and wild roses in blossom, with which the air was fragrant.  Crossing a little stone bridge, which our driver told us was the Bridge of Turk, we were on the edge of Loch Achray, a little sheet of water surrounded by wild rocky hills, with here and there an interval of level grassy margin, or a grove beside the water.  Turning from Loch Achray we reached an inn with a Gaelic name, which I have forgotten how to spell, and which if I were to spell it, you could not pronounce.  This was on the edge of the Trosachs, and here we breakfasted.

It is the fashion, I believe, for all tourists to pass through the Trosachs on foot.  The mob of travellers, with whom I found myself on the occasion—­there were some twenty of them—­did so, to a man; even the ladies, who made about a third of the number, walked.  The distance to Loch Katrine is about a mile and a half, between lofty mountains, along a glen filled with masses of rock, which seem to have been shaken by some convulsion of nature from the high steeps on either side, and in whose shelves and crevices time had planted a thick wood of the birch and ash.

But I will not describe the Trosachs after Walter Scott.  Head what he says of them in the first canto of his poem.  Loch Katrine, when we reached it, was crisped into little waves, by a fresh wind from the northwest, and a boat, with four brawny Highlanders, was waiting to convey us to the head of the lake.  We launched upon the dark deep water, between craggy and shrubby steeps, the summits of which rose on every side of us; and one of the rowers, an intelligent-looking man, took upon himself the task of pointing out to us the places mentioned by the poet.  “There,” said he, as we receded from the shore, “is the spot in the Trosachs where Fitz James lost his gallant gray.”  He then repeated, in a sort of recitation, dwelling strongly on the rhyme, the lines in the Lady of the Lake which relate that incident.  “Yonder is the island where Douglass concealed his daughter.  Under that broad oak, whose boughs almost dip into the water, was the place where her skiff was moored.  On that rock, covered with heath, Fitz James stood and wound his bugle.  Near it, but out of sight, is the silver strand where the skiff received him on board.”

Further on, he pointed out, on the south side of the lake, half way up among the rocks of the mountain, the place of the Goblin Cave, and still beyond it

  “The wild pass, where birches wave,
      Of Beal-a-nam-bo.”

On the north shore, the hills had a gentler slope, and on their skirts, which spread into something like a meadow, we saw a solitary dwelling.  “In that,” said he, “Rob Roy was born.”  In about two hours, our strong-armed rowers had brought us to the head of the lake.  Before we reached it, we saw the dark crest of Ben Lomond, loftier than any of the mountains around us, peering over the hills which formed the southern rampart of Loch Katrine.  We landed, and proceeded—­the men on foot