I glanced at the bright morning sun and the unclouded sky. I could see no mist, nor any sign of rain. Trying to forget my hunger, I stretched out on the sands to wait for the morning steamer. Ben Lomond, a mountain I had read of in Scott’s “Lady of the Lake,” stood just across the Loch, and I had made up my mind to climb it.
About six, a heavy-eyed shopkeeper sold me a roll of bologna and a loaf of bread. The steamer whistle sounded before I got back to the beach. I bought a ticket at the wooden wharf, and hurried out to board the steamer.
A big Scot stepped in front of me and demanded “tup’nce.”
“But I’ve paid my fare,” I said, holding up the ticket.
“Aye, mon, ye hov,” rumbled the native, straddling his legs and thrusting out his elbows. “Ye hov, mon. But ye hovna paid fer walkin’ oot t’ yon boat on our wharf.”
Ten minutes later I paid again, this time for being allowed to walk off the boat at Renwardenen.
Plodding through a half mile of heath and marsh, I struck into the narrow white path that zigzagged up the face of the mountain. The mist that the fisherman had seen began to settle down, and soon turned to a drenching rain. For five hours I scrambled upward, slipping and falling on wet stones and into deep bogs, and coming at last to a broad, flat rock where the path disappeared. It was the top of old Ben Lomond, a tiny island surrounded by whirling gray mist. The wind blew so hard that it almost bowled me off my feet into the sea of fog.
I set off down the opposite slope. In the first stumble down the mountain I lost my way, and came out upon a boggy meadow, where I wandered for hours over low hills and through swift streams. Now and then I scared up a flock of shaggy highland sheep that raced away down wild looking valleys. There was neither road nor foot-path. For seven miles I dragged myself, hand over hand, through a thick growth of shrubs and bushes; and once I fell head first into an icy mountain river before I reached the highway.
At the foot a new disappointment awaited me. There was a hotel, but it was of the millionaire-club kind. I turned toward a group of board shanties at the roadside.
“Can you sell me something to eat?” I inquired of the sour-faced mountaineer who opened the first door.