INTRODUCTION. xxi 



excepting the Burgundy-wine admirer, who somewhere gave 

 us the shp. For the better part of two days we enjoyed our- 

 selves in walking, riding, and visiting the neighbouring inlet 

 of Loch Long, with the romantic valley of Glen Croe. 



Our voyage to the head of Loch Lomond, and subsequently 

 to its lower extremity, was very pleasant. From Balloch we 

 were carried in crowded coaches to Dumbarton, where we ar- 

 rived just in time to be hurried on board of a Glasgow steamer, 

 which for half an hour stuck in the mud at the mouth of the 

 Leven, affording us more time than was necessary to see the 

 strangely abrupt crag on which Dumbarton Castle is built. 

 At length we arrived at the far-famed Broomielaw. 



Next day it rained, but we were assured that rain is of no 

 importance in Glasgow, and we congratulated ourselves on 

 the beautiful weather which we had in the Highlands. Having 

 visited the Museum of the University, and that of the Ander- 

 sonian Institution, in both which we were treated with kind- 

 ness, as well as the Cathedral with its multitudinous tombs, the 

 necropolis, the bridges, and the principal streets, not forgetting 

 the Salt Market, for the sake of honest Bailie Nicol Jarvie, we 

 left the mercantile metropohs of Scotland, and posted toward 

 Lanark. The scenery of the beautiful and fertile valley of 

 the Clyde is of a very different nature from that of the hills 

 which we had just visited, and the contrast was agreeable ; 

 but, excepting the celebrated Falls, which have so often 

 been described, and the Cave in which the Patriot Wallace 

 concealed hunself from his many foes, this tract did not pre- 

 sent objects on which I love to dwell. Still less does the bar- 

 ren moor that occupies the heights between Lanark and the 

 plain of the Lothians, over which we passed, until the beauti- 



