Lomond is one of the two most magnificent lochs in Scotland. It is twenty-one miles long, its only rival being Loch Awe, which is three miles longer. It is of a curious wedge shape, being about five miles broad at the low end and narrowing to a point in the north. In the widest part it bears a perfect archipelago of islands, once thickly populated, but now left mostly to deer and other wild creatures. There is a tradition of a floating island, repeated by many an ancient traveller; but all trace of this phenomenon has vanished—if, indeed, it ever existed. The fishing in the loch is free, and salmon, sea-trout, lake-trout, pike, and perch are to be caught. The nearness of the great lake to Glasgow is at once an advantage and a drawback. It is an advantage for the thousands that pour out of the grimy city on every holiday, and, at half an hour from their own doors, for a trifling sum, can spend joyous days in scenery which can be classed with the most beautiful in the world. But it is certainly not an unmixed joy to the real lover of Nature, who approaches the lake in a spirit of worship, to find the shores black with people and the steamers thronged with tourists. The attractions pointed out to those who pass up or down the great sheet of water are various. Not the least is the giant Ben, who raises his proud head on the eastern side, “a sort of Scottish Vesuvius, never wholly without a cloud-cap. You cannot move a step that it does not tower over you. In winter a vast white sugar-loaf; in summer a prismatic cone of yellow and amethyst and opaline lights; in spring a grey, gloomy, stony pile of rocks; in autumn a weather indicator, for when the mist curls down its sides and hangs in heavy wreaths from its double summit, ‘it has to rain,’ as the Spaniards say.”

The mountain is 3,192 feet high, and the ascent is not difficult; by the gradually sloping way from the hotel at Rowardennan it is about five or six miles, without any very stiff climbing, and there is a choice of other routes. On a clear day, which is a rare boon, the view from the summit is superb. Sitting on its topmost pinnacle, one looks down the almost perpendicular north-eastern slope into the little valley where the River Forth may be said to take its rise. On the western side Loch Lomond stretches out in full length, and across the narrow isthmus of Tarbet is the sea-loch, Loch Long. Far away to the east and south the eye may range over the Lothians, Edinburgh, and Arthur’s Seat, and even to the distant hills of Cumberland and the Isle of Man; while farther west, backed by the Irish coast, is the whole scenery of the beautiful Clyde estuary and the nearer Hebrides. Northward, peak after peak, rise the stately masses of the Grampians.

Leaving Inversnaid, the first point to which attention is usually drawn is the cave in the corries on the east side, called Rob Roy’s Cave; much farther down the loch, amid the screes of Ben Lomond, is another hole, called Rob Roy’s Prison. The Island Vow, midway across the loch opposite Inversnaid, owes its name to a corruption of Eilean Vhow, meaning the Brownies’ Isle, a fascinating enough name to a child. On the island are some remains of the Macfarlanes’ stronghold. Wordsworth’s poem The Brownie originated with this island. On the farther shore, a little more northward, there is what is called the Pulpit Rock, a cell cut out on the face of the cliff so that it could be used for open-air preaching.

Right opposite is Ben Voirlich, and, in its fastnesses, wild Loch Sloy, whose name formed the war-cry of the Macfarlanes.

The reputation of this clan was not far behind the Macgregors as far as desperate courage and mad savagery count. Their headquarters were at first on the Isle of Inveruglas, just near the outflow of that stream into the loch; then they moved to the Brownies’ Island, doubtless finding the near neighbourhood of their hereditary enemies, the men of Lorn, too dangerous; but subsequently, becoming bolder, they went to Tarbet, and there settled.

The name Tarbet means draw-boat, and the story goes that Haco, King of Norway, in 1263 entered Loch Long, and, sailing up it, made his men drag the long flat-bottomed boats across the isthmus, and launch them on Loch Lomond, in order that he might the more easily attack the people on its shores for plunder.

The next point of interest is the promontory of Luss, which gives its name to Colquhoun of Luss, whose seat is on the next most beautiful wooded promontory at Rossdhu. This family is one of the most ancient on record, being able to trace its ancestry back to the Colquhouns in 1190 and the Lusses in 1150, which two families were united in the main line by the marriage of a Colquhoun with the heiress of Luss about 1368. Mrs. Walford, the well-known novelist, is a scion of this family. The present mansion was built about the end of the eighteenth century, but a fragment of the old ancestral home is still standing. Not far off are Court Hill and Gallows Hill, where the chieftain tried delinquents, and where justice was meted out to them. The slogan of the clan means “Knoll of the willow.”

Across the loch, on the opposite side, is Ross Priory, where Scott was staying with his friend Hector Macdonald when he wrote part of Rob Roy.

