CHAPTER XXXIV 



BEN MACDHUI IN SEPTEMBER 



SEPTEMBER brings often mist and gloom to the high 

 tops. It is, more than perhaps any other month, a 

 time of colour effects, when the hills appear over- 

 shadowed, as it were, with the spirit of mystery, and when 

 their outlines are softened and the hills themselves are of a 

 wonderful blueness. Winter has not as yet laid her hand on 

 the Cairngorms, though as early as mid-August she may 

 have paid a fleeting visit and covered the whole range inches 

 deep in snow. But I do not recall ever having seen so much 

 snow of the previous winter still remaining in the high 

 corries in September as was the case this season of 1920 ; for 

 the winter snowfalls from the west were unusually heavy, 

 and the summer as a whole was cold and sunless. 



There is no glen in the Cairngorms more attractive than 

 that watered by the Luibeag burn. Ancient firs stand erect 

 at the burn-side; many more clothe the face of the hills on 

 either hand, and numbers still lie, their trunks bleached by 

 age, where they fell during some of the great gales of the 

 past century. The way up the glen of the Derry is long, 

 but as one emerges above Loch Etchachan the wearisome 

 walk is forgotten in the wide and varied view which lies 

 spread out on every side. 



Mist and sun strove for the mastery this September morn- 

 ing. On the rocky summit of Beinn Mheadhon the clouds 

 rose and fell, and so clear was the air every stone was dis- 

 tinct on the hill. On Cairngorm itself clouds hung, but its 

 namesake, Cairngorm of Derry, was clear to the top. South- 

 ward, sun and rain filled Glen Luibeag, the sunshine on the 



158 



