The steamboats
in this country have but one deck, and that deck has no shelter, so I was
content to stand in the rain for the sake of the air and scenery.
After
passing an island or two, the Frith, which forms the bay of Edinburgh,
contracts into the river Forth. We swept by country seats, one of which
was pointed out as the residence of the late Dugald Stewart, and another
that of the Earl of Elgin, the plunderer of the Parthenon; and castles,
towers, and churches, some of them in ruins ever since the time of John
Knox, and hills half seen in the fog, until we came opposite to the Ochil
mountains, whose grand rocky buttresses advanced from the haze almost to
the river. Here, in the windings of the Forth, our steamer went many times
backward and forward, first towards the mountains and then towards the
level country to the south, in almost parallel courses, like the track of
a ploughman in a field. At length we passed a ruined tower and some
fragments of massy wall which once formed a part of Cambus Kenneth Abbey,
seated on the rich lands of the Forth, for the monks, in Great Britain at
least, seem always to have chosen for the site of their monasteries, the
banks of a stream which would supply them with trout and salmon for
Fridays. We were now in the presence of the rocky hills of Stirling, with
the town on its declivity, and the ancient castle, the residence of the
former kings of Scotland, on its summit.
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