Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, August 1847

Unheeded spreads thy blossomed bud
Its milky bosom to the bee;
Unheeded falls along the flood
Thy desolate and aged tree.
Forsaken scene! how like to thee
The fate of unbefriended worth!
Like thine, her fruit unhonoured falls—
Like thee, in solitude she calls
A thousand treasures forth."

It is after proceeding through Glen Lui Beg, perhaps about three or four miles from the opening of the glen, that we begin to mount Ben Muich Dhui. At first we clamber over the roots and fallen trunks of trees; but by degrees we leave the forest girdle behind, and precipices and snow, with a scant growth of heather, become our sole companions. Keeping the track where the slope of the hill is gentlest, we pass on the right Loch Etichan, lying like a drop of ink at the base of a huge dark mural precipice—yet it is not so small when seen near at hand. This little tarn, with its back-ground of dark rocks interspersed with patches of snow, might strongly remind the Alpine traveller of the lake near the Hospice of the Grimsel. The two scenes are alike hard and leafless and frozen-like—but the Alpine pass is one of the highways of Europe, and thus one seldom crosses it without encountering a pilgrim here and there. But few are the travellers that pass the edge of Loch Etichan, and if the adventurous tourist desires company, he had better try to find an eagle—not even the red-deer, we should suppose, when driven to his utmost need, seeks such a shelter, and as for foxes and wild-cats they know too well the value of comfortable quarters in snug glens, to expose themselves to catch cold in so Greenland-like a region.

The climber will know that he is at the top of Ben Muich Dhui, when he has to scramble no longer over scaurs or ledges of rock, but walking on a gentle ascent of turf, finds a cairn at its highest part. When he stands on this cairn, he is entitled to consider himself the most elevated personage in the United Kingdom. Around it is spread something like a table-land, and one can go round the edges of the table, and look down on the floor, where the Dee, the Avon, the Lui, and many other streams, are seen like silver threads, while their forest banks resemble beds of mignionette or young boxwood. There are at several points prodigious precipices, from which one may contemplate the scene below; but we recommend caution to the adventurer, as ugly blasts sometimes sweep along the top.

When a mountain is the chief of a district, we generally see from the top a wide expanse of country. Other mountains are seen, but wide valleys intervene, and thus they are carried to a graceful distance. Probably, more summits are seen from Ben Nevis, than from any other height in Scotland, but none of them press so closely on the monarch as even to tread upon his spurs. The whole view is distant and panoramic. It is quite otherwise with Ben Muich Dhui. Separated from it only by narrow valleys, which some might call mere clefts, are Cairn Toul, Brae Riach, Cairn Gorm, Ben Avon, and Ben-y-Bourd—all, we believe, ascending more than four thousand feet above the level of the sea—along with several other mountains which very closely approach that fine round number. The vicinity of some of these summits to Ben Muich Dhui has something frightful in it. Standing on the western shoulder of the hill, you imagine that you might throw a stone to the top of Brae Riach—we have been so much deceived by distance as to have seriously made the attempt, we shall not venture to say how many years ago. Yet, between these two summits rolls the river Dee; and Brae Riach presents right opposite to the hill on which we stand, a mural precipice, said to be two thousand feet high—an estimate which no one who looks on it will be inclined to doubt. Brae Riach, indeed, is unlike any thing else in Scotland. It is not properly a hill, but a long wall of precipice, extending several miles along the valley of the Dee. Even in the sunniest weather it is black as midnight, but in a few inequalities on its smooth surface, the snow lies perpetually. Seldom is the cleft between the two great summits free of clouds, which flit hither and thither, adding somewhat to the mysterious awfulness of the gulf, and seeming in their motions to cause certain deep but faint murmurs, which are in reality the mingled sounds of the many torrents which course through the glens, far, far below.

