She records that, "Poor little Affie was knocked down
and sent rolling over the deck, and was completely drenched." The poor
little fellow, Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, the bold mariner of the
family, probably cried out then that he would "never, never be a sailor."
In a letter from Balmoral, written on his thirtieth birthday, the Prince-
Consort says: "Victoria is happy and cheerful--the children are well and
grow apace; the Highlands are glorious."
I do not know that the fact has anything to do with Her Majesty's
peculiar love for Scotland, but she came very near being born in that
part of her dominions--the Duke of Kent having proposed a little while
before her birth to take a place in Lanarkshire, belonging to a friend.
Had he done so his little daughter would have been a Highland lassie. I
don't think the Queen would have objected. She said to Sir Archibald
Alison, "I am more proud of my Scotch descent than of any other. When I
first came into Scotland I felt as if I were coming home."
With the occupation of Balmoral this home feeling increased: The Queen
was ever impatient to seek that mountain retreat and regretful to leave
it. She loved above all the outdoor life there--the rough mountaineering,
the deer hunts, the climbing, the following up and fording streams, the
picnics on breezy hill-sides; she loved to get out from under the dark
purple shadow of royalty and nestle down among the brighter purple of the
heather; she loved to go off on wild incognito expeditions and be
addressed by the simple peasants without her awesome titles; even loved
to be at times like the peasants in simplicity and naturalness, to feel
with her "guid mon," like a younger Mistress Anderson with her "jo John.
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