The path still kept onward, after passing Ellen's Isle, and I followed
it, finding it wilder, more shadowy with overhanging foliage of trees,
old and young,--more like a mountain-path in Berkshire or New Hampshire,
yet still with an Old World restraint and cultivation about it,--the
farther I went. At last I came upon some bars, and though the track was
still seen beyond, I took this as a hint to stop, especially as I was now
two or three miles from the hotel, and it just then began to rain. My
umbrella was a poor one at best, and had been tattered and turned inside
out, a day or two ago, by a gust on Loch Lomond; but I spread it to the
shower, and, furthermore, took shelter under the thickest umbrage I could
find. The rain came straight down, and bubbled in the loch; the little
rills gathered force, and plashed merrily over the stones; the leaves of
the trees condensed the shower into large drops, and shed them down upon
me where I stood. Still I was comfortable enough in a thick Skye Tweed,
and waited patiently till the rain abated; then took my way homeward, and
admired the pass of the Trosachs more than when I first traversed it. If
it has a fault, it is one that few scenes in Great Britain share with
it,--that is, the trees and shrubbery, with which the precipices are
shagged, conceal them a little too much. A crag, streaked with black and
white, here and there shows its head aloft, or its whole height from base
to summit, and suggests that more of such sublimity is bidden than
revealed.
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