mfaailbki

mm

35 almotal.

ALMORAL Castle , the Highland residence of Her Majesty the Queen, isromantically situated on the south bank of the river Dee; after passingAbergeldie, on the route from Ballater to Braemar , it forms a striking andpicturesque object; embosomed in birch wood, with a back ground of pineforest and mountain, the rapid and clear stream of the Dee running beneath,it is difficult to picture a more wild or beautiful scene. The Castle itself is a modern building,erected by the late Sir Robert Gordon, who, having obtained a lease from Lord Fife, withgreat taste availed himself of the natural beauties of the place, and formed, at the same time,a wild and ornamented residence. Balmoral formerly belonged to the Farquharsons, descen-dants of the family of Inverey, whose ancestor was Donald, the second son of Findla-Mor ; thefourth son of Donald of Inverey, died in the reign of James the Sixth, and was succeeded byhis eldest son, William, who married, secondly, the daughter of Gordon of Abergeldie, bywhom he had Charles, the first laird of Balmoral , who died unmarried, when the estate revertedto his elder brother; he having married Margaret, the daughter of Leith of Overhall, had byher a son, who inherited Balmoral , he also succeeded to the estate of Auchlossan, by the deathof an elder brother, and having married Jane, daughter of Mr. Wm. Leith of Aberdeen, diedleaving no family. In him ended the male line of William, eldest son of James Farquharson ofInverey.

Balmoral is in the parish of Crathie, and about a mile above the Church on the oppositeside of the Dee. The ground rises rapidly to the south of the Castle , and the wood extendsin a dense mass, or is in places feathered to a considerable height up the face of the mountainof Craig-Gowan. Still farther to the south-west, appears the summit of Loch-na-gar, which,although not the most remarkable for its altitude, is by much the most picturesque in form ofthe heights composing the mountain chain, and is, from other associations, without doubt themost celebrated of the Grampians . The question asked by travellers is not which is thegrandest mountain of the range, but which is “ Byron’s Hill,” and so it is; they are for everunited, the sublimity of his genius was cradled in the grand desolation of nature that charac-