Towns > Helensburgh > 1875 - Battrum's guide and directory to Helensburgh and neighbourhood

Luss. 99
memorials of the past history of the parish. During the
thirteenth century Haco, of Norway, better known than the
tutelary saint, ravaged the islands of Lochlomond and Luss
and put most of the Celtic inhabitants to death. Probably
then these islands were inhabited by numbers of savage free-
booting Highlanders, who found in them protection and
comparative immunity from danger, till the undaunted Nor-
wegians rooted them out. Since that time they have been
tenanted chielly by deer and game. The two largest of them,
Inchmurrin and Inchtavannach, each of them extending up-
wards of a mile in length, and several of the smaller ones —
such as Inchlonaig and Inchfad — would be capable of sup-
porting several parishes. They are generally fertile, and,
if cultivated, would yield luxuriant crops ; but then their
sylvan beauty would be lost, and that romantic attraction
which they possess, arising, as it does, to a considerable ex-
tent from their natural iuxuriousness, would be lost for ever.
The most utilitarian spirit of this age could hardly desire to
see them clothed with corn instead of the dark yew, the oak,
heath, and fern, or trimmed into grassy slopes, pasturing
sheep in place of the timid deer and rabbit. The Colquhouns
acquired the lands of Luss, and certain of the islands from
the Lennox family, in the fourteenth century and have since
retained them, adding to the original estates many other pro-
perties on the shores of Lochlomond, and adjacent to it, and
at this date, the present Sir James Colquhoun, is one of the
most extensive landholders in Scotland; many parts of his
estates are daily increasing in value to an extent which, half
a century since, would have been deemed fabulous. Eossdhu
House, the beautiful residence of the Colquhoun family,
stands close by the shore of the loch about a mile below Luss.
An older castle stood here, part of the ruins of which are