Field Meetings. 63 



QuEENSBEHRY. — June ith, 1881. 



The second field meeting of the Session took place on Saturday, 

 4th June, Queensberry Hill being the locality chosen. Anticipating 

 a continuance of the hot weathei- of the previous week, most of 

 the membei-s preferred to remain at home, and there was con- 

 sequently only a comparatively small muster, which included, 

 however, for the fii-st time in the history of the Society, several 

 ladies. Leaving the King's Arms Hotel at nine o'clock, the 

 party drove by waggonette to Mitchellslacks, near the foot of 

 Queensberry. The morning was cool, and the landscape through 

 which the journey lay, always picturesque, was enriched by the 

 green and hawthorn bloom of early summer. Amisfield Tower 

 was passed, hidden by embowering trees ; in the vicinity of Glen- 

 corse a passing peep was obtained of the romantic strath of the ^, 

 whei'e portions still remain of the ruins of Glense Castle ; and a 

 remarkably pretty linn was visited on the moor at the head of the 

 Gubhill property, where the waters of a small stream are 

 pi-ecipitated down a precipice of shelving rock on one side the 

 road, flow through a culvert beneath the road, and leap over a 

 series of rocky declivities in the natural channel on the other .side. 

 Past Loch Ettrick — an artificial pond on a large scale, and well 

 stocked with Loch Leven trout — the party went along an upland 

 road, where no tree was visible excepting a small plantation beside 

 the loch, and not even a furze bush or a thorn, until Mitchell- 

 slacks was reached. Here the horses were stabled, and Mrs 

 Harkness and her son gave a cordial welcome to their visitors. 

 Mr Harkness afterwards put the party on the right track for 

 making the ascent of Queensberry, accompanying them as far as 

 Hogg's Lodge, a ruined stone hut or bothy which was used as a 

 shelter and resting place by the Ettrick Shepherd when in the 

 service of the then Mr Harkness of Mitcliellslacks. It was in 

 this lodge that Hogg received and entertained James and Allan 

 Cunningham, whom he there met for the first time. "Thus 

 began," says Hogg, " at that bothy in the wilderness a friendship 

 and a mutual attachment between two aspiring Scotch peasants 

 over which the shadow of a cloud has never yet passed." But 

 the "shadow of a cloud" was passing over the party of natural- 

 historians who were treading their toilsome way u|) to the summit 

 of Queensberry — {i.e., Queenberg or Queenhill). From that windy 



