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IDol. 17. H pril 1926 H o. 101. THE SCOTTISH MOUNTAINEERING CLUB JOURNAL. KniTK.t) HY G. B. GREEN. ISSUED TWICE A YEAR-APRIL AND NOVEMBER. PUBLISHED BY THE SCOTTISH MOUNTAINEERING CLUB AGENTS : EDINBURGH : DOUGLAS & FOULIS. PRICE TWO SHILLINGS AND SIXPENCE NET. All Notices for the November Number should be sent to G. B. GREEN, 197 Banbury Road, Oxford, as soon as possible, and not later than 1st October 1926. CONTENTS. The Club Dinners..........................................................T. Fraser Campbell. Hill Walks by the Sound of Mull............................Arthur W. Russell. A Pedestrian Tour in the Highlands, 1856— 3. Lungard to the “ New Craig Inn”....................J. Gall Inglis. Stob Ghabhar.......................................................................................A. J. R. In Memoriam— Benjamin Neeve Peach, LL. D., F.R.S. T. R. Marshall. Proceedings of the Club— Thirty-seventh Annual General Meeting. Library and Club-Room. Gathering for the Meet. New Year Meet, 1926—Tyndrum. New Year Meet, 1925-26—Inveroran. At Bridge of Orchy. Excursions and Notes. Reviews. The Junior Mountaineering Club of Scotland. Office-Bearers for 1926. ILLUSTRATIONS. Storm Clouds over Coire an-t-Sneachda, Ben Macdhui. A’ Chioch of Ben More (Mull). Stob Ghabhar from below the Lochain. Loch Tulla and Stob Ghabhar. Clach Leathad and Sron na Creise. Buchaille Etive Mor and Bheag from Glen Etive. STORM CI.OIHS OVKR OIRK ANT-SNKACIIIIA, I'.KN MACDHl'l THE SCOTTISH JHountainming Club Journal Vol. XVII. April 1926 No. 101. THE CLUB DINNERS. B y T . F r a s e r C a m p b e l l . Man may live without Poetry, Music, or Art, He may live without hope, he may live without heart : He may live without friends, he may live without books, But civilised man may not live without cooks ! He may live without hope : what is hope but deceiving ? He may live without books : what is knowledge but grieving ? He may live without love : what is passion but pining ? But where is the man who can live without dining ? Edward Bllwer Lytton. It is improbable that the author of the lines which I quote above accepted the sentiments himself as a full And true expression of the philosophy of life ; but they contain a sufficiency of truth for my present purpose. Such purpose is not, I may say, to offer leaders of the Journal a Treatise on Gastronomy, or on the Art of Dining, though both are subjects upon which much has already been written, and much more might still be said. They manage these things better in France, and it is possible that a better knowledge, in our country, •of how to prepare food, and of howr to eat it, spread throughout the masses of our people, might so sweeten life that the spirit of unrest and the pangs of indigestion might receive their quietus. The fact that man cannot live without dining, or at any rate without eating, is applicable equally to the uncivilised as to the civilised variety, as well as to the lower animals and to the vegetable c i . A 242 The Scottish Mountaineering Club Journal. kingdom. But dining, indeed, is more than merely eating, and it is a fact that in all ages, and among all peoples, feasting has been a necessary accompaniment of all occasions for rejoicing, from the birth of an heir to the annihilation of an enemy. And with us at any rate no great causes may be furthered, no enterprises of great pith and moment concluded, without a dinner. Some of the older Members may recall that on the birth of the Jounal it was predicted that it would soon die of inanition, from lack of material : it may have been the case— I do not know7—that when man began to wrrite music he was discouraged by the fact that there are only seven notes in the scale. In any case the Journal has belied the gloomy predictions of its early decease, and is still in a very healthy condition, and remains one of the active forces of the Club ; such also, of course, are the Meets, and the same may be said of the Dinners. All combine to knit the members into one common brotherhood—that of the love of the mountains w'hich is the mainspring of its existence. I am privileged to have beside me, as I write, the Sacred Book of The Club, in which are inscribed the names of all who, as members or as guests, have taken part in the Annual Celebration of the inception of the Scottish Mountaineering Club. In its pages are the names of many distinguished in almost every walk of life, and of many, of course, who have passed beyond the veil, for fully a generation has elapsed since 1889, when the Inaugural Dinner was held. There still remain, however, on the roll, twenty-one original members, and of these, four who were at the 1889 dinner were also at the recent dinner on 4th December 1925, while others, Members and Guests, who wrere at the earlier dinner, are still, happily, with us. Those present at the first Dinner numbered thirty- three, of whom twenty-four were Members and nine Guests ; our first President, Professor George Ramsay, was in the chair, and all who were privileged to listen to his Inaugural Address are not likely to forget it ; for though many have since read it in the pages of the Journal, there was a personality about the speaker which. The Club Dinners. 