We need scarcely remind the tourist, that the scene of Sir Walter Scott's
"Lady of the Lake" is laid in this spot. The following description is from
the pen of Dr. Graham, the minister of the parish:--"When you enter the
Trosachs there is such an assemblage of wildness and of rude grandeur, as
fills the mind with the most sublime conceptions. It seems as if a whole
mountain had been torn in pieces, and frittered down by a convulsion of the
earth, and the huge fragments of rocks, woods, and hills scattered in
confusion at the east end, and on the sides of Loch Katrine. The access to
the lake is through a narrow pass of half a mile in length. The rocks are
of stupendous height, and seem ready to close above the traveller's head,
and to fall down and bury him in the ruins. A huge column of these rocks
was, some years ago, torn with lightning, and lies in very large blocks
near the road. Where there is any soil, their sides are covered with aged
weeping birches, which hang down their venerable locks in waving ringlets,
as if to cover the nakedness of the rocks."

"Travellers who wish to see all they can of this singular phenomenon,
generally sail westward, on the south side of the lake, to the Rock and Den
of the Ghost, whose dark recesses, from their gloomy appearance, the
imagination of superstition conceived to be the habitation of supernatural
beings. In sailing, you discover many arms of the lake;--here, a bold
headland, where black rocks dip into unfathomable water;--there, the white
sand in the bottom of a bay, bleached for ages by the waves. In walking on
the north side, the road is sometimes cut through the face of a solid rock,
which rises upwards of 200 feet perpendicular above the lake. Sometimes the
view of the lake is lost, then it bursts suddenly on the eye, and a cluster
of islands and capes appear at different distances, which give them an
apparent motion, of different degrees of velocity, as the spectator rides