Loch Achray.
Loch Katrine.
Loch Katrine is another Lake Horicon, with a grander environment, and this, like all the Scottish lakes, has the advantage of a more evenly sharp and vigorous air and of leaden and frowning skies [in which, nevertheless, there is a peculiar, penetrating light,] that darken their waters and impart to them a dangerous aspect that yet is strangely beautiful. As we swept past Ellen's island and Fitz-James's silver strand I was grateful to see them in the mystery of this gray light and not in the garish sunshine. All around this sweet lake are the sentinel mountains,—Ben Venue rising in the south, Ben A'an in the east, and all the castellated ramparts that girdle Glen Finglas in the north. The eye dwells enraptured upon the circle of the hills; but by this time the imagination is so acutely stimulated, and the mind is so filled with glorious sights and exciting and ennobling reflections, that the sense of awe is tempered with a pensive sadness, and you feel yourself rebuked and humbled by the final and effectual lesson of man's insignificance that is taught by the implacable vitality of these eternal mountains. It is a relief to be brought back for a little to common life, and this relief you find in the landing at Stronachlachar and the ensuing drive,—across the narrow strip of the shire of Stirling that intervenes between Loch Katrine and Loch Lomond,—to the port of Inversnaid. That drive is through a wild and picturesque country, but after the mountain road from Aberfoyle to the Trosachs it could not well seem otherwise than calm,—at least till the final descent into the vale of Inversnaid. From Inversnaid there is a short sail upon the northern waters of Loch Lomond,—forever haunted by the shaggy presence of Rob Roy and the fierce and terrible image of Helen Macgregor,—and then, landing at Ardlui, you drive past Inverarnan and hold a northern course to Crianlarich, traversing the vale of the Falloch and skirting along the western slope of the grim and gloomy Grampians, on which for miles and miles no human habitation is seen, nor any living creature save the vacant, abject sheep. The mountains are everywhere now, brown with bracken and purple with heather, stony, rugged, endless, desolate, and still with a stillness that is awful in its pitiless sense of inhumanity and utter isolation. At Crianlarich the railway is found again, and thence you whirl onward through lands of Breadalbane and Argyle to the proud mountains of Glen Orchy and the foot of that loveliest of all the lovely waters of Scotland,—the ebony crystal of Loch Awe. The night is deepening over it as I write these words. The dark and solemn mountains that guard it stretch away into the mysterious distance and are lost in the shuddering gloom. The gray clouds have drifted by, and the cold, clear stars of autumnal heaven are reflected in its crystal depth, unmarred by even the faintest ripple upon its surface. A few small boats, moored to anchored buoys, float motionless upon it, a little way from shore. There, on its lonely island, dimly visible in the fading light, stands the gray ruin of Kilchurn. A faint whisper comes from the black woods that fringe the mountain base, and floating from far across this lonely, haunted water there is a drowsy bird-note that calls to silence and to sleep.
CHAPTER XVIII
HIGHLAND BEAUTIES
