The next point of interest is the promontory of Luss, which gives its name to Colquhoun of Luss, whose seat is on the next most beautiful wooded promontory at Rossdhu. This family is one of the most ancient on record, being able to trace its ancestry back to the Colquhouns in 1190 and the Lusses in 1150, which two families were united in the main line by the marriage of a Colquhoun with the heiress of Luss about 1368. Mrs. Walford, the well-known novelist, is a scion of this family. The present mansion was built about the end of the eighteenth century, but a fragment of the old ancestral home is still standing. Not far off are Court Hill and Gallows Hill, where the chieftain tried delinquents, and where justice was meted out to them. The slogan of the clan means “Knoll of the willow.”
Across the loch, on the opposite side, is Ross Priory, where Scott was staying with his friend Hector Macdonald when he wrote part of Rob Roy.
LOCH LOMOND (Looking towards Glen Falloch).
It is one of the largest lakes in Scotland, and forms part of the famous Trossachs round.
The Islands
Just about here we are in a perfect world of islands, some of which—notably Inchmurrin—are preserved as a deer-park. At the south end are the ruins of a castle once inhabited by the Earls of Lennox, who belonged to the Macfarlane clan. Here Isabel, Duchess of Albany, retired when her father, husband, and sons had been executed at Stirling in 1424. Of the other islands, we have the names of Inchchlonaig, meaning the Island of Yew-trees, on which the yews are said to have been planted by Robert Bruce to furnish bows for his archers; Inchtavannach, or Monks’ Island; Inchcruin, Round Island; Inchfad, Long Island; and Inchcaillach, the Island of Women, from a nunnery once established here. This is close to the Pier of Balmaha, where is the entrance to a pass over the mountains, a well-known road in the old days of tribal war and bloodshed.
The Wordsworths landed on Inchtavannach, and climbed to the top of it. Here is Dorothy’s description: “We had not climbed far before we were stopped by a sudden burst of prospect, so singular and beautiful that it was like a flash of images from another world. We stood with our backs to the hill of the island, which we were ascending, and which shut out Ben Lomond entirely and all the upper part of the lake, and we looked toward the foot of the lake, scattered over with islands, without beginning and without end. The sun shone, and the distant hills were visible—some through sunny mists, others in gloom with patches of sunshine; the lake was lost under the low and distant hills, and the islands lost in the lake, which was all in motion, with travelling fields of light, or dark shadows under rainy clouds. There are many hills, but no commanding eminence at a distance to confine the prospect, so that the land seemed endless as the water.... Immediately under my eyes lay one large flat island bare and green ... another, its next neighbour, was covered with heath and coppice wood, the surface undulating.... These two islands, with Inchtavannach, where we were standing, were intermingled with the water, I might say interbedded, and interveined with it, in a manner that was exquisitely pleasing. There were bays innumerable, straits or passages like calm rivers, land-locked lakes, and, to the main water, stormy promontories.”
Not far from Rossdhu, on the west, is the entrance to Glen Fruin, the Glen of Weeping—a sad name, which turned out to be appropriate enough in view of the terrible scenes which happened here.