The dell upon the mountain’s crest
Yawned like a gash on warrior’s breast.
This can be reached on foot by a not too difficult walk, but most people prefer to view it from below. The Goblin’s Cave is impossible of exact identification, if, indeed, it had any actual prototype.
Loch Katrine
It has been suggested that the name of Loch Katrine arose from the hordes of robbers, or caterans, who infested its shores. If this be so, the name has been softened into something much more appropriate to the loveliness of the scenery, which is at its best at the east end. The Wordsworth party, indeed, coming from the other end, were at first disappointed. As the only means of transit was by a small row-boat, Coleridge was afraid of the cold and walked along the northern shore from Glengyle, though not, of course, on the well-made-up road which runs part of the way at present. Wordsworth himself slept in the bottom of the boat, which they had procured with much difficulty, and told his sister to awake him if anything worth seeing occurred. It was not until they nearly reached the eastern end that she did this, though then she confessed that what they saw was “the perfection of loveliness and beauty.”
The lake is about eight miles long by three-quarters broad, but the actual width varies very much, owing to the numerous indentations. The road on the northern shore runs to Glengyle, but there stops, so that the only means of getting right on to Loch Lomond is to take the steamer, which awaits tourists several times daily. No doubt a road by which cyclists could travel on their own account would be strenuously resisted in the neighbourhood, where the chief aim and object of the tourist’s being is supposed to be to pay for everything. On the southern side the steepness of the precipices of Ben Venue prevents any possibility of a road.
LOCH KATRINE AND ELLEN’S ISLE.