52 JOHN DUNCAN, WEAVER AND BOTANIST. 



or soon followed her to the same city, and continued his 

 kindly attentions to his mother, visiting her regularly and 

 paying her rent, a large demand on his poor purse, till 

 her death, about 1830, above fifty years of age. 



In 1816, when Duncan removed to the granite capital 

 of the north-east of Scotland, Aberdeen was not then 

 the large, fine city it now is, but a comparatively small 

 provincial town, with narrow streets, grouped chiefly round 

 St. Catherine's Hill. The ideas of what then constituted 

 a street are still preserved in the name of Broad Street, 

 which is little better than a winding lane, leading to the 

 University of Marischall College the old building erected 

 by Earl Keith in 1 593, for the present handsome structure 

 was not built till 1837. The splendid thoroughfare of 

 Union Street, now one of the good streets of Europe, had 

 just been begun, about 1812, by the construction of the high 

 bridge across the Den Burn. All south of it, where now 

 stands the spacious and substantial city between it and 

 the Dee, was then green fields, where Duncan gathered 

 herbs in the dewy morning. 



John's travelling at that time, and long, long after, 

 was performed altogether on foot, a mode of locomotion 

 then almost universal amongst the mass of the people, 

 who thought nothing of thirty or forty miles a day. He 

 was always a splendid pedestrian, excelling most men in 

 the smartness and extent of his journeys. He approached 

 Aberdeen by the old Brig of Dee, then half its present 

 width, passed over the narrow, parapet-less bridge spanning 

 the Ruthrieston Burn close by, one of the oldest bridges 

 in the district now deserted, but over which went the 

 traffic of hundreds of years and he entered the town by 



