July 5th.--Not being able to get a post-chaise, we took places in the
omnibus for the bead of Loch Katrine. Going up to pay a parting visit to
the waterfall before starting, I met with Miss C------, as she lately
was, who is now on her wedding tour as Mrs. B------. She was painting
the falls in oil, with good prospect of a successful picture. She came
down to the hotel to see my wife, and soon afterwards J----- and I set
out to ascend the steep hill that comes down upon the lake of Inversnaid,
leaving the omnibus to follow at leisure. The Highlander who took us to
Rob Roy's cave had foreboded rain, from the way in which the white clouds
hung about the mountain-tops; nor was his augury at fault, for just at
three o'clock, the time he foretold, there were a few rain-drops, and a
more defined shower during the afternoon, while we were on Loch Katrine.
The few drops, however, did not disturb us; and, reaching the top of the
hill, J----- and I turned aside to examine the old stone fortress which
was erected in this mountain pass to bridle the Highlanders after the
rebellion of 1745. It stands in a very desolate and dismal situation, at
the foot of long bare slopes, on mossy ground, in the midst of a
disheartening loneliness, only picturesque because it is so exceedingly
ungenial and unlovely. The chief interest of this spot in the fact that
Wolfe, in his earlier military career, was stationed here. The fortress
was a very plain structure, built of rough stones, in the form of a
parallelogram, one side of which I paced, and found it between thirty and
forty of my paces long. The two ends have fallen down; the two sides
that remain are about twenty feet high, and have little port-holes for
defence, but no openings of the size of windows. The roof is gone, and
the interior space overgrown with grass. Two little girls were at play
in one corner, and, going round to the rear of the ruin, I saw that a
small Highland cabin had been built against the wall. A dog sat in the
doorway, and gave notice of my approach, and some hens kept up their
peculiarly domestic converse about the door.
We kept on our way, often looking back towards Loch Lomond, and wondering
at the grandeur which Ben Vain and Ben Voirlich, and the rest of the Ben
fraternity, had suddenly put on. The mists which had hung about them all
day had now descended lower, and lay among the depths and gorges of the
hills, where also the sun shone softly down among them, and filled those
deep mountain laps, as it were, with a dimmer sunshine. Ben Vain, too,
and his brethren, had a veil of mist all about them, which seemed to
render them really transparent; and they had unaccountably grown higher,
vastly higher, than when we viewed them from the shore of the lake. It
was as if we were looking at them through the medium of a poet's
imagination. All along the road, since we left Inversnaid, there had
been the stream, which there formed the waterfall, and which here was
brawling down little declivities, and sleeping in black pools, which we
disturbed by flinging stones into them from the roadside. We passed a
drunken old gentleman, who civilly bade me "good day"; and a man and
woman at work in a field, the former of whom shouted to inquire the hour;
and we had come in sight of little Loch Arklet before the omnibus came up
with us. It was about five o'clock when we reached the head of