The poems of Ossian mirror, not the Lowland life and scenery, but that of the north and west. This is proof of the age-long differences that once divided Scotland. Archibald Geikie, geologist and prose poet, who has been familiar with the scenery of the western Highlands from boyhood, believes that, laying Macpherson aside altogether, there is in the poems of Ossian “a true poetry of local form and color, which could only have been created in the Highlands, but which must be of old date, for it alludes to characteristics that have long since passed away.... If poetry was to take birth in these regions and to deal largely with outer nature, as well as with human feeling and action, it must have been essentially Ossianic--sad, weird, and solemn.” Geikie says, again, that in “the well-known contrast in style and treatment between the northern and southern ballads, our national poetry seems to me to lead us back to the fundamental distinctions between the physical features of the border country and those of more southern and civilized parts of England.... The varied scenery of that wild borderland forms the background of the scenery in the poems, and according to their themes, we find ourselves among rough moss-hags, or in fertile dale, on bare moorland, or sheltered clowe, by forest side or river ford, amid the tender green of birken shaws, or the sad russet of dowie dens.... In the southern ballad, on the other hand, the local coloring is absent, or at least is so feeble that it could not have had the dominant influence which is exercised upon the imagination of the Northern minstrels.... To my mind this tame, featureless character is suggestive of the sluggish streams and pleasing but unimpressive landscape amid which the southern minstrels sang.” CHAPTER XX LOCH LOMOND AND THE TROSSACHS The Scotch lakes form the one element of repose in a landscape which, in almost every other feature, suggests the most terrific activities of nature. Excelling all in size, beauty, and romantic interest is Loch Lomond, in Rob Roy’s country. It is the pride of the Scottish inland waters, as Cayuga is the gem in the chain of finger lakes in central New York. On our first visit neither railway nor other tourist-bringing facilities, except steamboats, existed. Nor had the necessity of making the lochs of Scotland the drinking-glasses of towns near by yet arisen in so large a measure as to threaten to blot out some of the strands and beaches famous in song and story.