Having had a satisfactory gaze at Brae Riach,—looking across the street, as it were, to the interesting and mysterious house on the opposite side,—the traveller may probably be reflecting on the best method of descending. There is little hope, we may as well inform him, of his return to Braemar to-night, unless he be a person of more than ordinary pedestrian acquirements. For such a consummation, he may have prepared himself according to his own peculiar ideas. If he be a tea-totaller, he will have brought with him a large bottle of lemonade and some oranges—we wish him much satisfaction in the consumption of them, and hope they will keep his outer and inner man warm after the dews of eve have descended. Perhaps his most prudent course (we consider ourselves bound to give discreet advice, for perhaps we may have led some heedless person into a scrape) will be to get down to Loch Avon, and sleep under the Stone of Shelter. Proceeding along the table-land of the hill, in a direction opposite to that by which he has ascended, the traveller comes to a slight depression. If he descend, and then ascend the bank towards the north-east, he will find himself on the top of a precipice the foot of which is washed by the Loch. But this is a dangerous windy spot: the ledge projects far out, and there is so little shelter near it, that, from beneath, it has the appearance of overhanging the waters. It is not an essential part of the route we are about to suggest, and we would rather decline the responsibility of recommending it to the attention of any one who is not a practised cragsman. In the depression we have just mentioned will be found, unless the elements have lately changed their arrangements and operations, the largest of those fields of snow which, even in the heat of summer, dispute with the heath and turf the pre-eminence on the upper ranges of Ben Muich Dhui. If we were desirous of using high-sounding expressions, we would call this field a glacier, but it must be at once admitted that it does not possess the qualities that have lately made these frigid regions a matter of ardent scientific inquiry. There are no icebergs or fissures; and the mysterious principle of motion which keeps these congealed oceans in a state of perpetual restlessness is unknown in the smooth snow-fields of Ben Muich Dhui. But there are some features common to both. The snow-field, like the glacier, is hardened by pressure into a consistence resembling that of ice. A curious thing it is to topple a huge stone down from a neighbouring precipice on one of these snow-fields, and see how it hits the snow without sinking in it, and bounds along, leaving no scratch on the hardened surface. A stream issues from the field we are now alluding to, formed like the glacier streams from the ceaseless melting of the snow. It passes forth beneath a diminutive arch, such as the source of the Rhine might appear through a diminishing glass; and looking through this arch to the interior of the hardened snow, we see exemplified the sole pleasing peculiarity of the glacier—the deep blue tint that it assumes in the interior of the fissures, and on the tops of the arches whence the waters issue. This field of snow, which we believe has never been known to perspire so much in the hottest season as to evaporate altogether, constitutes the main source of the Avon. The little stream, cold and leafless though it be, is not without its beauties. Rarely have we seen such brilliant mosses as those which cluster round its source: their extreme freshness may probably be accounted for by remembering that every summer day deducts so much from the extent of the snow-field, and that the turf in its immediate neighbourhood has just been uncovered, and, relieved from prison, is enjoying the first fresh burst of spring in July or August. For our own part we think this region of fresh moss is quite worthy of comparison with the far-famed Jardin of the Talèfre, which we find described in Murray's hand-book as "an oasis in the desert, an island in the ice—a rock which is covered with a beautiful herbage, and enamelled in August with flowers. This is the Jardin of this palace of nature, and nothing can exceed the beauty of such a spot, amidst the overwhelming sublimity of the surrounding objects, the Aiguilles of Charmoz, Bletière, and the Géant," &c. "Herbage," "flowers"!! Why, the jardin is merely a rock protruding out of the glacier, and covered with lichens; but, after all, was it reasonable to expect a better flower-show ten thousand feet above the level of the sea, and some nine thousand or so above all horticultural societies and prize exhibitions?

As we follow the course of the little stream, it becomes gradually enlarged by contributions from subsidiary snow streams; and winds along for some distance not inconsiderable in the volume of its waters, passing through a beautiful channel of fine sand, probably formed of the detritus of the granite rocks, swept along by the floods, caused by the melting of the snow in spring. The water is exquisitely clear—a feature which at once deprives it of all right to be considered glacier-born; for filth is the peculiarity of the streams claiming this high origin, and none can have seen without regretting it, the Rhone, after having washed itself clean in the Lake Leman, and come forth a sapphire blue, becoming afterwards as dirty as ever, because it happens to fall in company with an old companion, the Arve, which, having never seen good society, or had an opportunity of making itself respectable, by the mere force of its native character, brings its reformed brother back to his original mire, and accompanies him in that plight through the respectable city of Lyons, till both plunge together into the great ocean, where all the rivers of the earth, be they blue or yellow, clear or boggy, classical or obscure, become alike indistinguishable.

Perhaps our traveller is becoming tired of this small pleasant stream running along a mere declivity of the table-land of Ben Muich Dhui. But he will not be long distressed by its peaceful monotony. Presently, as he comes in sight of the valley below, and Loch Avon lying in a small pool at the base of the dizzy height, the stream leaps at once from the edge of the hill, and disappears for a time, reappearing again far down in a narrow thread, as white as the snow from which it has issued. Down the wide channel, which the stream occupies in its moments of fulness and pride—moments when it is all too terrible to be approached by mortal footsteps—the traveller must find his way; and, if he understand his business, he may, by judiciously adapting to his purpose the many ledges and fractures caused by the furious bursts of the flooded stream, and by a judicious system of zig-zagging, convert the channel, so far as he is himself concerned, into a sort of rough staircase, some two thousand feet or so in length. The torrent itself takes a more direct course; and he who has descended by the ravine may well look up with wonder at what has the appearance of a continuous cataract, which, falling a large mass of waters at his feet, seems as if it diminished and disappeared in the heavens. The Staubbach, or Fall of Dust, in Lauter Brunen, is beyond question a fine object. The water is thrown sheer off the edge of a perpendicular rock, and reaches the ground in a massive shower nine hundred feet high. But with all respect for this wonder of the world, we are scarcely disposed to admit that it is a grander fall than this rumbling, irregular, unmeasured cataract which tumbles through the cleft between Ben Muich Dhui and Ben Avon. We should not omit, by the way, for the benefit of those who are better acquainted with Scottish than with Con tinental scenery, to notice the resemblance of this torrent to the Gray Mare's Tail in Moffat-dale. In the character both of the stream itself and in the immediate scenery there are many points of resemblance, every thing connected with the Avon being of course on the larger scale.

Our wanderer has perhaps indulged himself in the belief that he has been traversing these solitudes quite alone—how will he feel if he shall discover that he has been accompanied in every step and motion by a shadowy figure of huge proportions and savage mien, flourishing in his band a great pine-tree, in ghastly parallel with all the motions of the traveller's staff? Such are the spirits of the air haunting this howling wilderness, where the pale sheeted phantom of the burial vault or the deserted cloister would lose all his terrors and feel himself utterly insignificant. Sometimes the phantom's head is large and his body small, then he receives the name of Fahin. James Hogg has asserted, not only poetically, but in sober prose, that, he was acquainted with a man who