“Nobody who can spare the time should omit to explore Glenbogle. Apart from the wild magnificence of the natural scene Glenbogle literally teems with historic memories and romantic legends. It was in a cave in the rocky fastnesses of Ben Booey, the yellow mountain, that Bonny Prince Charlie spent several nights hidden from the ‘redcoats.’ Ben Booey (3,100 ft.) with Ben Glass (2,890 ft.), the grey mountain, and Ben Gorm (3,055 ft.), the blue mountain, are the famous Three Sisters of Glenbogle celebrated in many a poem and many a picture. Loch na Craosnaich (the loch of the spear) will be noticed on the left-hand side of the road five miles up the glen from the main road between Fort William and Fort Augustus. It was here that the famous Hector MacDonald of Ben Nevis, known as Hector of the Great Jaw, speared eleven Macintoshes and drowned them in the waters of the loch. A further two hours’ walk from Loch na Craosnaich will bring the visitor to the gates of Glenbogle Castle, the seat of MacDonald of Ben Nevis. The present Chieftain, Donald MacDonald of Ben Nevis, is the twenty-third of the famous line of Mac ’ic Eachainn (pron. Mack ’ick Yacken), and it is one of the boasts of the ‘true and tender North’ that a MacDonald of Ben Nevis in the direct male line still occupies the stronghold of the ‘sons of Hector.’

“The Castle itself is not shown to visitors, but permission to wander about the well-wooded policies is readily granted on application at the lodge by the main entrance-gate, on the pillars of which will be noticed the two stone water-horses mordant of the MacDonalds of Ben Nevis. Legend says that the first Mac ’ic Eachainn was pursued by two water-horses from sunrise till sunset all over Glenbogle and its guardian bens, and that at sunset, having found a clay-more embedded in a granite boulder, he drew the weapon and immediately slew the two monsters. Thereupon a fairy woman appeared and promised that all the land within the line along which he had been pursued by the two water-horses should be his and his heirs, until the day of the seven whirlwinds or, as the more prosiac Sassenach would say, the end of the world. Tradition goes on to relate that the granite boulder in which the claymore was embedded is the actual cornerstone of Glenbogle Castle. Everybody who is privileged to gaze upon this stately pile, portions of which date back to the first half of the fourteenth century, will give a fervid assent to the motto of this branch of the great Clan Donald, Beinn Nibheis Gu Brath (Anglicé Ben Nevis For Ever).