It is hard to leave the Nith, so much is to be said on each of its

tributaries. There is the Cairn, for instance, with its memories of

the noble family of Glencairn. Also it flows by Maxwellton, still the

seat of the Lauries, a fair scion of whose ancient house is celebrated

in the pleasing old ditty known to everybody as "Annie Laurie," though

_the_ song that rises in your mind when Glencairn is mentioned is

Burns's noble tribute to the memory of the fourteenth earl, ending--

"The mother may forget the babe

That smiles sae sweetly on her knee,

But I'll remember thee, Glencairn,

And a' that thou hast done for me!"

Even when we leave Dumfries and pass into Galloway (which consists of

the stewartry of Kirkendbright and shire of Wigtown) we are not quite

away from the Nith. On the right bank, nearly opposite Caerlaverock,

the small stream of New Abbey Pow runs into the estuary. Follow this

a little way up, and you come on the scanty but beautiful ruins of

Sweetheart Abbey. The origin was as romantic as the name: it was

founded in memory of her husband by the Devorgilla already mentioned.

He died in 1269 at Barnard Castle, and was buried there, all save his

heart, which his spouse had enclosed in a "coffyne of evorie," and ever

at mealtimes the "coffyne" was carried in and placed beside her, and

she "dyd reverens" to it as if it had been her living lord. Thus she

existed for twenty years, and then was splendidly interred before the

high altar of Dulee Cor, or Sweetheart Abbey, so called because the

heart of her dead spouse was laid on hers. Verily, love is stronger

than death!

* * * * *

The /Dee/, chief river of Kirkcudbrightshire, rises in desolate

Loch Dee, among heather-clad hills with impressive names--Lamachen,

Cairngarnock, Craiglee, and so forth. How those Celtic words suggest of

themselves a remote and desolate wilderness! Dee means "dark river,"

and in the early part of its flow so sullen is its appearance that,

with impressive tautology, it is called the "black water of Dee." Some

twenty miles from its source its colour is lightened by its confluence

with the Water of Ken, and, like other Border streams, the scenery

on its banks gradually becomes softer and richer. We have selected

for illustration (p. 326) a beautiful spot on the Dee at Douglas

Tongueland, within two or three miles of the burgh of Kirkcudbright.

Here the river still retains some of its early wildness, for it rushes

foamin' over masses of rock, but the scenery on its banks is sweetly

rural rather than wild and mountainous.

The most famous place on the Dee is Threave Castle, standing on an

islet formed by the river not far from Castle Douglas. It was built by

Archibald, called the Grim, third Earl of Douglas, and was the scene

of one of the terrible crimes which brought about the ruin of that

proud house. William, the eighth earl, had imprisoned there Maclellan,

tutor (or guardian) of Bombie, whose relative, Sir Patrick Grey,

having procured an order for his release from James II., therewith

repaired to the castle. Douglas, knowing very well what he came about,

with pretended courtesy refused to receive any message till the guest

had dined. Whilst Grey was eating with what appetite he might, the

prisoner was led forth and beheaded in the courtyard. Dinner over,

Grey produced the royal warrant, which Douglas read with mock respect

and consternation. Taking his guest by the hand and leading him to the

window overlooking the courtyard, he showed him the bleeding corpse.

"There lies your sister's son," quoth he, "he lacks the head, but the

body is at your service." Grey dissembled his rage and grief till he

was in the saddle, when, turning on the mocking earl, he solemnly vowed

his heart's blood should pay for that day's work. "To horse! to horse!"

cried the enraged tyrant. The pursuers followed Grey for many a long

league, nor did they draw bridle till the Castle-Rock of Edinburgh

loomed on the horizon. A few months after, the king stabbed Douglas

at a conference at Stirling, and Grey avenged Maclellan by killing

the wounded man with a pole-axe. In 1455 King James besieged Threave

Castle, which held out under James, the brother of the murdered noble.

It seemed impossible to batter down the stronghold till an ingenious

blacksmith, M'Kim of Mollance, constructed the enormous gun which lies

to-day on the Argyle battery at Edinburgh Castle, and is known far

and wide as "Mons Meg"--the "Mons" being a corruption of Mollance,

whilst Meg was M'Kim's wife. He named the gun after her in ironical

compliment, her voice being, he said, as the cannon's, neither soft

nor low. However, this piece was dragged with enormous labour to an

eminence commanding Threave Castle. The charge, it is said, consisted

of a peck of powder, and a granite ball the weight of a Carsphairn cow.

The Countess of Douglas, the Fair Maid of Galloway, who had married in

succession the two brothers, sat at table in the banqueting hall when

the gun was shot off; the ball crashing into the room, carried away her

right hand, wherewith she was in the act of raising a goblet of wine to

her lips. The place at once surrendered. Roofless, but still grim and

massive, the castle frowns amidst the peaceful surroundings of to-day.

They "still show you the gallows knob," "a large block of granite

projecting from the front wall immediately over the main gateway;

from here the meaner victims of the Earl's vengeance were suspended."

Rarely did the knob want the ornament, of a "tassel," as, with ghastly

pleasantly, its human burden was termed--nay, it is said that the

Douglas was so averse to see the "knob" out of use, and his power of

life and death rusting unexercised, that, did the supply of malefactors

run short, he would string up on any or no pretext some unoffending

peasant--_pour encourager les autres_, no doubt!

* * * * *

We now pass to the /Cree/ river, which forms the boundary

between Kirkcudbright and Wigtown, the two divisions of Galloway. It

is endeared to the poets, who name it "the crystal Cree"; either the

alliterative effect fascinated the tuneful ear, or they contrasted it

with the Dee, that other Galloway river whose dark waters have already

been described. Burns also, whose verse is linked with so much of the

scenery of his native land, has not forgotten this stream. In pleasing

numbers he sings its beauties:--

"Here is the glen, and here the bower,

All underneath the birchen shade;

The village-bell has told the hour,

O, what can stay the lovely maid?"

The song goes on to describe the emotions of the rustic youth, who

mistakes the whisper of the evening wind and the "warbler's dying fall"

for the voice of the beloved. Well! the lady is a little late, but she

keeps her appointment, after all:--

"And art thou come! and art thou true!

O welcome, dear, to love and me!

And let us all our vows renew,

Along the flowery bunks of Cree."

[Illustration: _Photo: J. P. Gibson, Hexham._

CAERLAVEROCK CASTLE (_p. 320_).]

In truth the river has many beautiful prospects, whereof the finest are

in the vicinity of Newton Stewart, the most considerable town on its

banks. We have selected the river at the bridge for our illustration.

The bridge is lauded in the "New Statistical Account" as "elegant and

substantial, built of granite, with a freestone parapet"; and another

authority assures us that it was built in 1813, and cost £6,000--all

which, no doubt, you are prepared to take on trust, as you can scarce

be expected to go to Newton Stewart to verify the facts!

One must not leave the river without mention of the famous "Cruives of

Cree," to wit, "salmon-traps in the stone-cauls or dam-dykes, which,

serving the country-folk for bridges, came to be well known landmarks."

They were situate near Penninghame House, in the parish of Penninghame,

and are commemorated in an ancient rhyme celebrating the power of the

Kennedys:--

"'Twixt Wigtown and the town o' Ayr,

Portpatrick and the Cruives o' Cree,

You shall not get a lodging there

Except ye court a Kennedy."

* * * * *

One more river and we have done. The /Bladenoch/ is a small

stream which passes by the town of Wigtown, and falls into Wigtown Bay,

the broad estuary of the Cree river. In 1685 it was the scene of the

greatest of the Covenanting tragedies, known in history as the death of

the Wigtown martyrs. Woodrow, in his "History of the Sufferings of the

Church of Scotland," tells the story. In the year noted there lived in

the parish of Penninghame a substantial farmer named Gilbert Wilson, a

law-abiding person who submitted to all the orders of the Government.

He had three children: Gilbert sixteen, Margaret eighteen, and Agnes

thirteen years of age. These, unlike their parents, would "by no means

conform or hear the Episcopalian incumbent, but fled to the hills,

bogs, and caves." The son went abroad, fought as a soldier in the Low

Countries, and returned long after the Revolution. The daughters had

come to Wigtown, where they were living with an old woman of the name

of Margaret McLachlin. All three, being apprehended, were tried at

Wigtown on various charges of nonconformity, the chief being their

presence at twenty field conventicles. The facts were patent, the law

clear, and it was adjudged that "all the three should be tied to stakes

fixed within the floodmark in the water of Blednoch, near Wigtown,

where the sea flows at high water, there to be drowned." (Drowning,

one ought to explain, was the ordinary method of execution for women.)

Gilbert Wilson hastened to Edinburgh, and procured, probably bought, a

pardon for his younger daughter; then Margaret McLachlin was persuaded

to sign a petition in which she promised to conform and besought the

Lords of Privy Council to have mercy on her. But the passionate words

of field preaching heard in lonely glens had sunk deep into Margaret

Wilson's mind; she refused, as she would have said, "to bow the knee

to Baal." She wrote a letter from prison to her friends "full of a

deep and affecting sense of God's love to her soul, and in entire

resignation to the Lord's disposal. She likewise added a vindication

of her refusing to save her life by taking the abjuration and engaging

conformity; against both she gave arguments with a solidity and

judgment far above one of her years and education."

[Illustration: _Photo: Poulton & Son, London._

THE DEE AT DOUGLAS TONGUELAND (_p. 322_).]

But the brave child's constancy found admirers, and her respite was

procured; it was drawn up in a somewhat loose form, and sent off to

Wigtown. Either it did not arrive in time, or (more likely) those

in authority determined to ignore it; at any rate, the sentence was

carried out. The chief actors were Grierson of Lag, the central

figure of "Wandering Willie's Tale" in "Redgauntlet"; and David

Graham, brother to Dundee. On the fated eleventh of May the two women,

being brought from prison, were tied to stakes on the Solway shore.

A horror-struck multitude lined the banks, but a force of soldiery

rendered any chance of rescue impossible. The women sang psalms; then

the fierce tide rushed in, and Margaret McLachlin's sufferings were

over. Margaret Wilson had been placed close to the bank of set purpose,

and before the Solway had done its fell work there ensued the most

moving incident in the martyrology of the Covenant. "While at prayer

the water covered her; but before she was quite dead, they pulled her

up, and held her out of the water till she was recovered and able to

speak; and then, by Major Windram's orders, she was asked if she would

pray for the king. She answered that she wished the salvation of all

men and the damnation of none. One deeply affected with the death of

the other and her case, said, 'Dear Margaret, say "God save the king!"

say "God save the king!"' She answered with the greatest steadiness

and composure, 'God save him if He will, for it is his salvation I

desire.' Whereupon some of her relations near by, desirous to have her

life spared if possible, called out to Major Windram, 'Sir, she hath

said it; she hath said it.' Whereupon the Major came near and offered

her the abjuration, charging her instantly to swear it or else return

to the water. Most deliberately she refused, and said, 'I will not; I

am one of Christ's children; let me go!' Upon which she was thrust down

again into the water, where she finished her course with joy."

And so we bid the Solway farewell!

/FRANCIS WATT./

[Illustration: _Photo: Poulton & Son, London._

THE CREE AT NEWTON STEWART (_p. 323_).]

[Illustration: THE AYR ABOVE MUIRKIRK.]

RIVERS OF AYRSHIRE.

Poetic Association--Headstreams of the Ayrshire Rivers--"The Land

of Barns"--The Ayr and the Doon--Sorn--Catrine--Ballochmyle--

Mossgiel--Manchline--Barskimming--Coilsfield House and the Fail

Water--The Coyl--Auchencruive--Craigie--Ayr--The Doon.

The rivers of Ayrshire have a corner by themselves in the heart of

the Scot, and in the memory of the world. "Bonnie Doon" and "auld

hermit Ayr" are better known and more extolled on the banks of the St.

Lawrence and of the Ganges than nearer streams incomparably greater in

length and volume. Why this should be so, the Philistine who takes no

account of the magical power of poetry may find it hard to understand.

Those waters of Kyle, Carrick, and Cunningham are short of course and

lacking in features of scenery that are in any marked degree impressive

or sublime. Their beauty, such as it is, they owe as much to Art as to

Nature. None of them can be said to be in any genuine sense navigable.

It is true that some among them are centres and outlets of important

industries. But even in the sordid affairs of trade their valleys

hardly take a first rank among Scottish streams. Commercially, and

almost geographically, they might be described as mere tributaries of

the wealthy Clyde.

