Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, August 1847Various
History
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, August 1847
Various
England -- Periodicals; Scotland -- Periodicals
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."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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