THE KING IN THE HIGHLANDS

Hokitika Guardian, 29 September 1928, Page 6

THE KING IN THE HIGHLANDS

HIS LOVE FOR BALMORAL. LONDON, August 16. The King left Eliston Station at 6.20 last evening for Bnliater, Aberdeenshire, where he is due at' <,lo o’clock .this morning on his way to Balinoral. He was heartily cheered.' by a large .crowd which had assembled outside the station.

fFrom J. M. N! Jeffries.) ORE A MAR, (Aberdeenshire). Aug 16. . Sq. many' familiar names'will bo read once more by everyone this : wfeck — Deeskle, Braetnar,. Balia,ter, Crathib—up to the most famili'Ar of them all, Balmoral'! For : tlie 'KiiigNs coming hack If of his' y'early stay in his northern seat. ... Balmoral is name iff, indeed, in a special sense, over-familiar. The world is full of half-knowledge of it and of. half-sights of it, seem'in innumerable photographs. You caii easily get a photeognvph of Balmoral, but liowevei' accurate it is up to a degree, it is only a quotation torn from the context c'f Nature spread for leagues round the Castle. You can see Queen Victoria driving up the valley to the shooting-tower of which she had heard—for then it was little more, and even to-day, despite enlargements, is more of a castle h.v royal occupancy and by its air than by its size. You can see her livening to its vows touched by its character and its changes of character, and deciding with the Prince Consort’to make it their home.

You ea.n fancy her interest in it all, in the richer scenes near Aberdeen, the meadows, the flowing hills, the lew quiet, severe houses, the occasional golflinks, greener than aught else and mak'ng lib break in the countryside, but flowing with it. How quiet the villiagcs must have been, one on the other, which even, now as one journeys up, produce such quiet stations for the railway. Crathes, Glass*?.!, where only the sound of a Tiwlieelharrow propelled by the porter broke its peace; Luniplianan, where little girls with cowslips in their lmnds looked admiringly at the trains. And so to Dinnet. where the moors begin to close round, with darker woods as a prelude. Then .Cambus o’ May, a name to charm even a Sovereign ivho.se are ali towns and villages and their names, set amid silver birches and the purple, hillside. It is an old timeworn phrase the purple hillside, but even now, with the heather not yet at its best.' it is as if a purple fleet bad been laid upon the bills.

And now after the valley of Balia ter Balmoral itself, a place to wake the woman’s heart in the Queen’s breast, for it is not too remote, not lost on the hillside in forests, but just withdrawn a trifle from its everflowing. broad, shallow, singing river, and with the church of Craithie a stone’s throw away and the simpler Highland life of those earlier days of hers passing on the other bank, in view of her windows.

And yet was there something queeny something royal in her choice, 'for the moors and grea.t spaces beyond her Castle, rising to the lonely -Cairngorms have held the hearts of two kings, her successors.

THE KING’S FAVOURITE VIEW. Here, as a man of the district said to me, “the King is happy to come' and we are happy to have him.” There is a. long white road you see going, straight from the royal woods up the hillside, a narrow .road at that beyond the visible end of which, where it turns to dark Lochnagar,” nothing shows hut the thinnest blue border of some.more-distant range. The road seems bound for the mountain fastnesses; the King iJften traverses it on his way to a moor where lie shoots all day. There is not room to pass on the road, but the country people who stop cart or car lor the King will always get a smiling goodiuorrow lip there, If or “I find no view more lovely in the world than here, he has said to one of them.

lie is fdnd ,too, they say, of taking his visitors into the tower ol his house above the river and watching with them the long stretches oi the Dee and the clouds-on the hills and the whole reflective countryside. Then in the evening when Iris visitors have taken leave lie sits and reads- —reads veiy much. So the day passes and the King takes his peace.

On Sundays when he crosses the river to Crathie Church the aspect of the busier world returns awhile; there have been, they saw in BaHater, more than two miles of cars drawn up along the road, their occupants gathered in crowds to seo the passage of the royal cortege. THE KING AND THE DONSIDE GIRL. Then comes Monday and once more the moors.and glens of which, lie is so ifond. A little story may close this, for it is such a true reflex of. the peaceful life at Balmoral. Someone of the King’s establishment,, with a post, upon his farms, had been brought by him. to Windsors as servant in bis bouse, a girl from a farm iii those parts. Who but the King comes, almost the morn of the arrival in Windsof - , to the house apportioned to his official to see himself if all is well there. The girl, fresh from her farm, not knowing her visitor, said that the master was out in tones well known to the King.

“Well, and where do you come from? said the King with a. smile, not departing. “Oh, ahm free Donside,” she answered at once. “Well, well,” said the King, “I’m Dceside myself.”