The headsprings of these Ayrshire waters are nowhere more than twenty

or thirty miles distant from the shores of the Firth, and their sources

as well as their mouths come within the range of view of travellers by

that broad highway to the Broomielaw. They rise for the most part in

high and featureless moorlands, where the county of Ayr borders with

Galloway, Lanark, and Renfrew, and disappear in the folds of a lower

country in which one appraiser of the picturesque has discovered a

general character of "insipidity"--a character which every true-born

son of Ayrshire will vehemently deny as belonging to the landscapes

of his county, pointing, as his witnesses, to many a "flowery brae,"

bold crag, and richly-wooded dell watered by the clear currents of his

native streams. Some of these slip quietly to the sea behind hills of

bent and sand, lonely except for the golfer, the salmon-fisher, and the

sea-fowl. Others have at their mouths ancient burghs, busy seaports or

pleasant Clyde watering-places flanked by breezy links or steep cliff

and headland, that look out across sand and wave to the purple peaks

of Arran, to the huge columnar stack of Ailsa Craig, to Bute, and the

Cumbraes, and the other wonders of those Western seas.

[Illustration: SORN (_p. 332_).]

The county might be likened in shape to a boomerang, or to a crescent

moon, with horns tapering to a point towards the north and south, the

shore-line from Wemyss Bay to Loch Ryan representing the concave inner

edge, and the land frontier, roughly approximating to the boundary of

the river-basins, standing for the outer surface. To the north the

brown moorlands come near to the sea; the streams are correspondingly

short, and the strip of fertile coast-territory narrows to nothing. But

from the basin of Garnock to that of Doon there extends a diversified

plain country, intersected by broad ridges, veined in all directions

by roads and railway lines, full of thriving towns and villages, and

amply endowed with the charms of wood, water, rock, and hill, as

well as with coalfields, pastures, and cornlands. This is the heart

of Ayrshire--the classic ground where the Ayr and the Doon are the

chief among a host of streams whose currents flow to the music of the

choicest of Scotland's lyric songs. South of Doon lies the broken sea

of hills known as Carrick, a country with a poorer surface and a wilder

and higher background of green or heathy mountains, yet with many

beautiful and some spacious and famous river-valleys opening between

its barer uplands, which run down to the coast in bold promontories,

crowned with ancient castles, or front it with walls of cliff pierced

with caves in which has found refuge many a legend of the Killing or

the Smuggling times.

Not, however, by its memorials and traditions of old strifes--or not

by these chiefly--are the hearts and the feet of strangers drawn to

Ayrshire. It is the "Land of Burns." The spirit of the song of the

Ploughman-Bard has taken possession of the banks of its streams, and

has almost silenced all older and harsher strains. Those who wander

by them think less about Bruce and Wallace, the grim deeds of the

Earls of Cassilis and Lairds of Auchendrane, and the dour faces and

pathetic deaths of the martyrs of the Covenant, than of Tam o' Shanter

glowering in at the "winnock-bunker" of Alloway's auld haunted kirk, of

the "Jolly Beggars" feasting and singing round Poosie Nancy's fireside

at Mauchline, and of all the rustic Nells and Jeans, and Nannies and

Bessies, and Marys, with whose praises Burns has made the waters of

Ayr vocal for all time. But chiefly the music of their currents seems

to be a running accompaniment to his own stormy life. It reminds us of

his youthful saunterings "adoun some trottin' burn's meander" while

the voice of poetry in him was yet only struggling for utterance; of

his later hours of rapture or of anguish in meetings with his "Bonnie

Jean" in the woods of Catrine or Barskimming or Ballochmyle, or in his

parting with Highland Mary where the Fail steals by leafy coverts past

the Castle o' Montgomerie to meet the Ayr; and all the other episodes

of passionate or pawky love which he turned to song as naturally and

spontaneously as do the birds.

[Illustration: RIVERS OF AYRSHIRE.]

From his earliest years, as he has told us, the ambition fired him to

"gar our streams and burnies shine up wi' the best." He lamented that

while--

"Yarrow and Tweed to mony a tune

Owre Scotland rings;

The Irwin, Lugar, Ayr, an' Doon

Naebody sings."

Gloriously has the wish been fulfilled and the want retrieved. The

very names of these rivers have become instinct with the spirit of

lyric poetry. To some he returned again and again, and docked them with

the freshest and sweetest garlands of his verse. Who has not heard of

"bonnie Doon," of "winding Ayr," of "crystal Afton," and the "moors

and mosses mony" of stately Lugar? Others, somewhat more removed from

the centre of his enchantments, have been immortalised in a line or

two of exquisite characterisation. Cessnock and Stinchar, "Girvan's

fairy-haunted stream"; where "well-fed Irwine stately thuds"; where the

Greenock "winds his moorland course," and "haunted Garpal draws his

feeble source," are all parts of "the dear, the native ground" of this

master of the notes of rivers and of human hearts.

* * * * *

The /Ayr/ and the /Doon/, in particular, Burns has

painted for us in all moods of the mind and of the weather. They murmur

and rave with him in his despondency, and lilt gaily in sympathy

with the brighter hours he spent beside them. He finds them fresh at

dawn, when the dew is hanging clear on the scented birks, and they

are "sweet in gloaming." He traces them from their first rise on the

heathery hillside, through hazelly shaw and hanging wood down to the

sea--from "Glenbuck to the Ratton Quay." He is familiar with their

aspect in brown autumn and bleak winter, not less than when spring has

set their choirs singing, or when summer is in prime. Often must he

have stood and watched the effects of spate and storm in his beloved

valleys, when, brown and turbid with the rains, or with "snowy wreathes

upchoked," "the burns came down and roared from bank to brae," and

"auld Ayr" itself became "one lengthened tumbling sea." Nor, after

seeing it through the poet's eyes, can we forget the moonlight scene of

frost and glamour in the "Twa Brigs," wherein, by a marvellous blending

of the real and the imaginary, the river spirits foot it featly over

the thin platform of the ice as it "creeps, gently-crusting, o'er the

glittering stream."

The description in "Hallowe'en" of the burn where "three lairds' lands

met," although Doon might claim it as applied especially to some spot

not far from where "fairies light on Cassilis Downans dance," might be

drawn as well from scores of nooks by the Ayr and its feeders:--

"Whyles owre a linn the burnie plays,

As thro' the glen it wimpl't;

Whyles round a rocky scaur it strays,

Whyles in a wiel it dimpl't;

Whyles glitter'd in the nightly rays,

Wi' bickerin', dancin' dazzle;

Whyles cookit underneath the braes,

Below the spreading hazel,

Unseen that nicht."

Many such might be discovered hidden even in the bare bleak moorlands,

bordering upon Clydesdale, where the Ayr has its source. Their brown

undulations, nowhere taking any boldness of form, and only in certain

lights any beauty of colouring, rise on one hand to the crown of

Cairntable, and on the other to Priesthill and its neighbour heights.

Stern and moving dramas have been enacted on these bleak hillsides.

Priesthill was the home of the "Christian carrier," John Brown, shot

beside his own door by Claverhouse's dragoons; and on Airds Moss, the

heathery ridge between Ayr and Lugar's mossy fountains, fell Richard

Cameron, the "Lion of the Covenant." If desolate, the district is no

longer lonely, for coalpits smoke at the taproots of the Ayr beside the

reservoirs that supply water to the mills and factories of Catrine; and

Muirkirk--the "Muirkirk of Kyle"--is a considerable village, with iron

and chemical works.

[Illustration: BALLOCHMYLE (_p. 334_).]

Through a cold moorish country the Ayr wanders to Sorn, a place not

easy to reach even now, when communication has improved so much since

the times when a Scottish king testily declared that if he wanted to

give "the devil a job" he would send him on a journey in winter to

Sorn. Here the face of the valley changes. It runs betwixt high and

wooded banks, often rising precipitously in great red cliffs, patched

with lichen and fern, and with birch and oak coppice growing in their

crannies, below which the strong dark current rushes tumultuously

over its shoals or eddies, and sleeps in its deep "wiels," or curves

majestically round the green margins of level "holms" or haughs. Wiel

and holm, crag and hanging wood, continue indeed to be characteristics

of the valley landscapes from this point almost to the sea; and, for

its short length of course, few streams, either of the Lowlands or

Highlands, or none, can compete with "winding Ayr" in the rich beauty

and romantic interest of its scenery.

[Illustration: THE AYR AT BARSKIMMING (_p. 334_).]

These features are blended in wonderful and picturesque variety where,

at the junction of the Cleuch burn, Sorn Castle looks down from its

rock upon the Ayr, with the parish church and the village in close

proximity. Here we come upon the footsteps of Peden the Covenanter,

who was born in this parish, and had his "cave" in the dell. Memories

of Burns, however, thrust those of the fierce withstander of the

"Godless" into the background even in his native parish. Catrine House,

beautifully placed among its woods on the left bank, is lower down; and

there the poet, as guest of Professor Dugald Stewart and his father,

first "dinnered with a lord"--had his first glimpse into that polite

and lettered society which, as many think, did as much harm as good

to the man and his genius. Catrine village, a model home of industry

ever since David Dale planted his spinning factories here more than

a century ago, is on the opposite side of the river; and adjoining

it, and skirting the stream, are the "braes of Ballochmyle," whose

picturesque beauties are worthy of their singer. And Ballochmyle, the

seat in Burns's time and our own of the Alexanders, brings us to the

environs of Mauchline, which, next to Ayr and Alloway and Dumfries, may

boast of being the locality most closely associated with the poet and

his muse. Mossgiel, where he farmed the stiff and thankless soil of the

"ridge of Kyle," is three miles behind the town, on high ground forming

the watershed between the Cessnock and the Ayr. There, as Wordsworth

sings, the pilgrim may find "the very field where Burns ploughed up the

daisy," and look far and wide over the undulating plain furrowed by

many a tuneful stream to where, "descried above sea-clouds, the peaks

of Arran rise." On the road leading down to the clean and thriving

little town below, Burns foregathered with Fun and her glum companions

on their way to Mauchline "Holy Fair." In the kirkyard one may find

the graves of "Daddy Auld" and of "Nance Tinnock." Close by, on the

site of the ancient priory that had Melrose as its mother house, Burns

wrote some of his best known lyrics; while opposite still stands the

change-house of "Poosie Nancy," whose fame has been made immortal by

the "Jolly Beggars." Jean Armour was the daughter of a local mason;

and other "Mauchline Belles," besides his "Bonnie Jean," attracted his

fickle fancy, and spurred his Muse to song. The best and the worst

memories of Robert Burns cling about Mauchline.

A mile from the town--a mile also below the railway viaduct that

bestrides the river--Ayr is joined by Lugar, and the united streams

flow in dark swirls under the picturesque arches of Barskimming Bridge

and along the margin of the pretty holm in which Burns is said to have

composed his "Man was Made to Mourn." The stretch of three or four

miles from this point down to Failford is perhaps the most beautiful

and romantic on the Ayr. The current alternately hurries and pauses

in its winding course, now between lofty crags of old red sandstone

or steep banks clad with hawthorn and bramble, now through umbrageous

woods of oak and beech coming down to the water's edge, or past the

skirts of flat green haughs.

Barskimming House, a square red mansion of last century, occupies a

noble and commanding position on a rock overlooking some of the deepest

pools of Ayr. Beside it, the river is spanned, high above its darkling

eddies, by an elegant balustrated bridge grey with age and green

with mosses. A mile below, the river path drawn athwart the stoop

brae-sides plunges by a tunnel through a great barrier of red rock that

rises sheer from the right bank, and openings in the cliff face give

glimpses of the rushing stream, and of the trees climbing the crags

opposite to where they are crowned by a mimic porticoed temple.

Hard by, on the Water of Fail, is the Castle o' Montgomerie, otherwise

known as Coilsfield House, where, according to some authorities,

Mary Campbell--"Highland Mary"--was dairymaid when Burns was farming

at Lochlea, behind the village of Tarbolton, whose "mote hill,"

high-standing parish church, and long village street, in which thatched

cottages still alternate with more modern dwellings, are only half

an hour's walk away. These "banks and braes and streams" will be

associated with this brief and somewhat obscure episode in the poet's

career until song itself is forgotten:--

"Time but the impression stronger makes,

As streams their channels deeper wear."

