Ordnance gazetteer of Scotland > Volume 5

LOMOND
deed, to the E and S completely so) ; but here are all the
Ijeautifully- wooded islands, to the number of twenty-four.
. . . To the left we passed some very pretty villas.
. . . Then Tarhet, a small town, where dearest Albert
landed in 1847 ; and here began tlie highest and finest
mountains, with splendid passes, richly wooded, and
the highest mountains rising behind. A glen leads
across from Tarhet to A rrochar on Loeh Long, and here
you see that most singularly-shaped hill called the
Cobbler, and a little further on the splendid Alps of
Arrochar. All this, and the way in which the hills run
into the lake, reminded me so much of the Nasen on
the Laie of Luccrjie. The head of the lake, with the
very fine glen (Glen Falloch), along which you can drive
to Oban, is magnificent. We (Louise and I) sketched as
best we could. ' In 1875, on her way back from Inveraray,
she drove along the bank of the loch from Tarhet to
Balloch. ' The drive along Loch Lomond, which we
came upon almost immediately after Tarbet, was per-
fectly beautiful. We wound along under trees on both
sides, with the most lovely glimpses of the head of the
loch, and ever and anon of Loch Lomond itself below the
road ; the hills which rose upon our right reminding me
of Aberfoyle near Loch Ard, and of the lower part of the
Pilatus. Such fine trees, numbers of hollies gi'owing
down almost into the water, and such beautiful capes
and little bays and promontories ! The loch was ex-
tremely rough, and so fierce was the wind that the foam
was blown like smoke along the deep blue of the water.
The gale had broken some trees. The sun lit up the
whole scene beautifully, but we had a few slight showers.
It reminded me of Switzerland. I thought we saw every-
thing so much better than we had formerly done from
the steamer. As we proceeded, the hills became lower,
the loch widened, and the many wooded islands appeared.
We next changed horses at Luss, quite a small village
— indeed, the little inn stands almost alone. . .
From here we drove along past the openings of Glen Luss
and Gle7i Finlas, which run up amongst the fine hills to
the right, the loch being on our left, and the road much
wooded. '
In consequence of its size and beautiful scenery Loch
Lomond is often styled the ' Queen of Scottish lakes,'
a title which it certainly deserves. At the S end the
banks have none of that bleakness and wildness that
characterise so many of the lakes of the Highlands of
Scotland. 'I have seen,' says BxaoWfitt in Hiimphrey
Clinker, ' the Lago di Gardi, Albano, De Vico, Bolsena,
and Geneva, and on my honour I prefer Loch Lomond
to them all ; a preference which is certainly owing to the
verdant islands that seem to float on its surface,
aff'ording the most enchanting objects of repose to the
excursive view. Nor are the banks destitute of beauties
which even partake of the sublime. On this side they
display a sweet variety of woodland, cornfields, and
pasture, with several agreeable villas emerging as it
were out of the lake, till, at some distance, the prospect
terminates in huge mountains, covered with heath,
which, being in the bloom, affords a very rich covering
of purple. Everything here is romantic beyond imagi-
nation. This country is justly styled the Arcadia of
Scotland ; and I don't doubt but it may vie with Arcadia
in everything but climate : I am sure it excels in verdure,
wood, and water. What say you to a natural basin of
pure water nearly thirty miles long, and in some places
seven miles broad, and in many above an hundred
fathoms deep, having four-and-twenty habitable islands,
some of them stocked with deer, and all of them covered
with wood ; containing immense quantities of delicious
fish, salmon, pike, trout, perch, flounders, eels, and
powans, the last a delicate kind of fresh-water herring
peculiar to this lake. ' He also adds that the powan
never descends the Leven. These are probably the
animals that the writer in Blaeu's Atlas calls paones,
though he is incorrect in confusing them with vipers.
They belong to the Salmonidae, and the species is
scientifically known as Coregonus La Cefcdei (Parnell)
or C. clupeoides (Lacepede). The level and well wooded
ground at the S end of the loch and the number and
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beautifully wooded condition of the islands gives this
part great softness, and it presents an appearance more
akin to that of the Lakes of Killarney than any other
sheet of water in Scotland. Above Luss, where the loch
contracts and the hills rise more steeply from the water
and at the same time lose somewhat of the green colour
they have further to the S, the scenery becomes wilder,
but by no means savage. Many parts of the lower
skirts of the hills are still well wooded, and the slopes
themselves have smooth rounded outlines, which the
height, however, prevents from being tame. Every-
where, too, Ben Lomond towers above the lake, and
fills up or borders the view.
Dr Johnson (who, however, visited it late in the year
and during rain) expresses his opinion of the scenery
in terms of great dissatisfaction ; but Boswell, ou
the other hand, declares that the Doctor was very much
pleased with the scene. Wordsworth, who visited
Loch Lomond in his Scottish tours in 1803, 1814, and
1S31, had all manner of faults to find with it. He
tliought 'the proportion of diffused water was too
great, ' and wished for ' a speedier termination of the
long vista of blank water, ' and ' the interposition of
green meadows, trees, and cottages, and a sparkling
stream to run by his side. ' He thought that ' a notion
of grandeur as connected with magnitude has seduced
persons of taste into a general mistake upon this subject.
It is much more desirable for the purposes of pleasure
that lakes should be numerous and small or middle-
sized, than large, not only for communication by walks
and rides, but for variety and for recurrence of similar
appearances. ' This may be true, but one hardly sees
that the proposition that everything great is not mag-
nificent also implies the opposite that everything mag-
nificent is not great. Dorothy Wordsworth, his sister,
who, along with Coleridge, accompanied him in 1803,
was no more satisfied. The hills were not such as ' a
Cumbrian would dignify with the name of mountains,'
nor was Ben Lomond ' seen standing in such company
as Helvellyn.' Everything was too good for them; it
would not submit to be measured by the spirit of
Ullswater, but doubtless things have changed for the
better in many ways about the shores of the loch since
then, for the Luss of that time, with ' not a single
ornamented garden,' must have been a very different
place from the Luss of to-day, in midsummer, bright
with rhododendron bloom. Dissatisfied, however, as
she was, she had to admit beauty. They crossed to
Inchtavannach, from which the view is thus described :
— ' We had not climbed far before we were stopped by a
sudden burst of prospect so singular and beautifid that
it was like a flash of images from another world. We
stood with our backs to the hill of the island which we
were ascending, and which shut out Ben Lomond
entirely and all the upper part of the lake, and we
looked towards the foot of the lake, scattered over with
islands without beginning and without end. The sun
shone, and the distant hills were visible, some through
sunny mists, others in gloom, with patches of suushine ;
the lake was lost under the low and distant hills, and
the islands lost in the lake, which was all in motion
with travelling fields of light or dark shadows under
rainy clouds. There are many hrUs, but no commanding
eminence at a distance to confine the prospect so that
the land seemed endless as the water. What I had
heard of Loch Lomond, or any other place in Great
Britain, had given me no idea of anything like what we
beheld : it was an outlandish scene — we might have
believed ourselves in North America. The islands were
of every possible variety of shape and surface — hilly and
level, large and small, bare, rocky, pastoral, or covered
with wood. . . . There were bays innumerable,
straits or passages like calm rivers, land-locked lakes,
and, to the main water, stormy promontories. ' Thescene
' was throughout magical and enchanting — a new world
in its great permanent outline and composition, and
changing at every moment in every part of it by the
efl'ect of sun and wind, and mist and shower and
cloud, and the blending lights and deep shades which