76 Summer 



the skirts of the mountains, the march-land between 

 hill and plain. If you looked down from the 

 shoulder of Ben Venue upon Loch Achray and 

 the woods that slope from it, and up the valley to 

 Loch Katrine and down to Vennachar, you found 

 them few and wide apart. There was scarce a haw- 

 thorn, scarce a whin-bush to be seen. The clump 

 from which the cuckoo was calling his whereabouts 

 was of light and brilliant green, but, apart from its 

 leafage, the great line of Bens was sombre and bleak, 

 for the young sprouts of heather had not yet covered 

 last year's witherings. On the marshy land, wherever 

 the heavy grey curlew called and flew, the dead ferns 

 made a mass of bright red-brown, with the new fronds 

 springing here and there, and touching it with glints 

 of palest green. Yet, now if ever is the time to under- 

 stand and share Sir Walter's enthusiasm for the 

 Trossachs. In late summer it is not easy to do so : 

 firstly, because of that gush of touring humanity from 

 which escape is well-nigh impossible, and against 

 which the human mind revolts ; and secondly, because 

 the thick and heavy foliage and the dense under- 

 growth are too much for the good effects of light and 

 shade. But in June, when the lady of the wood puts 

 on the light and flittering dress that veils without 

 dissembling her form, when the first lustre of the silver 

 fir can only be paralleled by the metallic gleam seen 

 now and then on a living animal, and when the road 

 through the pass winds not among a plump unbroken 



