Entering this wonderful defile of the Trossachs there is revealed a scene of
“Crags, knolls, and mounds, confusedly hurled,
The fragments of an earlier world.”
Somewhere near the entrance of the gorge, Fitz James lost his “gallant gray” horse. Perhaps, even without a silver suggestion, our guide might show the exact spot where the poor creature’s bleaching bones once lay! The rocks are verdure-clad and we catch a glimpse of Ben A’an rising above the wooded precipices on the north.
Suddenly emerging from the wild mountain rocks and woods, we behold, as Fitz James did,—
“One burnish’d sheet of living gold,
Loch-Katrine lay beneath him rolled;
In all her length far winding lay,
With promontory, creek, and bay,
And islands that, empurpled bright,