Intermediate Lectures. 101 



have placed boats on the same — a great attraction to strangers, and 

 a source of increasing amenity to the burgh. To increase its 

 attractions Captain Hope-Johnstone, the keeper of the Castle, has 

 asked the Town Council to supervise the cleaning out of the inner 

 fosse in the interests of science, in the hope of procuring ancient 

 relics, and also to allow of boats passing through it, as formerly 

 the Brucian barges and other boats did, till the period of the 

 destruction of the Castle from a.d. 1792 to a.d. 1800, or there- 

 abouts. To help to pay the expense of clearing out the inner 

 fosse, Lord Bute, who has done so much for clearing out Rothesay 

 Castle, had sent him £5; and were Dumfriesshire friends, interested 

 in historical and antiquarian research, willing to co-operate in 

 a kindly and jiatriotic spirit for tlie public good, that might be 

 easily accomplished without injury to a single stone of the ruin, 

 and form an object of additional historic and antiquarian interest 

 in Dumfriesshire. Of the desolate state of the Castle now com- 

 pared with what it was in its entire state in 1790, when enclosed 

 by its outer trench on a peninsula of the Castle Loch, extending 

 to about fifty acres, one could hardly imagine the vandal spirit 

 abroad at the end of last century which destroyed many of its 

 ai-chitectural beauties. But for the ill health at that period of 

 the keeper of the Royal Castle this almost impregnable fortress 

 might still have remained entire. Still, though desolate, its ruins 

 told of its ancient greatness, though weeds and nettles grew in its 

 halls, and sedges filled some of its fosses; its l-uined walls, 

 especially by autucnii moonlight, produced a picuturesque effect. 

 To visit the Castle under such circumstances was a gratification 

 worthy of the painter, the poet, or the lover of nature. The 

 Castle Loch was of itself a scene of lieauty, with its rare vendace 

 sporting in its waves, and the remainder of an old lake-dwelling 

 under the shadow of the Castle walls, partly explored, but still 

 further to be explored in search of some of the utensils used by 

 its inhabitants, such as awls, bodkins, picks, spoons, plates, 

 combs, bones of reindeer, horse and sheep, bronze weapons, 

 remains of spear heads, and rings of gold, all of which had already 

 been found in the lake dwellings of the iron age in the later 

 British or the later Celtic or earlier Roman times, in other parts 

 of Scotland and in Switzerland. 



On the motion of Mr Wilson, seconded by Mr Watson, a vote 

 of thanks was accorded to Mr Graham for his able paper, and the 

 meeting terminated. 