If we may trust his verse on the point, the last meeting of the lovers

was some trysting-place by the Ayr:--

"Ayr, gurgling, kiss'd his pebbled shore,

Overhung with wild woods, thick'ning green;

The fragrant birch and hawthorn hoar

Twin'd am'rous round the raptur'd scene."

There are scores of spots near the inflow of the Fail to which the

description, in "My Mary in Heaven," of the place of meeting might,

apply. But tradition and the poet himself point to the lovely wooded

glen of the Fail as the scene of parting; and the very spot, beside a

rustic bridge, is shown.

With many a sweeping curve and abrupt elbow, the Ayr continues to

pursue its course by rock and wood and level meadow and factory chimney

to the sea; past Coilsholm and the "Dead Man's Holm," a name that may

preserve the memory of some otherwise forgotten battle; past Stair

village and Stair House, now neglected and forlorn, whence the noble

and gifted family of Dalrymple have taken their title; past Dalmore and

Enterkin, that early seat of the Cunninghames, and Annbank, where the

scene of Burns's "Fête Champêtre" is now obscured by colliery smoke;

by Gadsgirth also, whose mansion, standing on a coign of the southern

bank, was long the home of the old family of Chalmers; and on to where

the river is joined by the Coyle, whose "winding vale," were we to

trace it up, would lead us to the bold cliffs and cascades of Sundrum,

to Coylton and the "King's Steps," which, too, preserve traditions

of "Coil, king of the Britons," said to have been defeated on the

neighbouring uplands by "Fergus, king of the Picts and Scots"; and so

to the Crains of Kyle, where, among "the bonnie blooming heather," one

can look down upon the Doon.

[Illustration: AUCHENCRUIVE.]

[Illustration: _Photo: Bara, Ayr._

THE TWA BRIGS OF AYR (_p. 338_).]

The same scenery--the alternation of pool and shallow, of wood and

crag and meadow--continues along the great double curve which the main

stream makes past the grounds of Auchencruive. Each wiel and holm

has its own name and story; and the woods of Auchencruive, of Laiglan,

and of Craigie are full of legends of William Wallace, who here sought

shelter when hiding from his English foes, or meditating his attack on

the "Barns of Ayr." Auchencruive, so named from the natural trap dyke

which here crosses the river, has a Wallace "Seat" and "Cave." It is

said to have been a possession of a branch of the family of the "Knight

of Elderslie," but passed from them and from their successors, the

Cathcarts.

"Sundrum shall sink, and Auchencruive shall fa',

And the name o' Cathcart shall soon wear awa'."

From Burns's day to our own it has been held by the Oswalds. Craigie,

too, was for centuries a seat of the Wallaces; and it also has its cave

and its well, dedicated to the hero--the mark of his heel is still

pointed out on the platform of rock on which he jumped down, and whence

rushed, and still rushes, a pure spring of water. And among the trees

of Laiglan, Burns tells us that he spent a summer-day tracing the

footsteps of the patriot, and in vision saw him "brandish round the

deep-dyed steel in sturdy blows."

[Illustration: THE DAM AT AYR.]

From the summit of these high banks delightful glimpses are had,

through the trees, of the ancient burgh of Ayr. "Low in a sandy valley

spread"; with spires, towers? and factory stalks rising above the

greenery and the masses of houses; its broad and rushing river in the

midst of it, crossed by bridges old and new; behind these the sweep of

the Bay of Ayr, and, as background towards the south, the dark ridge

of Brown Carrick Hill ending seaward in the bold front of the Heads of

Ayr--the town shows bravely from a distance. Nor does a nearer view

destroy the impression which it makes, especially as seen from the

leafy margin of the stream, across the still expanse of the Dam, or

from the Railway Bridge. Lower down are the historic arches of the "Twa

Brigs" that unite the original Ayr with its northern suburbs of Newtown

and Wallacetown. The poet's prophecy, as the citizens noted with

ill-concealed delight, has been, at least in part, fulfilled. The Auld

Brig, "the very wrinkles Gothic in its face," still stands, although

reserved for foot-passengers alone; its younger rival, giving way

prematurely to the assaults of time and flood, has had to be rebuilt:

"I'll be a brig when ye're a shapeless cairn."

Near the approaches of the Auld Brig are congregated what remains

of the old Ayr houses--a diminishing company, as town improvements

break in and sweep away narrow closes and grim dwellings with

high-pitched roofs and crow-stepped gables; below it are the harbour

and the shipping. Of what was memorable and historic in Old Ayr--its

monasteries of the Black and the Grey Friars; its castle, where kings

and parliaments sat in council; its ancient church, dedicated to St.

John the Baptist, wherein great Kirk controversies have been held, and

Knox and other Reformers have preached--all have disappeared except the

tower of St. John, and even it was reft of its gables last century "to

give it a more modern appearance." Cromwell, to make room for his fort,

cleared away church and castle; and the fort itself has followed in its

turn.

The high places of Ayr are of more modern date; and chief among them,

perhaps, are the Wallace Tower, the imposing front of the Joint Railway

Station, and the Hospital and the Poorhouse, heirs and successors

of the Lepers' Home, endowed by The Bruce in gratitude for the ease

yielded to him by the waters of St. Helen's Well at "King's-ease." The

handsome Town Hall was destroyed by fire in 1897. Round the margin

of the town, especially in the direction of the Doon, are streets of

handsome villas and open spaces shaded by trees; and the place grows

and thrives steadily if slowly. But, more than of its architecture, Ayr

is proud of its sons and daughters:--

"Auld Ayr, wham ne'er a toon surpasses,

For honest men and bonnie lasses."

The "auld clay biggin" where, in wild January weather, Burns first saw

the light, is two or three miles outside the burgh, close to the Doon

and to the haunted Kirk of Alloway. Within the thatched and whitewashed

cottage--the shrine of crowds of pilgrims, whose numbers grow with

the years--is a little museum of Burns mementoes and curiosities;

and the beautiful monument of the poet, a temple raised on lofty

fluted columns, overlooks the scene. The road thither leads past the

racecourse on the way to Maybole, and crosses the romantic wooded

dell through which flows the Water of Doon, by the Auld Brig, the

senior by some years of the Brig of Ayr itself. Across its keystone

young Robin often trudged on his way to school, after the family had

removed to Mount Oliphant, two miles off on the Carrick side. In the

churchyard his father, whose portrait is so grandly painted in "The

Cotter's Saturday Night," is buried. The "cairn above the well," the

"winnock-bunker in the east," and other places mentioned in the tale of

Tam o' Shanter's ride, are still pointed out in or near the roofless

and ivy-clad kirk. The neighbourhood is haunted by the strong and

familiar spirit of Robert Burns.

[Illustration: _Photo: Bara, Ayr._

THE DOON: THE NEW AND THE AULD BRIG.]

Having lingered so long on the Ayr, we can only spare time to glance up

"Bonnie Doon," although its charms are scarce less many and celebrated

than those of its twin river. Like the Ayr, the channel of its lower

course is carved boldly and deeply into the land. It flows, in pool or

shallow, under impending crags and steep banks clothed with coppice

and greenwood, or past the margin of fertile haughs. It has its ruined

castles and venerable mansion houses, its picturesque old kirks and

bridges and mills, and its rich dowry of tradition and song. Like its

neighbour, too, the Doon draws its strength from waste and solitary

places; only, its cradle is in barer and wilder scenes, and is haunted

by wilder legends, than are to be found about the headsprings of Ayr.

Its windings would bring us to Auchendrane, the home of James Muir,

"The Grey Man," as gruesome a villain as ever figured in history or

romance; to the woods and cliffs and walls of Cassilis, the seat of

the head of the Kennedys--those most unruly of the unruly men of

Garrick--whence Johnnie Faa, the Gipsy, stole away the lady, and

where he and his men afterwards dangled from the "Dool Tree"; to many

a spot beside, famous in song and legend, until, through long bare

moorlands on which mineral works and villages have intruded, we come,

past Dalmellington, to the solitary shores of Loch Doon, its tunnelled

outlet, its islands and old castle of the Baliols; and beyond it, to

the high green hills of Galloway now rising over against the dark

heathery slopes of the Carrick fells. And so we reach the sources of

the stream under the brow of Merrick in the desolate wilderness of

granite and peat-moss that surrounds Loch Enoch and the "Wolf's Slock,"

a region the wildest in the South of Scotland, where Mr. Crockett has

found the scenery of his "Raiders" and his "Men of the Moss Hags."

/John Geddie./

[Illustration: AYRMOUTH.]

THE CLYDE.

Clydesdale and its Waters--"The Hill of Fire"--Douglasdale--"Castle

Dangerous"--Bonnington Linn--Corra Linn and "Wallace's

Tower"--Lanark--The Mouse Water--Stonebyres Linn--The Nethan

and "Tillietudlem"--"The Orchard of Scotland"--Hamilton and its

Palace--Cadzow Castle and its Associations--Bothwell Brig and

Castle--Blantyre--Cambuslang--Rutherglen--Glasgow: The City and

its History--The Quays, Docks, and Shipbuilding Yards--The Work

of the Clyde Navigation Trust--Govan and Partick--The White

Cart--Dumbarton Rock and Castle--The Leven Valley--Ben and Loch

Lomond--Greenock--Gourock--The Firth at Eventide.

Glasgow City has, as its chief armorial device, a tree of massive trunk

and wide-spreading branches. The minor symbols, of bird and bell and

fish, have lost their old significance. The salmon no longer ventures

so far up the labour-stained waters of the Clyde as Glasgow Green. No

more the monkish bell sounds to matins and vespers on the banks of the

Molendinar Burn, now turned by man's improving hand into a main sewer.

The sooty street-sparrow, almost alone among the feathered tribe, is at

home under the great city's pall of smoke.

But more than ever the stately and flourishing tree is an apt

similitude, not only of the little cathedral town that has grown to be,

as its inhabitants proudly boast, the "Second City of the Empire," but

also of the stream that has nurtured it to greatness. The Clyde, if

it is not the longest of course or the largest of volume of Scottish

streams, is beyond all comparison the most important from the point of

view of industry and commerce. Within its basin are contained something

like one-third of the population and half of the wealth and traffic of

the Northern Kingdom. Between Dumbarton Rock and the sources of the

infant Clyde we are carried from the busiest hives of labour and marts

of trade to green or heathy solitudes, whose silence is only broken by

the bleat of the sheep and the cry of the muirfowl.

Harking back to the figure of the tree of goodly stem and spread of

limb, one has to observe that it is not by any means upon the largest

of the branches that immemorial usage has fixed the name of the Clyde.

According to the popular saying--

"Tweed, Annan, and Clyde,

A' rise in ae hillside."

But this description of the source applies only to the "Clyde's Burn,"

whose valley the main line of the Caledonian Railway ascends, on its

way by Beattock Summit into Annandale. When the Clyde's Burn has

run its half-dozen miles and met, above Elvanfoot, the Daer Water,

coming from a height of over 2,000 feet, on the slopes of the Gana and

Earncraig Hills, the latter has already flowed a course more than

twice the length; and there are other tributaries--the Powtrail and the

Elvan, for instance, draining the eastern slopes of the wild hills,

veined with lead-ore, that on the other side command the valley of the

Nith--which might successfully compete, as the source of the Clyde,

with the modest little runlet, issuing from the shoulder of Clyde's

Law, that overlooks Tweed's Well.

[Illustration: ONE OF THE SOURCES OF THE CLYDE.]

A "sea of hills," green or heather clad, is the whole of this region

of Clydesdale, forming the districts of Crawford, Crawfordjohn, and

adjoining parishes. It is rolled into great waves--not, however, as Sir

Archibald Geikie remarks, steep and impending like those that darken

the Highland glens, but rounded and smooth like the swell of the

ocean subsiding after a storm. On either hand streams innumerable have

hollowed out their channels--"hopes" and "gills" and "cleuchs"--in the

heart of the hills; and the clear or brown waters tumble merrily over

rock and shingle, or skirt the edges of peat-moss or pasture land on

their way to reinforce the Clyde. Bare and bleak are these landscapes,

as a rule. But there are not wanting fairylike nooks and glades, as

well as scenes of sterner beauty. The watersides are often fringed

with a natural growth of birch and oak and alder; and on the hillsides

are thriving plantations or groups of ash and rowan, sheltering the

infrequent farmhouse or shepherd's cottage. Only at the headstreams of

the Glengonnar Water, under the "Green Lowther," have smoky industries

broken in upon these pastoral and moorish solitudes of the Upper Ward:

for at Leadhills, as at the neighbouring village of Wanlockhead, across

the watershed, lead-ore is still worked and smelted in considerable

quantity, although the gold mines of this and other parts of Crawford

Moor, once the objects of kingly quest and solicitude, have long been

abandoned.

