As for Loch Lomond, it lies amidst very striking
scenery, being poured in among the gorges of steep and lofty mountains,
which nowhere stand aside to give it room, but, on the contrary, do their
best to shut it in. It is everywhere narrow, compared with its length of
thirty miles; but it is the beauty of a lake to be of no greater width
than to allow of the scenery of one of its shores being perfectly enjoyed
from the other. The scenery of the Highlands, so far as I have seen it,
cannot properly be called rich, but stern and impressive, with very hard
outlines, which are unsoftened, mostly, by any foliage, though at this
season they are green to their summits. They have hardly flesh enough to
cover their bones,--hardly earth enough to lie over their rocky
substance,--as may be seen by the minute variety,--the notched and jagged
appearance of the profile of their sides and tops; this being caused by
the scarcely covered rocks wherewith these great hills are heaped
together.
Our little steamer stopped at half a dozen places on its voyage up the
lake, most of them being stations where hotels have been established.
Morally, the Highlands must have been more completely sophisticated by
the invention of railways and steamboats than almost any other part of
the world; but physically it can have wrought no great change. These
mountains, in their general aspect, must be very much the same as they
were thousands of years ago; for their sides never were capable of
cultivation, nor even with such a soil and so bleak an atmosphere could
they have been much more richly wooded than we see them now.
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