Page:The Lady of the Lake - Scott (1810).djvu/313

 med my rashness for running such a hazard."— Desiderata Curiosa, II. 464.

Until the present road was made through the romantic pass which I have presumptuously attempted to describe in the preceding stanzas, there was no mode of issuing out of the defile, called the Trosachs, excepting by a sort of ladder, composed of the branches and roots of the trees.

The clans who inhabited the romantic regions in the neighbourhood of Loch Katrine, were, even until a late period, much addicted to predatory excursions upon their lowland neighbours.

"In former times, those parts of this district, which are situated beyond the Grampian range, were rendered almost inaccessible, by strong barriers of rocks, and mountains, and lakes. It was a border country, and though on the very verge of the low country, it was almost totally sequestered from the world, and, as it were, insulated with respect to society.