[Illustration: THE CLYDE.]

By the sites of old camps and mote-hills, by grey peels and kirkyards,

and clachans and mansion-houses, past Tower Lindsay, looking across

from its mound and its grove of lichened plane and oak trees to the

tiny barony burgh of Crawford; past the desolate little God's acre

of St. Constantine, or Kirkton, where lies the dust of Jane Welsh

Carlyle's mother, of the gipsy kin, of the Baillies; past the woods and

lawns and pretty red hamlet of Abington, runs the Water of Clyde until,

beside the fragment of Lamington Tower--the heritage, if tradition may

be credited, of the wife of William Wallace--it brings us fairly under

the shadow of Tinto.

This "Hill of Fire" spreads its skirts through four parishes, whose

boundaries meet at the huge cairn of stones on its crest--the site of

old beacon fires, perhaps of Druid altars. It is the sentinel height of

Upper Clydesdale. Few hills in Southern Scotland are so isolated or

command so wide and glorious a prospect. Its porphyritic mass seems to

be set in the very jaws of the Upper Vale; and between Lamington and

the mouth of the Douglas Water--little more than six miles as the crow

flies--the Clyde meanders through low-lying haughs and holmlands, by

Covington and Carstairs and Hyndford Bridge, for a distance of twenty

miles and more round the base of Tinto and its subject hills. From the

summit, on a clear day, one can descry the Bass Rock and Goat Fell, and

even the hills of Cumberland and Ireland, besides portions of nearly a

score of Scottish counties.

[Illustration: DOUGLAS CASTLE.]

Over against it to the eastward rises Cutler Fell and, divided from

the latter by the rich plain of Biggar, the heights of Bizzyberry and

Quothquan, scenes of the exploits of William Wallace. Its northern

slopes all drain into the Douglas Water. The moorland pastures that

enclose Douglasdale spread away towards Cairn Table and the Ayrshire

border; and from the nearer buttresses of Tinto glimpses are had, in

the valley below, of the smoke from its coalfield and of the woods that

surround the "Castle Dangerous" of history and romance.

The story of the House of Douglas may be read on the walls and on the

floor of the church of St. Bride of Douglas, of which there remains

only the spire and the choir, lately restored by the latest heir and

representative of the Douglas line, Lord Dunglass, the eldest son of

the Earl of Home. In its precincts, on Palm Sunday, 1307, took place

that memorable struggle between the "good Sir James" of Douglas and

his adherents, and the English garrison of Sir John de Walton, who

undertook, for the winning of his lovesuit, the perilous emprise of

holding the castle of the Douglases against its rightful master. Here,

enclosed in what we are told is a silver casket, placed under glass

in the floor of the church above the Douglas vault, is the heart of

the great warrior and patriot himself, brought home after he had lost

his life among the Paynim hosts of Spain while seeking to carry the

Bruce's heart to the Holy Land. His recumbent cross-legged effigy is

one of the most ancient of the monuments to his kin who lie in the

church of St. Bride; among these being "Archibald Bell the Cat," and

Archibald the second and James the third Dukes of Touraine, the sons

of "Earl Tineman." Hither came Sir Walter Scott, with Lockhart in his

company, on his last sad pilgrimage of romance, when the shadows of the

grave had already begun to gather about himself and his right hand was

already losing its cunning.

[Illustration: _Photo: A. Brown & Co., Lanark._

BONNINGTON LINN.]

Along the waterside for miles below Douglas extend the magnificent

woods and gardens and "policies" of Lord Home's estate, enclosing the

grand castellated mansion of Douglas Castle--although this is but a

fraction of the vast edifice begun by the last Duke of Douglas; the

vestiges of the old "Tower Perilous"; the three artificial lakes, and

spots that speak so plainly of the wars of old and of the rough deeds

of the Douglases as the "Bloody Sykes," the "Bottomless Mire," and the

artificial mound of the "Boncastle."

Just where it meets the Douglas Water, the Clyde makes a sharp and

momentous turn. It reaches the romantic crisis in its career, and

tumbles headlong over the Falls of Clyde. It leaves its youth behind it

as it passes the turning-point, and makes its plunge over Bonnington

Linn. Hitherto its flow has been placid or rippling; it has been the

clear-flowing Clyde Water of song and ballad, winding among lone places

of the hills, washing the bases of Roman camps or feudal peels, or

skirting leisurely the edges of fertile meadows or rough pastures,

browsed by sheep and cattle. The sound and stir of labour have not

greatly disturbed it; there have been no busy seats of industry near

its banks. But from its great ordeal it comes forth a stream with a

changed character and destiny; not less attractive in itself and its

surroundings--for a time, indeed, it gains in beauty--but with the

sober pace and growing burden of middle life upon it, gathering, as it

moves seaward, more and more of the stains and defilements of human

toil--the black trickles from the Lanarkshire coalfield, and the sewage

of busy towns and villages--until it becomes a muddy and ill-smelling

current, flowing between ranks of tenements and ranges of factory

chimneys.

In the three miles and three-quarters of its course beginning at

Bonnington, the Clyde descends a depth of 260 feet, leaping again

and again, and yet again, over sheer walls of rock, boiling in pools

and pot-holes, and brawling over boulder and shingle bed, between

mural cliffs of old red sandstone or high banks clothed with wood or

diversified by parks and orchards. In the remaining forty or fifty

miles of its journey, before it becomes finally merged in the salt

water, its fall is only 170 feet.

[Illustration: _Photo: A. Brown & Co., Lanark._

CORRA LINN.]

Clyde's first plunge, at the Bonnington, or Boniton, Linn, is the

least deep and impressive of the three; and by comparison with the

scenes below, the surroundings of the spot where the river takes its

leap are open and bare. The water falls sheer over a precipice into a

deep cauldron 30 feet below, and is broken in its descent only by a

projecting rock in the middle. Thence it churns and eddies and boils

between the lofty walls of sandstone overhung by wood, and draped

wherever there is hold for root and fibre by trees and undergrowth,

to meet a greater catastrophe at Corra Linn. At this the grandest of

Scotland's waterfalls--"Clyde's most majestic daughter"--the stream

flings itself down from a height of 84 feet, in a tumultuous white

mass of foam, the falling body of water being broken and torn in its

descent by many sharp ledges and points of rock. In time of spate,

especially when the sun shines and wreathes rainbows in the smoke of

mist and spray that rises from the fall, the scene is indescribably

grand. The deafening roar of the angry waters, the loveliness of the

rock and sylvan scenery in which they are set, deepen beyond measure

the impression which these Falls of Clyde make on the mind and

imagination. The wealth of foliage--bracken, broom, sloe, and wild

flowers of many kinds, as well as tall forest trees--drapes what would

otherwise be the savage nakedness of the spot with hues and forms

of beauty; and there is no lack of the shady "ell-wide walks" which

Wordsworth so much appreciated, winding from one to another coign of

vantage on the riverside. Nor is there wanting the charm of romantic

and historical association:--

"The deeds

Of Wallace, like a family of ghosts,

People the steep rocks and the river banks,

Her natural sanctuaries, with a local soul

Of independence and stern liberty."

[Illustration: _Photo: A. Brown & Co., Lanark._

ROMAN BRIDGE NEAR LANARK (_p. 351_).]

"Wallace's Tower" helped to inspire the poet of the "Excursion" at

sight of Corra Linn:--

"Lord of the vale! astounding Flood!

The dullest leaf in this thick wood

Quakes--conscious of thy power;

The caves reply with hollow moan;

And vibrates to its central stone

Yon time-cemented Tower."

There is also a "Wallace Chair" below Corra Linn; and in Bonnington

House, whose beautiful grounds, to which the public have access, occupy

the right bank of the river opposite both of these upper falls, there

are relics of the hero who made Lanark and the Linns of Clyde one of

his chief haunts.

Quite other memories--those of David Dale, "herd-boy, hawker,

manufacturer, turkey-red dyer, banker, and evangelist," and of his

partner and son-in-law, Robert Owen--linger about the wheels and

chimney-stacks of New Lanark, those celebrated cotton mills which were

established, in days before steam had robbed water-power of great part

of its workaday functions, for the purpose of carrying out a noble

experiment in industry and philanthropy. And Braxfield, still lower

down the stream, recalls to us the name and rural tastes--surely, not

without a redeeming touch of grace and romance--of that Hanging Judge,

the Jeffreys of the Scottish bench, whom Robert Louis Stevenson has

immortalised as the Lord Justice Clerk in "Weir of Hermiston."

But the Castle Hill and streets of the "ancient burgh of Lanark"--now

close by, on the table-land above the river--bring back our thoughts

to "Wallace wight" and to lawless and troublous times. The site of the

old Royal Castle, which had harboured kings and stood sieges, is now

occupied by a bowling green. Lanark Moor, where armies have mustered in

the cause of the Douglases or the Stuarts, of King or Covenant, is in

peaceful possession of golf and horse-racing. In the Castlegait is the

site of the house where, according to a cherished tradition over which

the duller Muse of History shakes the head, lived Marion Bradfute, that

heiress of Lamington whom Wallace took to wife, and whom he so terribly

avenged when Hazelrig, the sheriff and governor of Lanark Castle, had

slain her for giving harbourage to the hero.

The valley below Lanark gradually opens up into the fruitful "Trough

of the Clyde," and becomes beautifully diversified by fertile fields,

by woods and lawns, and by cottages surrounded by orchard trees, that

in spring are overspread with the tinted and perfumed snow of the

apple-blossom. From the right the Mouse Water flows into Clyde through

the savage chasm of the Cartland Crags--opposing walls and pinnacles

of rock, crowned and seamed with wood, that have apparently been riven

apart to allow scant passage for the turbid little moorland stream

that brawls over the sandstone reefs and ledges in the green obscurity

below. Still the ghost of Wallace flits before us, for in the jaws of

the Cartland defile, close to Telford's handsome bridge over the Mouse,

is the champion's Cave, and perched on the summit of the cliffs is

the "Castle of the Quaw," associated in legend with his deeds. Another

arch spanning the Mouse--the Roman Bridge at Cleghorn--has associations

much more ancient; it marks the spot where Watling Street, which

traversed Clydesdale and crossed Lanark Moor on its way from Carlisle

to Antonine's Wall, passed the brawling little stream.

Stonebyres Linn, the last of the three great leaps of Clyde, is

somewhat more than a mile below Lanark Bridge, and close to the road

that holds down the left bank of the stream to Crossford, Dalserf, and

Hamilton. It has not the romantic surroundings of Corra Linn. But the

fall of water descending headlong over rocky ledges in a dizzy plunge

into the "Salmon Pool"--the "thus far and no farther" of the lordly

fish that once swarmed in the Clyde--has by many been adjudged more

graceful, if less majestic, than the upper linn. Two miles further on

comes in the Nethan, winding through its wooded strath under the base

of Craignethan Castle. It is the Tillietudlem of "Old Mortality," the

name being probably borrowed by Scott from "Gullietudlem," a ravine

adjacent to Corra Linn. It was a stronghold of the Hamiltons; and, with

its strong position on a steep peninsulated bluff between the Nethan

and a tributary burn, its moat, and its massive walls and towers of

hewn stone, of which a goodly portion yet keep its place, it must when

first built have been well-nigh impregnable. The traditional tale is

that the Scottish monarch of the time, taking alarm at the portentous

and threatening strength, rewarded the builder and owner--the "Bastard

of Arran"--by hanging him betimes as a suspected rebel. The chief

incident in its annals is the stay made at Craignethan by Mary Stuart

before fortune went finally against her at Langside. More vividly do

the frowning keep, the crumbling vaults, the ivy-clad garden walls,

and the steep copse-clad dells and braes, recall to our minds Lady

Margaret Bellenden sitting down to "disjeune" in the chamber of daïs,

Jenny Dennison scalding the too-adventurous Cuddie Headrigg with the

porridge, Henry Morton before the Council, and Burley lurking like a

wounded wolf in his cave.

