and went on board the steamer Rob Roy; and, setting forth on our voyage,
a Highland piper made music for us the better part of the way.
We did not see Loch Katrine, perhaps, under its best presentment; for the
surface was roughened with a little wind, and darkened even to inky
blackness by the clouds that overhung it. The hill-tops, too, wore a
very dark frown. A lake of this size cannot be terrific, and is
therefore seen to best advantage when it is beautiful. The scenery of
its shores is not altogether so rich and lovely as I had preimagined; not
equal, indeed, to the best parts of Loch Lomond,--the hills being lower
and of a more ridgy shape, and exceedingly bare, at least towards the
lower end. But they turn the lake aside with headland after headland,
and shut it in closely, and open one vista after another, so that the eye
is never weary, and, least of all, as we approach the end. The length of
the loch is ten miles, and at its termination it meets the pass of the
Trosachs, between Ben An and Ben Venue, which are the rudest and
shaggiest of hills. The steamer passes Ellen's Isle, but to the right,
which is the side opposite to that on which Fitz-James must be supposed
to have approached it. It is a very small island, situated where the
loch narrows, and is perhaps less than a quarter of a mile distant from
either shore. It looks like a lump of rock, with just soil enough to
support a crowd of dwarf oaks, birches, and firs, which do not grow so
high as to be shadowy trees. Our voyage being over, we landed, and found
two omnibuses, one of which took us through the famous pass of the
Trosachs, a distance of a mile and a quarter, to a hotel, erected in
castellated guise by Lord Willoughby d'Eresby. We were put into a parlor
within one of the round towers, panelled all round, and with four narrow
windows, opening through deep embrasures. No play-castle was ever more
like the reality, and it is a very good hotel, like all that we have had
experience of in the Highlands. After tea we walked out, and visited a
little kirk that stands near the shore of Loch Achray, at a good point of
view for seeing the hills round about.
This morning opened cloudily; but after breakfast I set out alone, and
walked through the pass of the Trosachs, and thence by a path along the
right shore of the lake. It is a very picturesque and beautiful path,
following the windings of the lake,--now along the beach, now over an
impending bank, until it comes opposite to Ellen's Isle, which on this
side looks more worthy to be the island of the poem than as we first saw
it. Its shore is craggy and precipitous, but there was a point where it
seemed possible to land, nor was it too much to fancy that there might be
a rustic habitation among the shrubbery of this rugged spot. It is
foolish to look into these matters too strictly. Scott evidently used as
much freedom with his natural scenery as he did with his historic
incidents; and he could have made nothing of either one or the other if
he had been more scrupulous in his arrangement and adornment of them. In
his description of the Trosachs, he has produced something very
beautiful, and as true as possible, though certainly its beauty has a
little of the scene-painter's gloss on it. Nature is better, no doubt,
but Nature cannot be exactly reproduced on canvas or in print; and the
artist's only resource is to substitute something that may stand instead
of and suggest the truth.
The path still kept onward, after passing Ellen's Isle, and I followed
it, finding it wilder, more shadowy with overhanging foliage of trees,
old and young,--more like a mountain-path in Berkshire or New Hampshire,
yet still with an Old World restraint and cultivation about it,--the
farther I went. At last I came upon some bars, and though the track was
still seen beyond, I took this as a hint to stop, especially as I was now
two or three miles from the hotel, and it just then began to rain. My
umbrella was a poor one at best, and had been tattered and turned inside
out, a day or two ago, by a gust on Loch Lomond; but I spread it to the
shower, and, furthermore, took shelter under the thickest umbrage I could
find. The rain came straight down, and bubbled in the loch; the little
rills gathered force, and plashed merrily over the stones; the leaves of
the trees condensed the shower into large drops, and shed them down upon
me where I stood. Still I was comfortable enough in a thick Skye Tweed,
and waited patiently till the rain abated; then took my way homeward, and
admired the pass of the Trosachs more than when I first traversed it. If
it has a fault, it is one that few scenes in Great Britain share with
it,--that is, the trees and shrubbery, with which the precipices are
shagged, conceal them a little too much. A crag, streaked with black and
white, here and there shows its head aloft, or its whole height from base
to summit, and suggests that more of such sublimity is bidden than
revealed. I think, however, that it is this unusual shagginess which
made the scene a favorite with Scott, and with the people on this side of
the ocean generally. There are many scenes as good in America, needing
only the poet.
