this side of the pass and the other was really marvellous, reminding us of the contrast between winter and summer.  The sight of the numerous little waterfalls flowing over the rocks above to contribute their quota to the waters of the loch below was quite refreshing.  One of the great hills we had passed without being able to see its summit—­for it was quite near our road—­was the well-known Ben Arthur, 2,891 feet high, commonly spoken of either as “The Cobbler” or “The Cobbler and his Wife.”  It was not until we had got some distance away that our attention was called to it.  We walked round the head of Loch Long and crossed a bridge, some words on the iron fixtures informing us that we were now passing from Argyllshire into Dumbartonshire.  The coping on the bridge was of fresh, neatly clipped grass instead of the usual stonework we expected to find, and looked very remarkable; we saw nothing like it on our further travels.

[Illustration:  “REST AND BE THANKFUL,” GLEN CROE.]

We asked a gentleman who was standing in the road about the various objects of interest in the neighbourhood.  Pointing to Ben Arthur in the distance, he very kindly tried to explain the curious formation of the rocks at the summit and to show us the Cobbler and his Wife which they were said to represent.  We had a long argument with him, and although he explained that the Cobbler was sitting down, for the life of us we could not distinguish the form either of him or of his Wife.  We could see that he considered we were very stupid for not being able to see objects so plain to himself; and when my brother asked him jocularly for the third time which was the Cobbler and which was his Wife, he became very angry and was inclined to quarrel with us.  We smoothed him down as well as we could by saying that we now thought we could see some faint resemblance to the objects referred to, and he looked as if he had, as the poet says, “cleared from thick films of vice the visual ray.”

[Illustration:  “THE COBBLER,” FROM ARROCHAR.]

We thanked him kindly for all the trouble he had taken, and concluded, at first, that perhaps we were not of a sufficiently imaginative temperament or else not in the most favourable position for viewing the outlines.  But we became conscious of a rather strong smell of whisky which emanated from our loquacious friend, from which fact we persuaded ourselves that he had been trying to show us features visible only under more elevated conditions.  When we last saw him he was still standing in the road gazing at the distant hills, and probably still looking at the Cobbler and his Wife.