From this point downward the stream of Clyde, as it winds towards

Glasgow through the centre of the great coal and iron field that has

fed the wealth of the city and the commerce of the river, becomes more

and more closely beset by the great armies of industry. For a time

they still keep at a respectful distance; their camp fires--pillars of

flame by night and of cloud by day--rising from furnace chimney and

pit head on the high ground enclosing the "Trough of the Clyde." Up

there, in an intricate network of railway lines, are busy and growing

towns and villages sending forth their smoke to overshadow the valley,

and pouring down into it, by a score of tributary streams, the lees

and pollutions of labour and of crowded urban life. But for a while

the sheltered haughs and sloping banks of the Clyde still deserve the

name of the "Orchard of Scotland." The drumlie gills and burns, that

higher up have drained moss hags and skirted mounds of slag and mean

rows of miners' cottages, break into the central valley through bosky

and craggy dells, and through acres of fruit trees and the woods and

lawns of stately mansion houses, or past venerable parish churches or

fragments of old castles, to join the Clyde. There are such fine sweeps

of river as those, for instance, that skirt the grounds of Mauldslie

Castle, and wind round Dalserf, before the now broad and full stream

takes a straighter course under Dalserf Bridge, past Cambusnethan,

towards Dalziel and Hamilton.

[Illustration: STONEBYRES LINN (_p. 351_).]

All these names invite the down-stream wayfarer to pause and survey

the beauties of Clydesdale. But the spot of really commanding interest

is Hamilton, the centre for four or five centuries of the power

of the great family of Hamilton, that succeeded to so much of the

dominion and influence owned by the Douglases in the valley of the

Clyde. The haughlands here spread out to a truly noble width; and

the lawns and parks that surround the chief seat of the Dukes of

Hamilton, and stretch down to the right bank of the river and extend

along its windings from Hamilton Bridge down to Bothwell Bridge, have

space enough to give an air of grandeur and seclusion to the scene,

spite of the crowding around it of a modern workaday world. For the

town of Hamilton is at the very gate of the palace; and over against

the low parks and the racecourse by the riverside rise sheaves of

chimney-stacks, crowned with smoke, that proclaim the neighbourhood

of Motherwell and other grimy haunts of the Lanarkshire coal and iron

industries.

From the plain white baronial house of "The Orchard," built in 1591

and set among its pleasant fruit trees, Hamilton Palace has spread

and risen into one of the princeliest piles in the land. Its long and

lofty façade, adorned with Corinthian columns, overlooks its parterres

and flower gardens; the grand mausoleum of the Hamiltons, built--at a

cost, it is said, of £150,000--in the style of the castle of San Angelo

at Rome; and the spacious parks, dotted with trees, that slope gently

towards the margin of Clyde.

The soul of Hamilton Palace has departed since the sale in 1881 of

the unrivalled collection of pictures, books, and rare works of art,

brought together by the taste and wealth of Beckford, the author of

"Vathek," and of successive dukes. With this removal the centre of

interest seems once more to have shifted to the further side of the

busy burgh, where, in the High Parks adjoining the original seat of

the Hamilton family, the "crumbled halls" of Cadzow Castle, are to be

found the yet more venerable remains of the Caledonian Forest--huge

gnarled and decayed boles of ancient oaks, sadly thinned by latter-day

gales--and the survivors of what are supposed to be the native breed of

wild white cattle.

When Queen Mary escaped from Lochleven, she fled for shelter and

aid to her kinsfolk at Cadzow. A few years later, as Scott's ballad

rehearses, another refugee spurred thither--Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh,

after assassinating the Regent Moray in the street of Linlithgow. The

Magician waves his wand and restores the scene, by Avon side, as it was

more than three centuries ago:--

"Where, with the rock's wood-cover'd side

Were blended late the ruins green,

Rose turrets in fantastic pride,

And feudal banners flaunt between.

"Where the rude torrent's brawling course

Was shagged with thorn and tangled sloe,

The ashlar buttress braves its force,

And ramparts frown in battled row."

A hundred years later, when Cadzow was already abandoned and in decay,

the victorious Covenanting force which had defeated the dragoons

of Claverhouse at Drumelog, on the dreary moorland slopes near the

sources of the Avon, marched down this waterside--the Evandale of

"Old Mortality"--on their way to make their bold but luckless attempt

on Glasgow. Soon after they were back again in this neighbourhood in

force, preparing to resist, with what disastrous results is well known,

the passage of Monmouth's Royalist troops across Bothwell Brig:--

"Where Bothwell Bridge connects the margin steep,

And Clyde below runs silent, strong, and deep,

The hardy peasant, by oppression driven

To battle, deemed his cause the cause of Heaven;

Unskilled in arms, with useless courage stood,

While gentle Monmouth grieved to shed his blood."

So writes the author of "The Clyde"; and in spite of the beauty of

the scene, the old associations of Bothwell Brig and its vicinity are

with broil and wrong and bloodshed. Below the scene of Monmouth's

victory are sylvan banks consecrated to the memory of forsaken love--"O

Bothwell bank, thou bloomest fair!" And lower down, facing each other

from vantage ground on opposite sides of the stream, are the grand

ruins of old Bothwell Castle and the remains of Blantyre Priory.

Between these two sentinels of the past--the crumbling but still

massive feudal towers of the Douglases on their bold green bank,

and the meagre fragment of the monastic house perched on its red

sandstone cliff--runs the smooth deep current of the Clyde, inspiring,

as Wordsworth has said, "thoughts more in harmony with the sober and

stately images of former times, than if it had roared over a rocky

channel, and forced its sound upon the ear." The castle, both from the

mass and height of its huge walls and round towers and turrets, and

from its situation, is still magnificent in its decay. It has had many

masters, among them that Aymer de Valence who held Clydesdale for the

English and planned the capture of Wallace. Edward I. and Edward III.

have sojourned in it. But its best remembered owners are the Black

Douglases. They swore indifferently by "St. Bride of Bothwell" and by

"St. Bride of Douglas." In the beautiful choir of the old collegiate

church, now forming part of the church of the parish, reposes the dust

of chiefs of the name; and descendants of the old race still hold the

lands and woods around Bothwell Castle. In St. Bride's too, in 1400,

a couple of years after its erection, took place in an "unhappy hour"

the fateful marriage between David, Duke of Rothesay, and Marjory, the

daughter of "Archibald the Grim," Earl of Douglas. A more pleasant

association with Bothwell Church is the birth, in the manse here,

of Joanna Baillie, the poetess, who has preserved in her verse fond

remembrances of the "bonnie braes" and "sunny shallows" of the Clyde,

where she spent her childhood.

[Illustration: _Photo: F. W. Bergman, Hamilton._

BOTHWELL CASTLE.]

The left, or Blantyre, bank of Clyde also has its "stately images of

the past." The barony, which had belonged to Randolph and to "Black

Agnes of Dunbar," fell, with the Priory lands, to Walter Stewart,

the first Baron Blantyre, James VI.'s old classfellow and favourite,

whose descendant still bears the title. Blantyre Priory had in its

day sheltered Wallace. They will show you the rock, one of many, from

which, in legend, the patriot leaped to escape his enemies. It was

a daughter-house of the Abbey of Jedburgh, which, like other great

Tweedside monasteries, had a retreat in the Clyde, when invading armies

crossed the Border. Now the rifled and wasted monk's nest is itself

besieged by the clamorous army of labour. In a nook by the waterside,

between it and Bothwell Bridge, David Dale and John Monteith planted

their calico-printing and turkey-red works--those Blantyre mills

which have since thriven so mightily, and under whose shadow David

Livingstone was born. Blantyre village grows to a town on the bank

above, and behind are the pit shafts of High Blantyre, reminding us

of one of the saddest of colliery catastrophes.

[Illustration: _Photo: T. & R. Annan & Son, Glasgow._

GLASGOW UNIVERSITY (_p. 358_).]

[Illustration: THE BROOMIELAW LANDING-STAGE.]

Escaping from the shadow of Bothwell's braes, our river flows smoothly

on between widening haughs and opening prospects within sight of

Uddington, where Glasgow has planted a colony of villas, by a long

serpentine sweep past the parks and trees of Dalbowie, and so under

the steep wooded bluff of Kenmuir, long renowned for its wild flowers

and its "Wedding Well," to Carmyle, a hamlet that still, in spite

of the close neighbourhood of the great city, retains something of

rural quaintness and simplicity in its rushing mill-dams and its

climbing garden plots. Cambuslang is only a mile below, but on the

other or southern bank, along a reach of river beautifully fringed by

trees--Cambuslang, with its high-placed church tower, its Kirkton burn

bickering down its ravine past the golf-course and the amphitheatre

where Whitfield uplifted his voice in the great "Revival Wark" of

1742; and with Rosebank, the home of David Dale, on the river front,

shouldered by dye works and neighboured by the fine new railway bridge

over the Clyde.

The high ground behind "Cam's'lang," as those name it who know it, is a

convenient coign from whence to survey the myriad spires and chimneys

of Glasgow; for the river makes only a few more great sweeps through

a plain where pleasure-grounds alternate with public works, before

reaching Rutherglen--the senior and once the rival of Glasgow--and the

Green itself, and disappearing into St. Mungo's wilderness of houses

and canopy of smoke.

Passing strange it is to one who gazes down from Dechmont Hill or

from the Cathkin Braes upon the Clyde losing itself in the murky

depths of the great city, whose fog and reek and densely packed

masses of dwellings seem to fill the valley, to reflect that the spot

was originally chosen as a place suitable for seclusion and calm

meditation; that so late as the period of the Reformation Glasgow

was a country town of three or four thousand people. How much of

the legendary story of St. Kentigern is founded on fact, none can

positively say. But we can certainly believe that he came here and

preached to the heathen Britons of Strathclyde, whose capital,

Dumbarton, was not far off, and whose "high places" were on the

neighbouring hills; that he gathered disciples about him, and founded

a monastery, after the old Columban rule, on the slopes beside the

clear Molendinar Burn, something more than a mile above its confluence

with the waters of Clyde. His shrine is still the centre of the "Laigh

Kirk," or crypt of the Cathedral, and is, indeed, the nucleus around

which have grown not only the ancient and beautiful church, but also

the vast modern city that bears the name of Mungo "the Beloved." It is

the seed out of which Glasgow has grown.

A map of Glasgow in the early part of the seventeenth century shows

it to have then consisted of little more than two streets crossing

each other--one running at right angles to and the other parallel with

the course of the Clyde--together with a few tributary vennels and

closes, and with "kailyards" rendering upon the open fields. The former

thoroughfare, as the Saltmarket and High Street, climbed the slope to

the Metropolitan Church and the Bishop's Castle; the other diverged

to right and left as the Gallowgait and the Trongait, which latter

extended as far as the precincts of the church, croft, and well of St.

Tenu--transmogrified by time and wear into St. Enoch's--in the line of

the present Argyll Street. At the intersection were the Mercat Cross

and the Tolbooth, prison and council chamber in one. The Cross was,

accordingly, the centre of the commerce and of the municipal authority

of Old Glasgow. The venerable Tolbooth and Cross Steeples still look

down upon a busy scene. Still are they redolent of the memories of the

citizens and the burgh life of former times: spite of change, they

continue to be haunted by the spirit of Bailie Nicol Jarvie picking his

way along the street, accompanied by his lass and lantern, to visit

Francis Osbaldistone behind prison walls, and of Captain Paton's Nelly

bringing an ingredient of that hero's punch from the West Port Well.

Halfway between the Cross and the Cathedral, on the west side of a

thoroughfare which three hundred years ago was accounted spacious and

even stately, were the old College Buildings, where the University,

founded in 1450, was housed until, a quarter of a century ago, the

intrusion of the railway and other considerations made it flit to more

splendid and salubrious quarters at Gilmorehill.

In this oldest core of Old Glasgow, there are but few relics left of

its buildings mid monuments of early times. The Cathedral is the chief;

and, happily, the grey shape of this grand old Gothic pile remains to

put to shame even the finest of the modern edifices of which Glasgow

is so proud. It is, like most other minsters, of many dates; but there

is great harmony as well as dignity both in its exterior and interior

aspect, its style being mainly that of the First Pointed, or Early

Decorated, period. Only a fragment, in the crypt or lower church, is

supposed to remain of the building with which Bishop Joscelin 700

years ago replaced the previous edifice of wood. Within, the solemn

grandeur of the lofty groined roof, and the long receding array of

arches of the nave, chancel, and choir of the High Kirk, with the

perspective closed by the magnificent east window, awe all beholders.