July 6th.--We dined yesterday at the table d'hote, at the suggestion of
the butler, in order to give less trouble to the servants of the hotel,
and afford them an opportunity to go to kirk. The dining-room is in
accordance with the rest of the architecture and fittings up of the
house, and is a very good reproduction of an old baronial hall, with high
panellings and a roof of dark, polished wood. There were about twenty
guests at table; and if they and the waiters had been dressed in
mediaeval costume, we might have imagined ourselves banqueting in the
Middle Ages.
After dinner we all took a walk through the Trosachs' pass again, and by
the right-hand path along the lake as far as Ellen's Isle. It was very
pleasant, there being gleams of calm evening sunshine gilding the
mountain-sides, and putting a golden crown occasionally on the Tread of
Ben Venue. It is wonderful how many aspects a mountain has,--how many
mountains there are in every single mountain!---how they vary too, in
apparent attitude and bulk. When we reached the lake its surface was
almost unruffled, except by now and then the narrow pathway of a breeze,
as if the wing of an unseen spirit had just grazed it in flitting across.
The scene was very beautiful, and, on the whole, I do not know that
Walter Scott has overcharged his description, although he has symbolized
the reality by types and images which it might not precisely suggest to
other minds. We were reluctant to quit the spot, and cherish still a
hope of seeing it again, though the hope does not seem very likely to be
gratified.
This was a lowering and sullen morning, but soon after breakfast I took a
walk in the opposite direction to Loch Katrine, and reached the Brig of
Turk, a little beyond which is the new Trosachs' Hotel, and the little
rude village of Duncraggan, consisting of a few hovels of stone, at the
foot of a bleak and dreary hill. To the left, stretching up between this
and other hills, is the valley of Glenfinlas,--a very awful region in
Scott's poetry and in Highland tradition, as the haunt of spirits and
enchantments. It presented a very desolate prospect. The walk back to
the Trosachs showed me Ben Venue and Ben An under new aspects,--the bare
summit of the latter rising in a perfect pyramid, whereas from other
points of view it looks like quite a different mountain. Sometimes a
gleam of sunshine came out upon the rugged side of Ben Venue, but his
prevailing mood, like that of the rest of the landscape, was stern and
gloomy. I wish I could give an idea of the variety of surface upon one
of these hillsides,--so bulging out and hollowed in, so bare where the
rock breaks through, so shaggy in other places with heath, and then,
perhaps, a thick umbrage of birch, oak, and ash ascending from the base
high upward. When I think I have described them, I remember quite a
different aspect, and find it equally true, and yet lacking something to
make it the whole or an adequate truth.
J----- had gone with me part of the way, but stopped to fish with a
pin-hook in Loch Achray, which bordered along our path. When I returned,
I found him much elated at having caught a fish, which, however, had got
away, carrying his pin-hook along with it. Then he had amused himself
with taking some lizards by the tail, and had collected several in a
small hollow of the rocks. We now walked home together, and at half past
three we took our seats in a genuine old-fashioned stage-coach, of which
there are few specimens now to be met with. The coachman was smartly
dressed in the Queen's scarlet, and was a very pleasant and affable
personage, conducting himself towards the passengers with courteous
authority. Inside we were four, including J-----, but on the top there
were at least a dozen, and I would willingly have been there too, but had
taken an inside seat, under apprehension of rain, and was not allowed to
change it. Our drive was not marked by much describable incident. On
changing horses at Callender, we alighted, and saw Ben Ledi behind us,
making a picturesque background to the little town, which seems to be the
meeting-point of the Highlands and Lowlands. We again changed horses at
Doune, an old town, which would doubtless have been well worth seeing,
had time permitted. Thence we kept on till the coach drew up at a
spacious hotel, where we alighted, fancying that we had reached Stirling,
which was to have been our journey's end; but, after fairly establishing
ourselves, we found that it was the