Evening.--After breakfast at Dumbarton, I went out to look at the town,
which is of considerable size, and possesses both commerce and
manufactures. There was a screw-steamship at the pier, and many
sailor-looking people were seen about the streets. There are very few
old houses, though still the town retains an air of antiquity which one
does not well see how to account for, when everywhere there is a modern
front, and all the characteristics of a street built to-day. Turning
from the main thoroughfare I crossed a bridge over the Clyde, and gained
from it the best view of the cloven crag of Dumbarton Castle that I had
yet found. The two summits are wider apart, more fully relieved from
each other, than when seen from other points; and the highest ascends
into a perfect pyramid, the lower one being obtusely rounded. There seem
to be iron-works, or some kind of manufactory, on the farther side of the
bridge; and I noticed a quaint, chateau-like mansion, with hanging
turrets standing apart from the street, probably built by some person
enriched by business.
We left Dumbarton at noon, taking the rail to Balloch, and the steamer to
the head of Loch Lomond.
Wild mountain scenery is not very good to describe, nor do I think any
distinct impressions are ever conveyed by such attempts; so I mean to be
brief in what I saw about this part of our tour, especially as I suspect
that I have said whatever I knew how to say in the record of my former
visit to the Highlands. As for Loch Lomond, it lies amidst very striking
scenery, being poured in among the gorges of steep and lofty mountains,
which nowhere stand aside to give it room, but, on the contrary, do their
best to shut it in. It is everywhere narrow, compared with its length of
thirty miles; but it is the beauty of a lake to be of no greater width
than to allow of the scenery of one of its shores being perfectly enjoyed
from the other. The scenery of the Highlands, so far as I have seen it,
cannot properly be called rich, but stern and impressive, with very hard
outlines, which are unsoftened, mostly, by any foliage, though at this
season they are green to their summits. They have hardly flesh enough to
cover their bones,--hardly earth enough to lie over their rocky
substance,--as may be seen by the minute variety,--the notched and jagged
appearance of the profile of their sides and tops; this being caused by
the scarcely covered rocks wherewith these great hills are heaped
together.
Our little steamer stopped at half a dozen places on its voyage up the
lake, most of them being stations where hotels have been established.
Morally, the Highlands must have been more completely sophisticated by
the invention of railways and steamboats than almost any other part of
the world; but physically it can have wrought no great change. These
mountains, in their general aspect, must be very much the same as they
were thousands of years ago; for their sides never were capable of
cultivation, nor even with such a soil and so bleak an atmosphere could
they have been much more richly wooded than we see them now. They seem
to me to be among the unchangeable things of nature, like the sea and
sky; but there is no saying what use human ingenuity may hereafter put
them to. At all events, I have no doubt in the world that they will go
out of fashion in due time; for the taste for mountains and wild scenery
is, with most people, an acquired taste, and it was easy to see to-day
that nine people in ten care nothing about them. One group of gentlemen
and ladies--at least, men and women--spent the whole time in listening to
a trial for murder, which was read aloud by one of their number from a
newspaper. I rather imagine that a taste for trim gardens is the most
natural and universal taste as regards landscape. But perhaps it is
necessary for the health of the human mind and heart that there should be
a possibility of taking refuge in what is wild and uncontaminated by any
meddling of man's hand, and so it has been ordained that science shall
never alter the aspect of the sky, whether stern, angry, or beneficent,--
nor of the awful sea, either in calm or tempest,--nor of these rude
Highlands. But they will go out of general fashion, as I have said, and
perhaps the next fashionable taste will be for cloud land,--that is,
looking skyward, and observing the wonderful variety of scenery, that now
constantly passes unnoticed, among the clouds.
At the head of the lake, we found that there was only a horse-cart to
convey our luggage to the hotel at Inverannan, and that we ourselves must
walk, the distance being two miles. It had sprinkled occasionally during
our voyage, but was now sunshiny, and not excessively warm; so we set
forth contentedly enough, and had an agreeable walk along an almost
perfectly level road; for it is one of the beauties of these hills, that
they descend abruptly down, instead of undulating away forever. There
were lofty heights on each side of us, but not so lofty as to have won a
distinctive name; and adown their sides we could see the rocky pathways
of cascades, which, at this season, are either quite dry, or mere
trickles of a rill. The hills and valleys abound in streams, sparkling
through pebbly beds, and forming here and there a dark pool; and they
would be populous with trout if all England, with one fell purpose, did
not come hither to fish them. A fisherman must find it difficult to
gratify his propensities in these days; for even the lakes and streams in
Norway are now preserved. J-----, by the way, threatens ominously to be
a fisherman. He rode the latter portion of the way to the hotel on the
luggage-cart; and when we arrived, we found that he had already gone off
to catch fish, or to attempt it (for there is as much chance of his
catching a whale as a trout), in a mountain stream near the house. I
went in search of him, but without success, and was somewhat startled at
the depth and blackness of some of the pools into which the stream
settled itself and slept. Finally, he came in while we were at dinner.
We afterwards walked out with him, to let him play at fishing again, and
discovered on the bank of the stream a wonderful oak, with as many as a
dozen holes springing either from close to the ground or within a foot or
two of it, and looking like twelve separate trees, at least, instead of
one.