But still more impressive are the wonderful clusters of pillars,

the low-browed arches, and the dim and obscure "religious light" of

the crypt underneath. "There are finer minsters in the kingdom than

Glasgow," says Dr. Marshall Lang, the present minister of the Barony

Parish, "but there is none with a finer crypt." In the centre of the

darkling maze is the shrine of St. Mungo, the position of which, in the

sloping ground falling eastward towards the Molendinar, is the key to

the construction of the church. After the Reformation, the crypt became

the Laigh Barony Church before there was set up, in the Cathedral

green without, what Dr. Norman Macleod, one of its later incumbents,

called "the Temple of Ugliness," which has in its turn given place to

the handsome structure that is the parish church of the old Bishop's

Barony. The famous Dr. Zachary Boyd--he who, in the High Church above,

railed at Cromwell to his face--was minister for nearly thirty years in

the Laigh Barony; and from behind its pillars Rob Roy spoke his warning

word into the ears of the English stranger.

[Illustration: THE CLYDE AT GLASGOW.]

While Time and reforming zeal--aided by the voices and pikes of

the citizens of the day--have spared to us St. Mungo's Church, the

fortress-like Bishop's Palace and the "Manses" of the thirty prebends

and other ecclesiastics have been swept away, along with memorials

of earlier and later date; St. Roche's Chapel, in the fields to the

north, now flaunts a smoky pennon as St. Rollox; the high ground of

the "Craigs," or the "Fir Park," across the once limpid trouting

burn--where St. Columba is fabled to have met St. Kentigern--is covered

with the thicket of headstones and obelisks of the Necropolis, grouped

about Knox's monument, and holds the dust of some of the host and most

distinguished of Glasgow's sons; the Molendinar itself has been buried

from sight and smell--none too soon.

[Illustration: PARTICK (_p. 363_).]

Returning to the lower end of what was once the main thoroughfare of

the Glasgow of old, the Briggait--once a busy centre of the city's

commerce--led to the riverside and what was long the sole bridge

connecting the north and south banks of the Clyde. Stockwell Street

also gave access to it from the Trongait. Only in the early 'fifties

was the ancient stone structure, which had stood for five centuries

and which figures prominently in old views of Glasgow from the Clyde,

replaced by the present Victoria Bridge. Nine other bridges, including

two suspension bridges for foot-passengers and three great railway

viaducts, now span the stream within the city bounds. All of them have

sprung up within the last fifty years; and the traffic between bank

and bank has required, besides, the burrowing under the river-bed of

subways and underground lines, and the connection of bank and bank by

steam and other ferries. Chief among these bridges, as channels of

commerce and intercourse--what London Bridge is to the Metropolis--is

the "roaring lane" of the Jamaica Street Bridge. The fine structure

immediately below it, which carries the Caledonian line across from the

Bridge Street to the Central Station, marks the limits of navigation

for all but the smaller kind of river-craft; for here Clyde may be said

to merge into Glasgow Harbour, and a new and almost last chapter in

its career opens at the Broomielaw.

[Illustration: PAISLEY (_p. 366_).]

There was a time when Rutherglen reckoned itself a seaport, and when

fishermen drew shoals of salmon from the clear-flowing Clyde, and

spread their nets on Glasgow Green. Such sights have long ceased to be

witnessed; and the Camlachie Burn no longer wimples in the face of day

between alder-covered banks through the flat riverside meadow to join

the Molendinar and the Clyde. But "the Green" remains the most famous

and most prized of the city's open spaces: it is the central "lung"

of Glasgow. If not in fashionable surroundings, in its function as a

safety valve for popular enthusiasm and excitement it is the Hyde Park

of the Second City of the Empire. In it great political and religious

gatherings have been and still are held; here do the East-enders

throng and bask in holiday time, and here have been seen also riot and

rejoicing, and events of note in the history of the municipality, the

kingdom, and even of the world. To mention the greatest of all, did not

the epoch-making idea of the steam-engine flash through the brain of

James Watt as he took a Sunday ramble, thoughtful and solitary, on the

Green, near the Humane Society's quarters, where afterwards Lambert,

"hero and martyr," achieved his wonderful rescues from drowning? Did

not the Regent Moray's army here cross the Clyde to intercept and

disperse Mary Stuart's adherents at Langside? And did not Prince

Charlie--an unwelcome guest in Whiggish Glasgow--review his Highlanders

in the Flesher's Haugh?

At the time of the Pretender's visit, the era of Glasgow's commercial

prosperity--the reign of the "tobacco dons" and the "sugar dons," who

preceded the "cotton lords" and the present reigning dynasty of the

"iron kings"--was only opening. The current of the city's business life

had already begun to turn aside from the channel of the High Street, in

order to run parallel with the river, along the line of the Trongait

and Argyll Street, to absorb little suburban villages, to overflow

the neighbouring fields, and by-and-by to swallow up, one by one, the

mansions of its merchant princes. But when the present century opened,

the town could boast of only some 80,000 inhabitants. The Saracen's

Head in the Gallowgate was still the chief place of entertainment;

there Dr. Johnson housed on his return from his Hebridean tour, and

Burns was also among its guests. Queen Street a hundred years ago

had not so long ceased to be the Cow Loan through which the citizens

drove out their cows to pasture; and George Square, when the century

was young, was a retired park, with trees and turf and shrubberies,

surrounded by the private dwellings of a few city magnates.

[Illustration: DUMBARTON ROCK (_p. 366_).]

To this once rural spot the centre of interest and authority of Modern

Glasgow has now flitted; and here the city has set up its Valhalla. In

the heart of the Square a statue of Sir Walter Scott towers on its high

pedestal; and surrounding it are ranks of other monuments--equestrian

statues, and figures erect and seated: among them those of Sir John

Moore and Lord Clyde, both of them "Glasgow callants" who won for

their native city war-laurels to place beside its trophies of peaceful

industry; and of Thomas Campbell, the poet, who was born in the High

Street, within a stonecast of the old College Buildings. Chief of the

public edifices that face the Square are the new Municipal Buildings,

in which, after several shiftings from the venerable Tolbooth, the

City Fathers have set up their gods. The foundation stone of this

magnificent pile was laid in October, 1883, and it has cost the town

nearly £600,000. Here would be a convenient standpoint whence to survey

the more recent spread and growth of the city, were this a description

of Glasgow instead of a glance down the course of the Clyde. From

George Square as a centre, a radius of fully two and a half miles would

now be required in order to draw a circle embracing the whole area of

the city. In that space, and included within the municipal boundaries,

is a population which in 1891 numbered 656,000. But the circle would

enclose also the police burghs of Govan, Partick, and Kinning Park,

which, although partially surrounded by Glasgow, and essentially a part

of the same urban community, have separate municipal organisations.

Adding these and the suburban villages and populous areas attached to,

but outside the circumference of, the city, and making allowance for

the growth of five years, we have a greater "geographical Glasgow"

which Sir James Bell and Mr. Paton, in their recent work, estimate to

contain no fewer than 900,000 souls. So that since the beginning of the

century the increase has been something like tenfold in population;

while in wealth, in trade, and in the multiplication of the resources

of civilisation, its progress has been, perhaps, still more marked.

The classic but now much-befouled Kelvin is at its mouth the boundary

between the city and the adjoining burgh of Partick; and when it passes

this point the Clyde leaves Glasgow territory behind it, without,

however, escaping from the sphere of its administrative authority.

Very different is this straight, broad highway of commerce--lined

by quay walls and wet and graving docks, by shipbuilding yards and

boiler-sheds, by factories, timber depôts, and railway sidings,

burdened with craft innumerable, and overhung by the shapes of great

iron vessels (the pride of Glasgow and the Clyde) in every stage of

construction--from the stream that winds and gleams like a serpent

between its green banks only a few miles above. The opposing shores

send up a perpetual din of iron smiting upon iron: the deafening

and yet, to the understanding ear, inspiriting sound of the Clyde's

most famous industry--that of shipbuilding. The broad tide of waters

is churned by paddles and propellers innumerable. It is muddy and

evil-smelling, for Glasgow has not repaid its debt to the Clyde with

gratitude, and still makes its river the receptacle of its sewage

and garbage. All this, however, is to be changed; already the

experiment of sewage purification has been for some years in operation

at Dalmarnock, and shortly a scheme intended to embrace the whole

north side of Glasgow will be at work on ground purchased by the

Corporation at Dalmuir, some miles down the river. So that in time

trout may venture back to Kelvin, and the "stately salmon" itself be

seen basking in the sandbanks opposite the Broomielaw, or stemming the

"amber-coloured Clyde," once more pure and sweet as well as "beneficent

and strong."

Often the channel itself is choked with mist and overhung with smoke;

and vessels and houses loom vaguely through the haze, or stand out in

startling relief against their dim background when the sun manages to

send his shafts through the mist and to light up river and shipping.

Nowhere are there such sunsets to be seen as in this murky and rainy

and dinsome clime of Glasgow Harbour.

To embark on board one of the river-steamers at the Broomielaw is a

convenient mode of surveying what remains to be seen of the river and

its surroundings. Steering down-stream by the broad and deep channel

between the lines and thickets of masts and funnels of the craft moored

to either bank, or assembled in the great dock basins, there is plenty

of time to reflect on the changes that have come over the scene, even

since Campbell deplored that Nature's face was banished and estranged

from the "once romantic shore of his native Clyde," and the face of

Heaven was no more reflected in its soot-begrimed waters--

"That for the daisied greensward, down thy stream

Unsightly brick-lanes smoke and clanking engines gleam."

The days when the river could be forded at high-water opposite

Govan Point, and when a voyage up or down stream was a series of

bumpings from shoal to shoal, seem almost as far removed from our

own as the date of the canoes of our remote ancestors that have been

found embedded in the ooze of the channel in the course of dredging

operations. Yet they belong to the present century; and even after

Henry Bell's _Comet_ inaugurated steam navigation by making her runs

between Greenock and Glasgow, the better part of a day has been

known to be spent on the trip. In the course of a century and half

some sixteen millions have been spent on widening, deepening, and

straightening the channel and improving the harbour accommodation of

Glasgow; and the revenue of the Clyde Navigation Trust now reaches

about £400,000 annually. As the fruit of all this expenditure, the

Trust can point to the long lines of quay walls and the magnificent

Queen's and Govan Docks, and to a broad and straight waterway which,

from Glasgow Bridge to Port Glasgow, has a uniform depth of 28 feet at

high tide.

[Illustration: _Photo: Andrew Young, Burntisland._

LOCH LOMOND (_p. 367_).]

Even fifty years ago Dr. Macdonald could write of Govan as "a still

rural-looking village," to which the denizens of St. Mungo resorted

on Sundays, after the skailing of the kirks, to "snuff the caller

air" by the waterside; and of Partick, on the opposite bank, as

an "old-fashioned town with a pleasant half-rural aspect," also in

repute as a holiday-resort on account of the "salubrity of its air."

Now, these adjuncts of Glasgow, with the adjoining Whiteinch, are

world-famous as the headquarters of Clyde shipbuilding. From the

Govan, Fairfield, and Linthouse yards, on the south side, and from

the Finnieston, Pointhouse, Meadowbank, and Whiteinch slips, on

the north bank, have been launched some of the largest and finest

vessels--mercantile craft and ships of war--that have ever put to sea.

Dwelling-houses and public works have spread over the ground behind,

so that little is left of the "rural" or "half-rural" villages of the

'fifties. Yet Govan has its spacious breathing-space in the Elder

Park, and elms still shade the ancient Celtic crosses and monuments

in its parish kirkyard; Partick still borders on Kelvin Grove; and

Whiteinch boasts, in its Victoria Park, of a "Fossil Grove" of more

hoar antiquity than Runic crosses, or the prehistoric canoes of Govan.

Clyde, as it moves majestically away from the stir and clangour of the

water fronts of Govan and Partick, begins slowly to open what Wilson,

the descriptive poet of the stream, calls an "ampler mirror" to the

sky and the objects on the banks. Its shores resume something of their

old romance and rusticity as we come abreast of the woods and lawns

of Elderslie and of Blytheswood. Behind them is the ancient burgh of

Renfrew--once a fishing port and the rival of Glasgow--which, as part

of the earliest heritage of the High Stewards, gives the title of Baron

of Renfrew to the Heir Apparent. Further back is the romantic valley

of the White Cart, that flows under Gleniffer Braes and through the

busy town of Paisley--birthplace of poets, burial-place of kings, and

metropolis of thread manufactures--to meet the Black Cart at Inchinnan,

and enter the Clyde at the "Water Neb."

