New Statistical Account of Scotland--Banffshire_, p. 298.

[9] _Dr Skene Keith's Surrey of Aberdeenshire_, p. 644.

LETTERS ON THE TRUTHS CONTAINED IN POPULAR SUPERSTITIONS.