Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume 4 (of 10)Lockhart, J. G. (John Gibson)
General
Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume 4 (of 10)
Lockhart, J. G. (John Gibson)
Authors, Scottish -- 19th century -- Biography; Scott, Walter, 1771-1832
guide shook his head at our proposal to climb over the peninsula
which divides the two bays and the two lakes. In rowing round the
headland, surprised at the infinite number of sea-fowl, then busy
apparently with a shoal of fish; at the depth of the bay find that
the discharge from this second lake forms a sort of waterfall or
rather rapid; round this place were assembled hundreds of trout, and
salmon struggling to get up into the fresh water; with a net we
might have had twenty salmon at a haul, and a sailor, with no better
hook than a crooked pin, caught a dish of trouts, during our
absence.
"Advancing up this huddling and riotous brook, we found ourselves in
a most extraordinary scene: we were surrounded by hills of the
boldest and most precipitous character, and on the margin of a lake
which seemed to have sustained the constant ravages of torrents from
these rude neighbors. The shores consisted of huge layers of naked
granite, here and there intermixed with bogs, and heaps of gravel
and sand marking the course of torrents. Vegetation there was little
or none, and the mountains rose so perpendicularly from the water's
edge, that Borrowdale is a jest to them. We proceeded about one mile
and a half up this deep, dark, and solitary lake, which is about two
miles long, half a mile broad, and, as we learned, of extreme depth.
The vapor which enveloped the mountain ridges obliged us by assuming
a thousand shapes, varying its veils in all sorts of forms, but
sometimes clearing off altogether. It is true, it made us pay the
penalty by some heavy and downright showers, from the frequency of
which, a Highland boy, whom we brought from the farm, told us the
lake was popularly called the Water Kettle. The proper name is Loch
Corriskin, from the deep _corrie_ or hollow in the mountains of
Cuillin, which affords the basin for this wonderful sheet of water.
It is as exquisite as a savage scene, as Loch Katrine is as a scene
of stern beauty. After having penetrated so far as distinctly to
observe the termination of the lake, under an immense mountain which
rises abruptly from the head of the waters, we returned, and often
stopped to admire the ravages which storms must have made in these
recesses when all human witnesses were driven to places of more
shelter and security. Stones, or rather large massive fragments of
rock of a composite kind, perfectly different from the granite
barriers of the lake, lay upon the rocky beach in the strangest and
most precarious situations, as if abandoned by the torrents which
had borne them down from above; some lay loose and tottering upon
the ledges of the natural rock, with so little security that the
slightest push moved them, though their weight exceeded many tons.
These detached rocks were chiefly what are called plum-pudding
stones. Those which formed the shore were granite. The opposite side
of the lake seemed quite pathless, as a huge mountain, one of the
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