The Distance To Loch
Katrine Is About A Mile And A Half, Between Lofty Mountains, Along A Glen
Filled With
Masses of rock, which seem to have been shaken by some
convulsion of nature from the high steeps on either
Side, and in whose
shelves and crevices time had planted a thick wood of the birch and ash.
But I will not describe the Trosachs after Walter Scott. Head what he says
of them in the first canto of his poem. Loch Katrine, when we reached it,
was crisped into little waves, by a fresh wind from the northwest, and a
boat, with four brawny Highlanders, was waiting to convey us to the head
of the lake. We launched upon the dark deep water, between craggy and
shrubby steeps, the summits of which rose on every side of us; and one of
the rowers, an intelligent-looking man, took upon himself the task of
pointing out to us the places mentioned by the poet. "There," said he, as
we receded from the shore, "is the spot in the Trosachs where Fitz James
lost his gallant gray." He then repeated, in a sort of recitation,
dwelling strongly on the rhyme, the lines in the Lady of the Lake which
relate that incident. "Yonder is the island where Douglass concealed his
daughter. Under that broad oak, whose boughs almost dip into the water,
was the place where her skiff was moored. On that rock, covered with
heath, Fitz James stood and wound his bugle.
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