But the surrounding and distant scenery is also very varied and splendid. East and north and west there is a perfect table-land of mountains, too numerous to mention here, and which can best be studied with a good map in hand. Conspicuous, however, are the giant heads of Nevis, Anachan, Ben Lui, Ben More, Lawers, Voirlich, Ledi, and Lomond. The view of Ben Lomond from this is specially grand. Looked at from its own loch it is a shapeless mass, but here, by displaying his ample peak, with precipices of 2000 feet or more, he shows what a fine fellow he really is. You can see the bright gleaming waters of Loch Katrine and Loch Lomond, beyond which even Stirling shows a smoky front. To the south you have the long and sinuous extent of Loch Long winding brightly beneath your feet, and prolonged between its mountain boundaries till it reaches the Clyde and the sea. This loch reminded some of the Queen’s friends, on the occasion of her visit to it in 1848, of Switzerland and the Tyrol, “surrounded by grand hills all so green, and with such beautiful outlines, all so different from the eastern part of Scotland, the loch winding along most beautifully so as to seem closed at times.”
You can also see the glittering course of Loch Goil, Gareloch, and Loch Fyne, all adding to the variety and beauty of this great landscape map. And you cannot help feeling that the patriotic Scotchwoman was not far wrong who said that “Scotland would be as big as England any day if she were all rolled out flat like her.” You can see the Clyde at various points, with the Cumbraes, Arran, and even the distant Ailsa, and, according to some, several of the Western Islands, including Mull.
It is to those and similar points of the western coast that the traveller strains his eye from the Cobbler. He can see but dimly, but he feels the wild power that belongs to that broken and chaotic sea, and his heart goes out to the early Gaelic sires who fished in the firth, gave names to the summits, and spent their life amid that maze of rock and flood. It was their feet that made the mountain tracks where you and other tourists can safely climb to-day.
At your foot is Arrochar, at the opening of a woody glen formed by Anach, Voirlich, and Ben Tarbet, between which is seen Craigrostan, a rocky peak of Ben Lomond. At the upper end of the Loch (Long) is a glen, which, with its mountain, gets its name from fairies, a very general creation of Highland superstition. You have due south the wild and well-known Glencroe, which is only surpassed by Glencoe, its wild and savage grandeur being on too broad a scale for the pencil. It is some five or six miles in length, and the rocky ramparts through which it runs are in most part composed of micaceous schist, beautifully undulatory, and in many places embedded in quartz, and shining like silver. Some of the huge boulders display these characteristics to perfection. The narrow bed of the valley is occupied by a dashing torrent, and you see the road carried along its course as near as the tortuous bank and rocky fragments will permit. In some parts there are beautiful scenes in the bed of the river; here the water is rushing violently past some huge rock, or tumbling over it in cascades; and there it is heard only to growl in an inaccessible dungeon. One of those might pass for the grotto of a naiad. At one end the sunbeams admitted through different apertures may be seen to play on the waters; at the other a small cascade glitters in the gloom; while the sides are wrought into various odd forms by the whirlpools, and in one part a natural chair is scooped out of the rock.
But human habitations there are none! This part of the country does not seem to belong to the amiable nobleman who told his factor that he would rather see one human being on his estate than a hundred sheep. It was once the abode of quite a small colony, but it is now little better than a sheep walk, and hard work it must be even for the sheep to get a decent livelihood here. Speaking of sheep, there is quite close to you here a small burn called the Eagle’s Burn, which was until lately frequented by eagles of a large grey kind, which have been known to fly off more than a mile with a lamb in their talons. At the summit there is the famous “Rest and be Thankful,” the theme of Wordsworth’s lines—
Doubling and doubling with laborious walk,
Who that has gained at length the wished-for height,
This brief, this simple wayside call can slight,
And rest not thankful?