If Loch Lomond is the queen of Scottish lakes, Ben Lomond is the king of Scottish mountains. He may not reign by divine right in one sense, for there are higher heights than his in this “land of the mountain and the flood,” yet he reigns by almost universal consent. There is none of them all that attracts such a number of visitors from all parts of the world who have heard of his greatness and majesty, beauty, and widely extended dominion. It is the fashion to climb Ben Lomond at least once in a lifetime, and that it has many who worship at its shrine is evident from the otherwise unnecessary comfortable hotel at its base, and the well-marked track which leads to the summit.
A return ticket should be taken to Rowardennan, say, on a Saturday morning, from Queen Street low level; the hotel is to the right of the pier, and opposite its garden wall will be found the beginning of the track. The length of slope and the numerous breaks in the way make it a journey of 6 miles. The path seems quite conspicuous from below along a green ridge of hill; but soon it breaks off and dies away into a wet and boggy valley. A little higher up an unheard-of rill becomes quite a little torrent, and a gentle cliff turns into an apparently unscalable crag. The ridge of the hill is green, but like most such lands is soft; and this is the nature of the way till you reach the last stage, which is steeper (excepting near the very summit), and is formed of large fragments of slaty-rocky, intermixed with a kind of sparry marble of considerable size. The first part of the journey is the least agreeable, from its soft and boggy nature; halfway up the lake appears to most advantage, its glassy surface studded with islands, round which appears to breathe a perpetual spring.
We are now, however, coming near “the melancholy days—the saddest of the year”; and before we get to the summit and down again a great red ball will look out upon the world for a little space, and then sink down into its shroud of gray cloud. But how beautiful the mountain side is in its autumn robes. “The violin,” said Mendelssohn, when comparing the sounds of an orchestra to the hues in the rainbow, “is the violet”; and in the stealing sweetness of both there is a rare charm. The musician’s well-known comparison of red to the sound of a trumpet is scarcely to be recalled in autumn except for a scarlet berry, shining like a spark here and there in the bushes or the trees, or for the bright stomacher of the robin as he nears the ground trilling his sad flute-like strain. The landscape is quickly becoming like a mezzotint by Bartolozzi—a true study in copperplate. Every shade of brown, many shades of red, and all tinges of green, may be seen in great masses of leaves.
The summit is reached at an elevation of 3192 feet, and though the ascent will cost you three hours and a little toil, it will well repay you. It is not picturesque, like the view from Mount Misery, for it defies the pencil; but it is nobly poetical, as it excites sensations of the truest sublimity. It is wilder and more romantic, not having the broad and majestic appearance that it has looked at from the south; but is narrow and river-like, as most of the Scotch lakes are.
The hill at the lower end displays all the richness of diversified wood and quiet beauty, but here we have a vast ocean of mountains, separated by deep glens, in every direction, which look like the troubled waves of a mighty chaos. They are broken and rugged in their outlines, and rise up at once precipitately and abruptly from the water, and looking north we miss those islands which give such a delightful interest to the broad expanse of the lower portion. They have every variety of form and magnitude, and sweep round as far as the eye can reach from the Ochils in the east, north by Voirlich and Lawers, and Ben More to Cruachan. To the west the peaks are too numerous to mention, but are strikingly impressive from the double fact that they are so near to us and so nearly of a size to that on which we stand. The mountain scene here is simply magnificent, and everywhere high peaks toss up their heads, wildly grand in storm, or calmly beautiful as immersed in the lake “100 fathoms down.” To the south-west there is the wild confusion of sea and mountain which forms the sea coast, with Ailsa, Arran, and the Paps of Jura. Due south there lies the glassy mirror of the lake, its islands now mere specks; the Vale of Leven, the rock of Dumbarton, Clyde, and the distant counties of Renfrew and Ayr. Eastward is the valley of the Forth, with the Castle of Stirling, and even that of Edinburgh on a clear day quite visible. You can also see far over the Kilpatrick range the conical peak of Tinto.
Among the most attractive objects are some of the lakes that lie around; you see the upper part of Loch Katrine, reminding you that you are not so far from home after all, on the one side of Ben Venue, and the whole of Ard on the other, with its beautiful cascade of Ledard. You cannot see its water, but you can see the exact spot where it is, with its fall of 12 feet into a basin formed of solid rock, and the water so transparent that at the depth of 10 feet the smallest pebble can be seen. From this basin it dashes over a ledge of rock and precipitates itself again over an irregular slope of more than 50 feet—a place peculiarly interesting from having been described by Sir W. Scott both in “Waverley” and “Rob Roy.” And yonder is the Lake of Menteith, with its soft pastoral beauty, and its three islands, Inchmahorne, “the Isle of Rest,” with its ancient priory, which in its day was visited by Bruce, and Mary, and James VI.; Tulla, or Cat’s Isle, where the Earls of Menteith lived; and the little Dog Island, where the kennel was.
Between these lakes (Menteith and Ard) you can also see the snugly sheltered clachan of Aberfoyle, which can boast of a thermometer standing at 80 degrees in the shade, and sometimes even at 84 degrees, and in whose churchyard there is the grave of a Pat (or Patrick) Graham, a member of the Menteith family, who was “vicar of Aberfoyle” about the Revolution; and also the grave of Rob. Kirk, who had a chief share in translating the Psalms into Gaelic, “Hiberniæ linguæ lumen.” There also we can trace the track of the Glasgow water supply, a little above Loch Katrine. Losing sight of it and Loch Chon by some rising ground, you see it again over the hilly country between Loch Ard and Gartmore, and can picture it in your mind, flowing through the Moss of Flanders, round the shoulder of Dungoin, away yonder at the end of the Strathblane range, a very river of health and life.
And just below you are some of the sources of the Forth, at the place called in Gaelic, Skid-n’uir, or ridge of yew trees (which, however, are not now to be seen). Here there rises a pretty copious spring, which divides into two parts, the one going to the German Ocean, and the other into the Atlantic, via Loch Lomond. The Forth is soon joined by the Duchray, and becomes a considerable river; and, as you see it here, you can quite forgive the pride of Bailie Nicol Jarvie as he said, “That’s the Forth,” with an air of reverence which, Francis Osbaldistone tells us, the Scotch usually pay to their distinguished rivers. The fall from Gartmore to Stirling is not more than 18 feet, as was found by the measurement which was taken when it was proposed to take the great canal up the bed of the Forth and join the Clyde by Loch Lomond and the Leven.
The north side of Ben Lomond excites a degree of surprise almost amounting to terror. This mighty mass, which hitherto has appeared to be like an irregular cone, placed on a spreading base, suddenly appears as an imperfect crater, with one side forcibly torn off, and leaving a stupendous precipice of nearly 2000 feet to the bottom. We on one occasion were fortunate enough during our stay on the Ben to be enveloped with a thick mist like a curtain, shutting off the view for a time, and leaving us alone on the mountain-top, far above the clouds, the sun shining on our heads all the time. We felt as if transported into a new state of existence, cut off from all meaner associations, and invisibly united with the surrounding purity and brightness. The clouds rising again, we had a view of the lake in almost all its length, and after this a slight shower came on, giving us many fine effects of light and shade and aerial tints. The hills would become of a dark purplish grey or blue, sometimes softened by a thin lawny veil of mist, which, again gradually increasing, enveloped all but a craggy point; and then a minute or two more and they would be enlivened by a faint gleam of sunshine, spreading a dewy green over part of the mountain, while the chief mass retained its dark brown or purple gloom.