From W. E. Darwin to Emma Darwin [27? September 1874]

My dear Mother

We got here on Friday evening coming from the Station on ponies about 7 miles across the hills by a frightfully rough & boggy path. We brought as much luggage as w. could pack with careful shuffling & sorting into Jim's small portmanteau the pony carrying it in a very lopsided panines brought up our rear by about $\frac{1}{2}$ a mile; it was quite dark when w. got in, & the gilly with the luggage must have steered clear of bogs & capsizing merely by instinct. Altogether it was a most picturesque expedition. They had just finished a highland game meeting & it was the tenants ball in the evening; which was great-luck. It was held in an old barn nicely ornamented with stag's heads & ivy, & the music was alternately an invisible band in a sort of loft, & a grand old whiteheaded fellow in a smart Kilt playing the bagpipes. The reel was really well worth seeing, & the Miss Balfours & a M^rsCampbell (Miss Beresford Hope) who is staying here danced with the headkeepers & the Stalkers. I declined the risk myself in a reel but Horace & I got thro' a country dance very decently. Yesterday A. Balfour took me out deer stalking & I saw the whole thing beautifully it is most exciting work, & by riding ponies to & from the forest not very hard work at least our day was a shortish one.