We kept on our way, often looking back towards Loch Lomond, and wondering
at the grandeur which Ben Vain and Ben Voirlich, and the rest of the Ben
fraternity, had suddenly put on. The mists which had hung about them all
day had now descended lower, and lay among the depths and gorges of the
hills, where also the sun shone softly down among them, and filled those
deep mountain laps, as it were, with a dimmer sunshine. Ben Vain, too,
and his brethren, had a veil of mist all about them, which seemed to
render them really transparent; and they had unaccountably grown higher,
vastly higher, than when we viewed them from the shore of the lake. It
was as if we were looking at them through the medium of a poet's
imagination. All along the road, since we left Inversnaid, there had
been the stream, which there formed the waterfall, and which here was
brawling down little declivities, and sleeping in black pools, which we
disturbed by flinging stones into them from the roadside. We passed a
drunken old gentleman, who civilly bade me "good day"; and a man and
woman at work in a field, the former of whom shouted to inquire the hour;
and we had come in sight of little Loch Arklet before the omnibus came up
with us. It was about five o'clock when we reached the head of
LOCH KATRINE,
and went on board the steamer Rob Roy; and, setting forth on our voyage,
a Highland piper made music for us the better part of the way.
We did not see Loch Katrine, perhaps, under its best presentment; for the
surface was roughened with a little wind, and darkened even to inky
blackness by the clouds that overhung it.
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