Just about here we are in a perfect world of islands, some of which—notably Inchmurrin—are preserved as a deer-park. At the south end are the ruins of a castle once inhabited by the Earls of Lennox, who belonged to the Macfarlane clan. Here Isabel, Duchess of Albany, retired when her father, husband, and sons had been executed at Stirling in 1424. Of the other islands, we have the names of Inchchlonaig, meaning the Island of Yew-trees, on which the yews are said to have been planted by Robert Bruce to furnish bows for his archers; Inchtavannach, or Monks’ Island; Inchcruin, Round Island; Inchfad, Long Island; and Inchcaillach, the Island of Women, from a nunnery once established here. This is close to the Pier of Balmaha, where is the entrance to a pass over the mountains, a well-known road in the old days of tribal war and bloodshed.

The Wordsworths landed on Inchtavannach, and climbed to the top of it. Here is Dorothy’s description: “We had not climbed far before we were stopped by a sudden burst of prospect, so singular and beautiful 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 toward 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 sunshine; 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 hills, but no commanding eminence at a distance to confine the prospect, so that the land seemed endless as the water.... Immediately under my eyes lay one large flat island bare and green ... another, its next neighbour, was covered with heath and coppice wood, the surface undulating.... These two islands, with Inchtavannach, where we were standing, were intermingled with the water, I might say interbedded, and interveined with it, in a manner that was exquisitely pleasing. There were bays innumerable, straits or passages like calm rivers, land-locked lakes, and, to the main water, stormy promontories.”

Not far from Rossdhu, on the west, is the entrance to Glen Fruin, the Glen of Weeping—a sad name, which turned out to be appropriate enough in view of the terrible scenes which happened here.

The trouble began with the Macgregors. Their clan claimed descent from the third son of Alpine, King of the Scots, who lived about 787, and was therefore known by the alternative name of Clan Alpine. Their savage ways made them hated by their neighbours, and the Earls of Argyll and Breadalbane managed to obtain from the Government a right by charter to a great part of the lands belonging to the unfortunate clan. This, of course, was the signal for a fight to the death.

From the time of Queen Mary onward various warrants were given to the other clans to make war on the unfortunate Macgregors, and to extirpate them as they would vermin. They were not only to be hounded out of existence, but the other clans were forbidden to supply them with the common necessaries of life. The climax was reached in the slaughter of Glen Fruin, which arose in this wise: Two of the Macgregors, being benighted, called at the house of one of the Colquhouns, and asked shelter. This was refused. They accordingly helped themselves to a sheep and supped off mutton, for which it is alleged they offered payment. The Laird of Luss seized them and had them both executed. Then the rest of the clan arose in wrath, and, to the number of three or four hundred strong, marched down to Luss. Sir Humphrey Colquhoun, receiving warning of their advance, called together his clansmen and others, to double the number of the invaders, and advanced to meet them, doing so in Glen Fruin.

The clan of the Macgregors charged the Colquhouns with fury, and, owing to the fact that part of the opposing force was mounted, and that the horses got mired in the boggy ground, they were able, notwithstanding their inferiority of numbers, to get the best of it, whereupon they set upon their flying foes and slaughtered them mercilessly.

The event which, however, lives in memory longest is that of the action of a gigantic Macgregor, called Dugald Ciar Mohr, or the “great mouse-coloured man,” who was in charge, as their tutor, of a party of youths from Glasgow. It is said that, excited by the sound of his clansmen shouting their war-cry, or incensed by the remarks of the youths against his clan, he lost his head; anyway, he slew them all in cold blood.

The great stone called Leck-a-Mhinisteir, the “minister or clerk’s stone,” is still pointed out as the place where this horrid deed was done, and it is said the stone was bathed red in the blood of the hapless boys. This Dugald was the ancestor of Rob Roy and his tribe.

The terrible song put by Sir Walter Scott into the mouths of the Macgregor boatmen carries with it a wild cry of savagery:

After this defeat the fury and wrath of the other clans, who were in favour at Court, may be imagined, and the widows of the slain men, to the number of several score, were sent, dressed in deep mourning, and riding upon white palfreys, carrying each her husband’s bloody shirt, to demand vengeance of King James VI. on the Macgregors. The Court was then at Stirling, and surely Stirling never saw a more woesome sight! The vengeance they obtained was all that they could desire, for by an Act of Privy Council, dated April 3, 1603, the name of Macgregor was wiped out of the land, all those who bore it being compelled, under dire penalties, to adopt the name of some other clan; hence it was that Rob Roy was known as Rob Roy Macgregor Campbell. The Macgregors were forbidden to carry any weapons, and were otherwise penalized. The chief, Alistair Macgregor, who had led the fight at Glen Fruin, was seized, and hanged in 1604. Yet, in spite of these and other dire disabilities, the Macgregors continued to be Macgregors in heart, whatever they might call themselves, and held their heads as high as their own crest, a pine-tree. They attached themselves to the cause of King Charles in the Civil Wars, and were subsequently rewarded by the annulling of the Acts and having their rights restored to them.