2110-1-4-1

B. C. Boulter, Consett House, Burford Oxon.

Alexandra Hotel Fort William

April: 3: 98

My dear Taff

I should have written to you long ago but my life has been chequered of late. I stayed a week at Glasgow and worked hard. Then last Monday, when I proposed going off to Loch Fair, the weather put salmon-fishing out of the question. It was the most terrific wind and snow, and cold beyond words, so Edgar & I set off on the Tuesday for a long serious walk, leaving our fishing things at home. We started from Bridge of Orchy in Perthshire and walked up through the Black Mount deer forest (Lord Breadalbane's) to King's House inn where Parr stayed for some weeks last year. I found the memory of that great man still fragrant. The old landlord declared "Mr Parr he wass a fine waalker: I neffer saw none petter". On

the next morning the Spirit of Evil tempted me and I fell. You must know that opposite to King's House there is a great hill called Buchaille Etive Mhor (the great shepherd of Etive) which guards the entrance to Glen Etive on the one hand and Glencoe on the other. Parr had once tried to climb this and failed: it is marked in all the guide-books as inaccessible: even the Scottish Mountaineering Club succeeded with difficulty in getting up last summer though they had ropes & axes. Now as we were walking down the glen I cast my eyes up to the giant. I saw Edgar do the same. Then our eyes began to water and simultaneously we turned to the other & said 'Come on' & went. It was sheer madness, for we had no mountaineering tools & we were encumbered with waterproofs. In two hours we had wrestled up to the top of the heather slope where the rocks & snow began. It was very laborious work for the day was strangely enough growing very hot. Thus far we had kept together; now I, being

very excited and considerably the better climber, began to pull ahead and forget all about Edgar. The next thousand feet were the most laborious I ever tried. It was simply a case of pulling oneself up hand over hand on rocks crated with ice and now and then crossing terrible crevasses of snow. Once I thought I was done for. I was crossing a snow-filled gorge when I began to slide. I got on my face & kicked, but I couldn't stop, so before ever I knew I had shot down a chasm away below a great snow drift of about 20 feet in depth. I thought I should slip to the foot of the drift and be suffocated, but luckily my foot caught a rock and I stopped. The place was pitch dark; only the hole I had fallen through shone like a little patch of light away above me. I was lying flat in the bed of a stream and the icy water was trickling up my arms & down my neck. I should think I must have taken an hour to crawl out inch by inch, & when I reached the open and lay down on a rock, I felt as weak as water & my teeth were chattering with fright. In about another hour I had reached the foot of the cone of rock which makes the summit. This was really the most dangerous part & should never have been attempted without ropes, but

I found it considerably less laborious than the earlier part. However it was very difficult climbing, for the cone is almost perpendicular. At last about 4 1/2 hours after starting, I stood on the top (3605 ft) and looked over the Moor of Rannoch. I lit a pipe out of defiance, but I was too cold to enjoy it. Then I had the deuce of a time getting down, & when I reached the bottom of the cone of rock, Edgar was not to be seen. I waited for two hours till I was nearly numbed and then he arrived, looking very bad, & with the nail off one finger, and all his face & hands bleeding. He had made an involuntary glissade down a snow-field & fallen among rocks. In the circumstances it was impossible for him to climb the cone of rock, so we directed all our energies to getting down. It was an extremely difficult task & we were within an ace of losing our lives fifty times, but at length we lay panting in the valley, thanking God for our safety. Looking back on it, I think it was a piece of great folly, but at the same time a very creditable piece of mountaineering considering our equipment. Of course the achievement was far more creditable in Edgar's case, for he did not know the way

to climb a hill, and his getting up so far as he did was a real bit of pluck. I am writing an account of the whole affair for the Field.

Thereafter we walked down Glencoe, which, as you know, is the wildest glen in Scotland and altogether beyond words. We had tea at a queer little inn at the ford. I have never seen anything like the foot of the valley. There is a fine salmon stream running between the greenest, lawn-like meadows, and then the great blue-black crags rise sheer from the edge of the grass.

That night we slept at the inn of Ballachulish, and the next day drove away down into my own country of Appin and investigated the places spoken of in Kidnapped. We saw the cave where the chief Ardshiel lay hid. We saw the house of James [Stewart] of the Glens, who was hung for the Appin murder, and the place where the Red Fox [Colin Campbell of Glenure] was murdered, and where Alan Breck & Davie set off for the