Opposite, on the busier right bank of the river, are the factories and

building-yards of Yoker and Clydebank; below these, Dalmuir and its

purification works; and lower down, beyond Erskine Ferry, the houses of

old Kilpatrick and of Bowling--its little harbour filled with craft,

new and ancient--facing the fine lawns and woods that surround Lord

Blantyre's beautiful mansion of Erskine House. Here, where under the

rough and furrowed spurs of the Kilpatrick Hills the Highlands meet the

Lowlands; where the Forth and Clyde Canal joins the tide-water, and the

line of "Grime's Dyke" (the Roman wall of Antonine) found its western

term; here where, according to legend, Patrick, the apostle of Ireland,

was born and spent his childhood--we might lay down the limits of River

and Firth. Or passing the ancient castle of Dunglass and the ford

under the Hill of Dumbuck, which was the first great obstacle to Clyde

navigation, it might be found in that grandest of landmarks, the Rock

and Castle of Dumbarton, 91 miles from the source of the Clydes Burn,

and 106 miles from the taproot of the Daer.

The lofty isolated double-headed crag sentinels alike the channel

of the Clyde and the valley of the Leven, and mounts guard over the

ancient and still thriving burgh at its base, once the capital of the

Britons of Strathclyde, and for a thousand years the refuge and defence

of kings. On the crown or at the base of the Rock many strange scenes

in Scottish history have been enacted. From Dumbarton Queen Mary,

a child of six, set sail for France to wed the Dauphin; and to the

friendly shelter of its castle she was hastening when--

"From the top of all her trust

Misfortune laid her in the dust."

The town has still its great shipbuilding industry, its shipping trade,

and its foundries and turkey-red and other manufactories. Some of the

old houses remain, along with a fragment of its collegiate church.

Other bold hills beside the Castle Rock overlook it, and the broad

and smooth Leven--harbour and river--divides it into two parts. The

view northwards from the Rock carries the eye through the wide and

beautifully-wooded vista of the Leven valley into the heart of the

Highlands.

The pyramid of Ben Lomond, buttressed by Ptarmigan Hill, is the

presiding shape. But a score of other peaks are huddled behind and

around it. Below can be traced the folds of the hills that sheltered

Rob Roy, and over against it the glens of the Colquhoun country

that witnessed the prowess and revenge of the Wild Macgregors. Loch

Lomond, the queen of our northern lakes, with its lovely archipelago

of islands, is spread between. Loch Lomond, too, is tributary to the

Clyde, and all the waters that tumble through its glens, from Ardlui to

Balloch Pier, including the fine stream of the Endrick, which drains

the heart of the Lennox, and flows past Buchanan House, the seat of the

great family of Montrose, are poured by the Leven past Smollett's old

home of Bonhill, and past the busy manufacturing towns of Alexandria,

and Renton, to the foot of Dumbarton Rock.

The prospect commanded by the southern side of the Rock is hardly less

grand, and has infinitely more of movement and space and variety.

Winding into view from out of its coverts of smoke, and under its

shadowing heights, comes the great river which in its westward course

here opens up into the dimensions of a firth; and beyond it the fertile

plains and valleys, the busy towns and villages, and the bare enclosing

hills of Renfrew, are spread out like a map. The deep-water channel of

the Clyde is marked not alone by the line of red buoys and beacons,

but by the craft of all nations and all sizes, from the dredger to the

huge floating palace of the ocean-going passenger steamer, that are

continually plying up or down on it.

As the eye travels westward the shores expand and grow dim. But the

houses, shipping, and shipbuilding yards of Port Glasgow, and the long

line of timber lying off its sea front, are well in view, and beyond

them the thicker pall of smoke and the more densely packed masses of

dwellings, chimney stalks, and masts that proclaim the whereabouts of

Cartsdyke and Greenock.

[Illustration: _Photo: Fergus & Sons, Greenock._

GREENOCK.]

One has to embark and pass this dingy and crowded side of the

birthplace of James Watt--the harbour, the docks, and the shipbuilding

yards, the custom house, the steamboat quays, the handsome classic

façade and tower of its Municipal Buildings, and the bulk of the

many spires and steeples that rise among the masses of houses which

climb the hillside--before seeing the fairer and more open face which

Greenock presents to those approaching it from the west. Beyond

Prince's Pier stretch wide esplanades, lined with trees, lashed with

saltwater, and blown upon by salt breezes; and behind and above these

are broad and handsome streets and boulevards, ascending to the steeper

sides of the Craig and the Whin Hill, on whose airy heights the town

has planted its cemetery, golf course, public park, and water works.

Beyond Fort Matilda is the semicircular sweep of Gourock Bay, thronged

with yachts and lined with villa residences, which stretch on under the

base and round the corner of the headland, crowned by a fragment of

Gourock Castle, towards the Cloch Light, the beacon of the inner waters

of the Firth.

[Illustration: GOUROCK.]

In mid-firth, opposite Prince's Pier, is the "Tail of the Bank"--the

station of the guardship, the anchorage of vessels preparing to ascend

the river or put out to sea. Opposite, the dark-wooded headland of

Ardmore projects into the estuary, and lower down the beautiful glades

and tree-clad slopes surrounding the Grecian front of the Duke of

Argyll's mansion rise gently from the water to the bare ridge of the

peninsula of Roseneath. Between these opens the Gare Loch--perhaps

the most charming nook in all the winding waters of the Clyde--with

Craigendoran Pier and Helensburgh on its lip, Row in its narrow throat,

and Shandon and a string of other seaside retreats in its inner

recesses. Behind this the peaks that mount watch over Loch Lomond,

Loch Long, and waters yet more distant--Ben Lomond, Ben Vorlich, The

Cobbler, the rugged mass of "Argyll's Bowling Green," and far Ben

Cruachan among them--stand up in the evening light in purple and gold.

Nearer at hand are lower heights that surround the Holy Loch and guard

the entrance to the inner Firth; at their feet are rank upon rank of

fine seaside residences and favourite watering-places, to which the

crowds in populous city pent rush for fresh air and recreation. All

these and other scenes lying beyond, in the outer vestibule of the

Firth--the Shores of Cowal and Ayrshire; the Cumbraes; Rothesay, and

the windings of the Kyles of Bute; and, well seen from the neighbour

island, the rugged peaks and corries of Arran--are fringes of Greater

Glasgow, and creatures of the Clyde.

/John Geddie./

[Illustration]

INDEX.

Abbey Dore, 142

Abbot's Worthy, 15

Aberdovey, 104

Abergavenny, 153;

streets, historical associations of castle, former industries, St.

Mary's Church, 154

Aberglaslyn, Pass of, 204

Abergorlech, 179

Aberystwith:

Devil's Bridge, Castle, and University College, 190, 192

Abington, 344

Adur, The, 10, 11

Afon, The, 155

Afon Cych, The, 187

Ailsa Craig, 329

Airds Moss and the death of Richard Cameron, 332

Alexanders, The, Seat of, 334

Alfred the Great and the baptism of Guthrum, 68;

his retreat from the Danes, 68, 69;

and the monastery in the Isle of Athelney, 70;

his fleet at Caerleon, 156

Allen, The, tributary of the Stour, 23

Allen, The (Cornwall), 63

Alresford Pond, 14

Alyn, The:

Scenery, and junction with the Dee, Richard Wilson, Eaton Hall,

237

Amberley, 11

Ambleside, 291

Amesbury, 22

Anglesea, Isle of, 206

Annan, The:

Meaning of name, and allusion of Allan Cunningham, 317;

ballad of "Annan Water," 318;

Annandale and Bruce, Ecclefechan and Carlyle, Annantown and Edward

Irving, 318

Annbank, 335

Anton River, The, 19

Aran Benllyn, 229

Aran Mowddwy, 195

Ardmore, 368

Argyll, Duke of, Mansion at Roseneath of, 368

Arle, The (or the Titchfield):

Source and scenery, 12;

Wickham and William of Wykeham, Warton the poet, Funtley Abbey,

and Titchfield House, 13

Armathwaite:

The Castle, 304;

Benedictine monastery, 305;

John Skelton, 305, 306

Armstrong, Johnnie, hanged by order of James V., 315

Armstrong, William ("Kinmont Willie"), his imprisonment at Carlisle

and rescue, 310, 311

Arnside, 286, 288

Arthur, King:

Legends at Caerleon, 156;

Knights of the Round Table, 160, 161;

Merlin's Grotto, 179;

battle at Camlan, 195;

association with the Dee, 228, 229

"Arthur's Chair," 151

Arun, The:

Its surroundings, Arundel, angling, Pulborough, Amberley,

Swanbourne Mill, Arundel Castle, and Littlehampton, 11

Arundel:

Scenery, Castle, and Roman Catholic Church, 11

Ashdown Forest, 10

Ashford and the Stour, 3

Atcham, 96

Athelney, Isle of, 69, 70

Attery stream, The, 55

Auchencruive, 337

Auchendrane, 339, 340

Avenham Park, 278

Avon, The Devon, 49

Avon, The Hants:

Confluence with the Stour, tributaries, Christchurch, and

Amesbury, 22;

Salisbury and its cathedral, 22, 23

Avon, The Lower:

Source at Estcourt Park, 71:

Malmesbury and the abbey, 72;

view near Christian Malford, Bradenstoke Priory, Chippenham, 73;

Melksham, Bradford and its cloth industry, Freshfield, Limpley

Stoke, Claverton, 74;

tributary of the Frome, 74, 75;

Priory of

Hinton, 75;

Bath, its history, abbey, and views of the river and bridges,

75-78;

Bristol, birthplace of Cabot, Southey, and Chatterton, St. Mary

Redcliffe, 78;

Bristol Cathedral, "The Chasm," Clifton Suspension Bridge, 79;

the lower reaches, site of the Roman station Abona, 79, 80;

Avonmouth, 81

Avon, The Upper or Warwickshire:

Source, Naseby, 107;

Rugby, the Swift, Lutterworth and Wiclif, Coventry, Stoneleigh

Abbey, Kenilworth, Leamington, 108;

Warwick Castle and Church, 110;

Stratford and Shakespeare, 110-114;

Evesham and its abbey, death of Simon de Montfort, 114, 115;

Pershore Church, 115;

Tewkesbury Church, 115, 117;

battle of Tewkesbury, 117, 118

Avonmouth, 81

Axe, The Devonshire, 27

Axe, The Somersetshire, 71

Aymer de Valence, and the defence of Clydesdale, 354

Ayr, The, 330;

in the poetry of Burns, 331;

Priesthill and Muirkirk, 332;

scenery at Sorn, 333;

Sorn Castle, 333;

Catrine House and village, Ballochmyle, Mossgiel, Mauchline,

Barskimming Bridge and House, 334;

the Castle o' Montgomerie and "Highland Mary," Stair, Enterkin,

Gadsgirth, Coylton, 335;

Auchencruive and Craigie, 337;

Laiglan, 337, 338;

Ayr town, 338, 339

Ayr town:

Viewed from Laiglan, 338;

the two bridges, 338;

remnant of ancient buildings, modern buildings, and suburbs, 339

Ayrshire, The rivers and scenery of, General features of, 328-331

Bacon, Francis, and Liverpool, 267

Badgworthy Water, The, 35

Baillie, Joanna, Birthplace of, 355

Bala Lake, 230

Baldwin, Archbishop, at Rhuddlan, 226

Baliol, John, 319

Baliols, The, Castle of, 340

Balliol College, Oxford, and the mother of John Baliol, 319

Ballochmyle, 334

Bampton, 30

Bangor-on-Dee, 236

Barle, The, 29

Barmouth, 202, 203

Barnstaple, 36, 46, 47

Barrow, 288

Barrow, Bishop, 227

Barskimming House, 334

Barton aqueduct and locks, 254

Basingwerk Abbey, 240

Bass Rock, 345

Bath:

Names given to it, 74;

beauty of approach from the east, Beau Nash, growth, bridges over

the Avon, 75;

the Skew Bridge, Abbey Church, 76;

Twerton and Fielding, 76, 77;

