The wanderer’s eye could barely view
The summer heaven’s delicious blue;
So wondrous wild, the whole might seem
The scenery of a fairy dream.
Dorothy Wordsworth
It must be remembered that the beautiful even road which now runs through the heart of this fairyland was a work of great difficulty and cost. It has been hewn out of the side of the rock, and built up by the side of the loch in order to facilitate the constant stream of tourists. At first there were several wild pathways leading down to Loch Katrine through a perfect wilderness of boughs and undergrowth, and at the end a precipitous drop over the edge of a steep crag, only scaled by the aid of a sort of natural ladder of saplings and tendrils, and it is thus that Scott makes Fitz-James approach the loch. In the beginning of the nineteenth century, however, when Dorothy Wordsworth and her brother reached the Trossachs from Loch Katrine, a great improvement had taken place. When nearing the end of the lake, she says, they came in sight of two huts, which had been built by Lady Perth as a shelter for visitors. “The huts stand at a small distance from each other, on a high and perpendicular rock, that rises from the bed of the lake. A road, which has a very wild appearance, has been cut through the rock; yet even here, among these bold precipices, the feeling of excessive beautifulness overcomes every other.”
THE SILVER STRAND, LOCH KATRINE.
Where Scott describes the meeting between Fitz-James and Ellen of the Isle.