Guests visiting Balmoral for the first time are prone to remark on the number of memorial cairns scattered about the estate. Queen Victoria had a great liking for memorializing her friends in this way. The first cairn was erected to commemorate the purchase of the estate, and this was followed by a huge pile of loose slabs of granite to the memory of the Prince Consort, and another to mark the spot where the Marquis of Lorne proposed to Princess Louise in 1870. Other cairns me-moralize Princess Alice, the Duke of Albany, the Duke of Clarence, and Prince Henry of Battenberg, while all over the grounds are inscribed tablets, seats, ete., to the memory of the great Queen's friends andi even her pet animals.
One memorial is missing at Balmoral, There used to be in the vounds of the Castle a statue of John Brown, Queen—Victoria's favourite Highland servant Tt i commanding position full view of the windows of the al apartments reserved for d their guests. When ward came to the throne ted Balmoral again it was ud. Where it went to no one. seems to know precisely. T_ have often wondered. The lasi. T heard of it was that it was lying packed in straw in the garden of a tenant of the estate. John Brown was something of an autocrat, and may not have been popular with the Tt was the s and the crediting of its disappearance to him is generally accepted.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.