Kelston Round Hill, views of the Avon, 77

Batherm, The, 30

Battle, 7

Beacons, The, 150, 152, 159-161

Beaulieu Abbey, 20

Beaulieu river, The, 20

Beckford collection at Hamilton Palace, 353

Beddgelert, 204

Bekesbourne, 6

Ben Cruachan, 369

Ben Lomond, 367

Ben Vorlich, 369

Benbow, Admiral, Birthplace of, 91

Benbow, Captain, and the capture of Shrewsbury, 91

Benglog, Falls of, 207, 208

Benson, Archbishop, and Truro Cathedral, 64

Benthall, 99

Benthall Edge, 98

Berkeley Castle, 122, 123

Berthon boats, 19, 20

Berwyn hills, 232

Bethesda, 208, 209

Bettws-y-Coed, 212, 213

Beult, The, 3

Bewdley, 102

Bickleigh Bridge, 31

Bickleigh Vale, 50

Bideford, its antiquity, bridge, and the Grenvilles, 48, 49

Biggar, Plain of, 345

Birchington, 6

"Bird Rock" on the Dysynni, 197

Birkenhead:

Railway to Liverpool, 266;

landing-stages and Docks, 267;

shipbuilding yards, progress during the century, population,

Parliamentary representation, tramways, Priory, 268

Bishop's Sutton, 14

Bishop's Tawton, 46

Bishopsbourne Church and Bishop Hooker, 6

Biss, The, 74

Bizzyberry, 345

Black Mountains, The, and the rise of the Usk, 149

Black Prince and Rhuddlan Castle, 226

Black Rock, 65

Blackstone-edge Reservoirs, 244

Bladenoch, The:

Wigtown martyrs, 325, 326

Blaenau Festiniog, 214

Blaenhafren, 84

Blantyre Priory, 354, 355

Blantyre Town, 355

Bleasdale Moor, 279

Blundell, Peter, Grammar School of, 30

Bodinnoc Ferry, 62

Bolton-le-Sands, 286

Bonhill, 367

Bonnington House, 350

Bonnington Linn, 347, 348

Bothwell, visited by Mary Queen of Scots at Hermitage Castle, 314

Bothwell Bridge, 353, 354

Bothwell Castle, 354

Bovey, The, 39

Bowdler, Dr. Thomas, Burialplace of, 176

Bowland Forest, 274, 279

Bowling, 366

Boxbrook, The, 75

Boyd, Dr. Zachary, and the Laigh Barony Church, Glasgow, 359

Brackenbank, 306

Bradenstoke Priory, 73

Bradford-on-Avon:

Woollen industry, Church, and bridges, 74

Bramber, 11

Bran, The, 178

Brantwood and its associations, 294

Brathay, The, 291

Braxfield, 350

Bray, The, 29

Brecknock Beacons, 150, 152, 159-161

Brecon:

Picturesque situation and Churchyard's verses, 150;

history of the castle, birthplace of Mrs. Siddons, Church of St.

John, 151

Brede, The, 7

Breidden Hills, The, 87

Brendon Water, The, 35

Bridgnorth, 99, 100

Bridgwater:

Manufacture of bath brick, 70, 71;

Admiral Blake, St. Mary's Church, 71

Brighton, 11

Bristol:

Birthplace of Cabot, Southey, and Chatterton, commerce, first

bridge over the Avon, St. Mary Redcliffe, 78;

Chatterton's forgeries and monument, 78, 79;

Castle, Cathedral, and busts of Joseph Butler, Southey, and Mary

Carpenter, floating harbour, "The Chasm," Clifton Suspension

Bridge, 79

Broadstairs, 6

Broseley, 99

Broughton Gifiord brook, 74

Brown Willy, 60

Brownsholm Hall and the Seal of the Commonwealth, 274

Bruce, Robert, and Annandale, 318;

his dispute with the Red Cumyn, 319

Brue, The, 71

Brydges, Sir Egerton, 6

Buchanan House, 367

Buckfastleigh, 41, 42

Buckland Abbey, 46

Buildwas Abbey, 98, 99

Builth, 130

Burgh-on-the-Sands, 310

Burnham, 71

Burnley, 276

Burns, Robert, at Dumfries, 319;

and Lincluden Abbey, 319;

incident of his last days, and monument in St. Michael's

Churchyard, 319;

and the Glencairn family, 321;

and the rivers and scenery of Ayrshire, 330, 331, 334, 335, 337;

birthplace and relics, 339

Bute, Marquess of, and the Cardiff Docks, 166

Buttermere, 299

Buxted, and the manufacture of the first cannon, 10

Cabot, Sebastian, Birthplace of, 78

Cadbury Castle, 31

Cade, Jack, 3

Cader Idris, 197, 200, 203

Cadzow Castle, 353, 354

Caerlaverock Castle and the Maxwell family, 320, 321

Caerleon, its splendour in Roman times, Arthurian legends,

university and bishopric, 155, 156

Caersws fortress in Roman times, 86

Cain, The, 202

Cairntable, 332

Calder, The (Lancashire), 279

Caldew, The, 307

Cale, The, 23

Caledonian Forest, Remains of, 353

Calstock, 56

Cambuslang, 357

Cambusnethan, 353

Camel, The, 54

Camlan, The, 202

Camlan, Farmhouse of, 195

Canford Hall, 23

Canonbie, 314, 315

Canterbury and its associations, 3, 4

Capel Curig, 210

Caradoc Hills, 94

Cardiff:

Water-supply, 162;

Castle, mansion of the Marquis of Bute, 166;

docks, streets, and exhibition, 166, 167

Cardigan, 188

Carew, Bampfylde Moore, the "King of the Beggars," 31

Carew Castle, its historical associations and present condition,

182, 183

Carew family, The, 182, 183

Carlisle: 307;

incursions by the Northmen, the Castle, 308;

lines by Mrs. Sigourney, 309;

Edward I. and the oath enjoined on the Prince of Wales, 309, 310;

"Kinmont Willie" and Buccleuch, 310, 311;

execution of Jacobites, 311;

Cathedral, 312

Carlyle, Thomas, Birthplace of, 319

Carmarthen, 79, 80

Carmyle, 357

Carnarvon, Town and Castle of, 206, 219

Carnforth, 285

Carrick Road estuary, 65

Carron, The, 318

Carstairs, 345

Cartland Crags, 350

Cartmel Peninsula, 288

Cartsdyke, 367

Cassilis and the Kennedys, 340

Castell Coch, 164

Castle Head (or Alterpite Castle), 288

Castlerigg Top, View of Lakeland from, 299

Caton, The Vale of, The poet Gray on, 282

Catrine, 332, 334;

and the visit of Burns to Dugald Stewart, 334

Cefn Carnedd, British earthwork, 85

Ceiriog, The, 234

Cenarth, 187

Cessnock, The, 334

Ceunant Mawr, 205, 206

Chagford, 38

Charlecote and Sir Thomas Lucy, 111

Chartists, Attack on Newport of, 158

Chatterton, his birthplace, forgeries, and monument, 78, 79

Chepstow, 146, 147

Cheriton, Defeat of the Royalists at, 15

Chester:

Antiquity, "Rows," walls, Cathedrals, 238, 239

Chetham, Humphrey, and Chetham College, 251

Chillingham cattle, 274

Chippenham, 73

Chirk Castle, 234, 235

Chow, The, 78

Christchurch:

Salmon-fishing, church, and Shelley memorial, 22

Chudleigh, 38

Churchyard, the poet, on the situation of Brecon, 150;

on the Vale of Clwyd, 223;

and Valle Crucis Abbey, 233;

on the waters of the Dee, 233;

and Offa's Dyke, 235

Chweffru, The, 130

Cilhepste Fall, The, 170

Claerwen, The, 127

"Clam" Bridge over the Wallabrook, 38

Clapdale Ravine, 282

Clare, Richard, Earl of, Murder of, 153

Cleghorn, Roman bridge at, 351

Cletwrs, The two, 187

Clifford Castle and Rosamond, 132, 133

Clough, Memorial stone to, 289

Clun Gwyn Falls, 170

Clwyd, The:

Rhyl, Rhuddlan, 223-226;

junction with the Elwy, 226

Clyde, The:

Its importance, the population and wealth within its basin, and

variety of scenes on its banks, 342;

source and some of its tributaries, 342, 343;

the "sea of hills" of Clydesdale, 343, 344;

the trees on the banks, 344;

smoky industries of the Upper Ward at Leadhills and Wanlockhead,

344;

its course past Tower Lindsay, the churchyard of St. Constantine,

or Kirkton, the woods and lawns of Abington, and the fragment of

Lamington Tower, 344;

Tinto Hill--"Hill of Fire"--and the prospects it commands, 344,

345;

its meandering through haughs and holmlands, by Covington,

Carstairs, and Hyndford Bridge, 345;

scenes of Wallace's exploits, 345;

Douglas Water, 345, 347;

the Church of St. Bride of Douglas and the struggle between the

"good Sir James" and St. John de Walton, 345, 346;

Douglas Castle, 345, 347;

Falls at Bonnington Linn, 347, 348;

Corra Linn Falls--"Clyde's most majestic daughter," 348-350;

meeting the Douglas Water, 347;

"Wallace's Tower" and "Wallace Chair," 350;

Braxfield, Lanark, "Trough of the Clyde," 350;

Mouse Water and Cartland Crags, 351;

Roman bridge at Cleghorn and site of Watling Street, 351;

Stonebyres Linn, the Nethan, Craignethan Castle and Mary Stuart,

351;

"Orchard of Scotland," 351;

Hamilton, 353;

Hamilton Palace and the Beckford collection, 353;

Cadzow Castle, 353, 354;

remains of the Caledonian Forest, 353;

Bothwell Castle, 354, 355;

Blantyre, 355;

Uddington, Dalbowie, Carmyle, Cambuslang, 357;

Rutherglen, 358, 361;

Glasgow, 358-365;

St. Mungo, 358, 364;

the early days of steamships, 364;

widening and deepening the channel, 364;

Partick, Whiteinch, Govan, shipbuilding yards, 365;

the opening of an "ampler mirror," 366;

Renfrew, valley of the White Cart, Inchinnan, Yoker, Clydebank,

Dalmuir and its purification works, Erskine House, Castle of

Dunglass, and Hill of Dumbuck, 366;

Dumbarton Castle and town, 366;

prospects from Dumbarton Rock, 367;

Greenock, Gourock, Fort Matilda, Whin Hill, the Clock Light, the

"Tail of the Bank," Ardmore, Roseneath, and the Duke of Argyll's

mansion, 368;

Gare Loch, 368, 369;

Craigendoran Pier, Helensburgh, Row, and Shandon, 369;

view of the peaks of Ben Lomond, Ben Vorlich, The Cobbler,

"Argyll's Bowling Green," and Ben Cruachan, 369;

seaside residences and watering-places, 369

Clydebank, 366

Clydesdale, The hills of, 343

Coalbrook Dale, 99

Cobbler Peak, The, 369

Cobden, Richard:

Statue at Stockport, 245

Coccium, Roman station of, 278

Cocker, The:

Crummock Water, scenery, cataracts, Vale of Lorton, Cockermouth,

Workington, 299, 300

Cockermouth, 299, 300

Codale Tarn, 288

Coelbren, 177

Coilsfield House (Castle o' Montgomerie) and "Highland Mary," 335

Coldwell Rocks, 138, 140, 141

Coleridge, Birthplace of, 27

Coleridge, Hartley, Burialplace of, 289

Condover, 98

Coniston Water, 294

Conway, 206, 220

Conway, The:

Bettws and Llanrwst, 217, 218;

Gwydir Castle, Llanbedr and ancient British post, Trefriw, 218;

Castle, 219, 220;

Conway town, 220;

Deganwy, pearl-fishery and Castle, 221, 222;

Llandudno, 222

Conway Castle, 219, 220

Corby Castle, 307

Cornbrook, The, 246

Corra Linn, 348, 349

Corwen and associations of Owen Glendower, 230, 231

Cotehele House, 58

Cotehill, 306

Cothi, 179

Countess Weir, 34

Courtfield and Henry V., 138

Courthose, Robert, eldest son of the Conqueror, tomb in Gloucester

Cathedral, 122

Coventry, 108

Covington, 345

Coyle, The, 335

Craig-y-Nos and Madame Patti, 177, 178

Craigendoran, 369

Craigenputtock, 318

Craigie, 337

Craignethan Castle, 351

Craigs of Kyle, 335

Crake, The, 293;

and Coniston Water, Brantwood and Gerald Massey, 294

Cranbrook, 38

Cranmer and his palace at Bekesbourne, 6

Cranmere Pool, 37, 41, 45

Crawford, 343, 344

Crawford Moor, 344

"Cray," Drayton's, 150

Cree, The:

Scenery near Newton Stewart and bridge, 323;

the "Cruives of Cree," 323, 324

Creedy, The, 31

Crewkerne, 67

Crickhowell, 153