[LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS]

1.[Birches by Loch Achray][Frontispiece]
FACING PAGE
2.[Beneath the Crags of Ben Venue][9]
3.[Stirling Castle from the King’s Knot][16]
4.[Loch Vennachar][25]
5.[Loch Lubnaig][27]
6.[Brig o’ Turk and Ben Venue][30]
7.[In the Heart of the Trossachs][32]
8.[The Silver Strand][43]
9.[Loch Katrine and Ellen’s Isle][46]
10.[Ben A’an, seen from Loch Katrine][49]
11.[Head of Loch Lomond][56]
12.[Silver Birches in the Trossachs][On the cover]

[CHAPTER I]
“THE LADY OF THE LAKE”

The charm that lies in a mysterious name has been amply exemplified in that of the Trossachs, which is said to mean “bristled territory.” Something in the shaggy uncouthness of the word fits so well with the land of romance and mountain scenery that it has drawn tens of thousands to make the round between Glasgow and Edinburgh, by rail and coach and steamer, who, if the name had not been so mysteriously attractive, might never have bestirred themselves at all. Since the publication of Rob Roy and The Lady of the Lake the principal actors in these dramas have been just as real and important to the imaginative tourist as the familiar names of history. It is nothing to them that Rob Roy, of the clan of Macgregor, was merely a Highland thief: his character, invested by Scott with the charm of a magician’s pen, has made him as heroic as the great Wallace himself; while Ellen, the Lady of the Lake, wholly born of the poet’s imagination, has become only second to Mary Queen of Scots.

Scott has certainly done much for the land of his birth: not only has he enriched its literature for all time, and raised its literary standing in the eyes of nations, but he has done more for it commercially than almost any other writer has ever done for any country in bringing to it streams of visitors, especially from across the Atlantic. The gold flowing from the coffers of the Sassenach into the pouches of the Gael is a perennial blessing which could hardly have been secured in any other way.

“The Lady of the Lake”