We were reluctant to quit the spot, and cherish still a
hope of seeing it again, though the hope does not seem very likely to be
gratified.
This was a lowering and sullen morning, but soon after breakfast I took a
walk in the opposite direction to Loch Katrine, and reached the Brig of
Turk, a little beyond which is the new Trosachs' Hotel, and the little
rude village of Duncraggan, consisting of a few hovels of stone, at the
foot of a bleak and dreary hill. To the left, stretching up between this
and other hills, is the valley of Glenfinlas,--a very awful region in
Scott's poetry and in Highland tradition, as the haunt of spirits and
enchantments. It presented a very desolate prospect. The walk back to
the Trosachs showed me Ben Venue and Ben An under new aspects,--the bare
summit of the latter rising in a perfect pyramid, whereas from other
points of view it looks like quite a different mountain. Sometimes a
gleam of sunshine came out upon the rugged side of Ben Venue, but his
prevailing mood, like that of the rest of the landscape, was stern and
gloomy. I wish I could give an idea of the variety of surface upon one
of these hillsides,--so bulging out and hollowed in, so bare where the
rock breaks through, so shaggy in other places with heath, and then,
perhaps, a thick umbrage of birch, oak, and ash ascending from the base
high upward. When I think I have described them, I remember quite a
different aspect, and find it equally true, and yet lacking something to
make it the whole or an adequate truth.
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