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noble or kingly birth, that had approached Edinburgh for at least a thou- 

 sand years, must certainly have passed ; which has bome processions 

 of monks, and marches of armies, and trains of kings; which has rattled 

 under the feet of Mary's frolic steed, and thundered beneath the war- 

 horse of Cromwell." Near the bridge are found Mentha sativa, 0. 

 rubra, and Chenopodium olidum. At the eastern extremity of Mus- 

 selburgh the road skirts the links or sand downs where the Marquis of 

 Hamilton, as the commissioner of Charles I. was met in 1638 by as- 

 sembled thousands of the Covenanters, who lined the road to Edin- 

 burgh during his progress ; and here also Cromwell encamped his in- 

 fantry while his cavalry were quartered in the burgh in 1650. The 

 Links are famous in a botanical point of view as being a station for 

 Trifolium ornithopodioides. Pinkie House, which has been celebra- 

 ted both in song and story, is beautifully situated in the same neigh- 

 bourhood, within sight of the road ; and as we passed along we caught 

 glimpses of the battle-field of Prestonpans, and of the house inhabited 

 in 1745, by the gallant and pious Colonel Gardiner, who fell in that 

 engagement. Prestonpans, which has become celebrated in modern 

 times for the ale it brews, still carries on its ancient manufacture of 

 salt. The monks of Holyrood and Newbattle, the early superiors of 

 this and the adjoining parish of Tranent, were the first to establish 

 salt-pans on the shore of Preston (Priestistown) village, which there- 

 fore received the name it bears in ancient ecclesiastical records of 

 ' Salt Preston.' The manufacture, however, is now carried on, not by 

 the evaporation of sea-water, but by the purifying and recrystallising 

 of rock-salt imported from the neighbourhood of Liverpool. We 

 made a brief stay at the village of Aberlady, which is remarkable only 

 for its spacious bay, affording sea-room for a whole fleet. Our coun- 

 trymen in these parts, at the period of the threatened invasion by 

 France, considered this to be the spot which Napoleon would in all 

 probability select for disembarking his troops. Had'he done so, the 

 probability is equally strong that he would not have tarried longer 

 than we did in a region offering but indifferent temptations to the cu- 

 pidity of an invader, whether he comes armed with the munitions of 

 war, or bearing the peaceful implements of the spadix and vasculum. 



About 5 o'clock we reached North Berwick, and having made the 

 necessary arrangements for our accommodation for the night, set off 

 by our stage coach for the Bass. The shore here becomes rocky and 

 precipitous, presenting a succession of bold cliffs, contrasting agree- 

 ably with the quiet sandy bays by which they are intersected. This 

 is the trappean district of the coal-measures, and the junctions of the 



