"Night was coming on quickly as I rowed back to the mouth of the little river. On reaching the inn I found that the people were getting anxious about me."
This first row on Loch Awe has a pathetic interest for me to this day. It was like one's first meeting with a friend who was destined to become very dear and to exercise a powerful influence on the whole current of one's life.
As my first impression of London had been, "This is a place an Englishman ought to see once, but I will never come to it again," so my first impression about Loch Awe was a profound sort of melancholy happiness in the place and a longing to revisit it. I never afterwards quitted Loch Awe without the same longing to return, and I have never seen any place in the world that inspired in me that nostalgia in anything like an equal degree.
There is an affinity between persons and places, but the Loch Awe that won my affection exists no longer. What delighted me was the complete unity of character that prevailed there, the lonely magnificent mountains, the vast expanse of water only crossed occasionally by some poor open boat, the melancholy ruins on island or peninsula, the wilderness, the sadness, the pervading sense of solitude, a solitude peopled only with traditions of a romantic past. It was almost as lonely as some distant lake in the wilds of Canada that the Indian crosses in his canoe, yet its ruined castles gave a poetry that no American waters can ever possess. Such was Loch Awe that I loved with the melancholy affection of youth before the experience of life had taught me a more active and practical philosophy than the indulgence in the sweet sadness of these reveries. But Loch Awe of to-day and of the future is as modern and practical as the sea-lochs that open upon the Clyde. On my first visit in 1852 there was neither steamer nor sailing-boat; now there are fourteen steamers on the lake, four of them public, and the railway trains pass round the skirts of Cruachan and rush through the Brandir Pass. There is a big hotel, they tell me, just opposite Kilchurn, from which place, by express train, you can get to Edinburgh in four hours.
The day after our arrival at Loch Awe turned out to be most beautiful (a fine day in the Highlands seems, by contrast, far more beautiful than elsewhere), and I shall never forget the enchantment of the head of Loch Awe as our carriage slowly descended the hilly road from Cladich towards Dalmally, stopping frequently for me to look and sketch. When we got near the island, or peninsula, of Innistrynich, with its dark green oaks and pasture-laud of a brighter green in the sunshine, and gray rocks coming down into the calm, dark water, it seemed to my northern taste the realization of an earthly paradise. I have lived upon it since, and unwillingly left it, and to this day I have the most passionate affection for it, and often dream about it painfully or pleasurably, the most painful dream of all being that it has been spoiled by the present owner, which happily is quite the contrary of the truth.