Page:Margaret Fuller by Howe, Julia Ward, Ed. (1883).djvu/152

Rh enjoyed, from the top, the varying aspect of that picturesque region. Perth, Loch Leven, and Loch Katrine were visited, and Rowardenpan, the place from which the ascent of Ben Lomond is usually made by travellers. Margaret attempted this feat with but one companion, and without a guide, the people at the inn not having warned her of any danger in so doing.

The ascent she found delightful. So magnificent was the prospect, that, in remembering it, she said: “Had that been, as afterwards seemed likely, the last act of my life, there could not have been a finer decoration painted on the curtain which was to drop upon it."

The proverbial facilis descensus did not here hold good, and the revocare gradum nearly cost Margaret her life. Beginning to descend at four in the afternoon, the indistinct path was soon lost. Margaret's companion left her for a moment in search of it, and could not find her.

“Soon he called to me that he had found it [the path], and I followed in the direction where he seemed to be. But I mistook, overshot it, and saw hip no more. In about ten minutes I became alarmed, and called him many times. It seems he, on his side, did the same, but the brow of some hill was between us, and we neither saw nor heard one another."

Margaret now made many attempts to extricate herself from her dangerous situation, and at last attained a point from which she could see the lake, and the inn from which she had started in the morning. But the mountain-paths were crossed by water-courses, and hemmed in by bogs. After much climbing up and down, Margaret, already wet, very weary, and