243 lent a charm which cannot be recaptured in the written word. Ramsay spoke often, at the Annual Meetings, and at the Dinners, and he liked speaking, of which I may be allowed to recall an instance. He had written to me upon one occasion in regard to some guest, or guests, whom he was bringing, and he laid upon me—I happened to be in charge of the Dinner—the injunction that upon no account was he to be called upon to speak at it ; to which I replied that his wishes in this matter should be respected. The evening arrived, and early in the course of the dinner a brief note was passed to me, from Ramsay, saying that before So-and-so spoke there were some remarks which he would like to make. I forget the subject, but on being called upon by the chair, Ramsay spoke for perhaps a quarter of an hour with all his usual brilliancy and point. While on the subject, I may record another, somewhat similar, incident. There was, of course, no member of the Club more respected and esteemed than the late Sir Hugh Munro, but as an after-dinner speaker he was inclined to be somewhat heavy. Like Ramsay, he liked speaking—or rather, perhaps, he liked to make his opinions known. Upon the occasion which I have in mind his name was not on the toast list, but Ramsay suggested that “ we must get Munro on his feet.” So in the course of the dinner he was asked to give a little recitation which some of us may remember. On rising to do so he said that before reciting there was something he would like to say, and he proceeded to do so at considerable length, and then gave the recitation. I think that in a former number of the Journal I have recorded the fact that some years before the founda­ tion of the S.M.C. there existed in Edinburgh a small group of enthusiastic hill-climbers, originally only four in number, but recruited from time to time until they eventually numbered nine or ten, all of whom joined the Club as original members. Some profane person had called them ‘‘ The Tramps,” and at one of the early dinners they were present in full force. In his speech Ramsay, who was then President, made some remark 244 The Scottish Mountaineering Club Journal. as to few people having systematically climbed the Scottish hills before the S.M.C. was formed. One of the number, the late Frank Dewar, exclaimed “ What about the Tramps ? ” to which Ramsay replied, somewhat acidulously, that he had never heard that tramps were addicted to hill-climbing ! I do not know that he was ever enlightened. Of the “ Tramps,” four only remain, and some of their deeds, or misdeeds, are recorded in the “ Phantasy ” contributed to the Journal a year or two ago by J. G. Stott, one of their number. In turning over the pages of the “ Dinner Album,” a hundred incidents, many long forgotten, crowd upon my memory, but the temptation to dwell upon more than a few of these must be resisted. Among the names which stand out in the records of the Club are those of Professor George Ramsay, who occupied the Chair of Humanity in the University of Glasgow, and of Hugh Munro, known to us later as Sir Hugh Munro, Bart., neighbours and fast friends, their friendly but forceful bickerings at the Annual Meetings were a joy—though they tended sometimes to let the soup grow cold. But to these must be added the name of John Veitch, Professor of Logic in Glasgow University, and to all three the Club owes a debt of gratitude which it will be difficult to repay. It is significant that they were our first three Presidents. Ramsay was already a member of the Alpine Club when the S.M.C. was formed : a fine climber, a brilliant and witty speaker, he dominated by his personality whatever company he might be in. He attended many of the Meets, spoke often at the Dinners, and contributed many articles to the Journal, where his first address, already referred to, stands as a perpetual memorial of his con­ nection with the Club.

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