Page:Footsteps of Dr. Johnson.djvu/326

258 for himself. In the darkness of a winter's evening his boat was upset as he was coming home from the Yew Island, and he was drowned with three of his gamekeepers and a boy. It was never known how the accident happened, for no one escaped; but the boat was heavily laden with the dead bodies of some stags, which they had shot in the island, and the unhappy men were weighed down with their accoutrements and the ammunition which they carried. The yew trees were planted, it was said, on the advice of King Robert Bruce, in order to furnish the Lennox men with

YEW TREE ISLAND.

trusty bows. The old castle, "on which the osprey built her annual nest," is so much buried in ivy that it is not easily distinguished from the surrounding woods. We hired a boat at Luss and in our turn roved upon the lake. We landed on one of the islands and lunched on the top of a rock by the ruins of a second castle. Loch Lomond, studded with islands, lay like a mirror beneath us, with the huge Ben Lomond for a noble background. From time to time a boat broke the smoothness of the water, and the cry of a gull, or the bark of a far-away dog, the stillness of the air. We spoke of the heat and bustle of the world, but imagination almost refused to picture them in so peaceful a spot. Our boat-