ad by which
we had ascended, we made our way over the rough stones left bare by the
tide, round the bottom of the rock, to the point where we had set off.
This is a wild and melancholy walk on a blustering cloudy day: the naked
bed of the river, scattered over with sea-weed; grey swampy fields on the
other shore; sea-birds flying overhead; the high rock perpendicular and
bare. We came to two very large fragments, which had fallen from the
main rock; Coleridge thought that one of them was as large as
Bowder-Stone, {61} William and I did not; but it is impossible to judge
accurately; we probably, without knowing it, compared them with the whole
mass from which they had fallen, which, from its situation, we consider
as one rock or stone, and there is no object of the kind for comparison
with the Bowder-Stone. When we leave the shore of the Clyde grass begins
to show itself on the rock; go a considerable way--still under the
rock--along a flat field, and pass immediately below the white house,
which wherever seen looks so ugly.

Left Dumbarton at about eleven o'clock. The sky was cheerless and the
air ungenial, which we regretted, as we were going to Loch Lomond, and
wished to greet the first of the Scottish lakes with our cheerfullest and
best feelings. Crossed the Leven at the end of Dumbarton, and, when we
looked behind, had a pleasing view of the town, bridge, and rock; but
when we took in a reach of the river at the distance of perhaps half a
mile, the swamp ground, being so near a town, and not in its natural
wildness, but seemingly half cultivated, with houses here and there, gave
us an idea of extreme poverty of soil, or that the inhabitants were
either indolent or miserable. We had to travel four miles on the banks
of the 'Water of Leven' before we should come to Loch Lomond. Having
expected a grand river from so grand a lake, we were disappointed; for it
appeared to me not to be very much larger than the Emont, and is not near
so beautiful; but we must not forget that the day was cold and gloomy.
Near Dumbarton it is like a river in a flat country, or under the
influence of tides; but a little higher up it resembles one of our
rivers, flowing through a vale of no extreme beauty, though prettily
wooded; the hills on each side not very high, sloping backwards from the
bed of the vale, which is neither very narrow nor very wide; the prospect
terminated by Ben Lomond and other mountains. The vale is populous, bu