Travels in Scotland

Publisher Marketing: Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: TEAVELS IN SCOTLAND. CHAPTER I THE CLYDE. COTTON LORDS? GEOLOGICAL STRUCTURE OF SCOTLAND ? LIGHTING OF THB COASTS ? LIGHTHOUSES OT SCOTLAND ? FIRST SIGHT OF THE COUNTRY - DUMBARTON - HENBY BBLl.'s MONUMENT ? IMPROVEMENT OF THB ri. VP!-: - BUOYS - III VEU-M I-. KS - BIGGINS ? PARCHES ? DECLINE OB STEAM NAVKiATJON. Scottish gentlemen in the linen line, some in the silk line, a. few cotton-spinners, cotton-weavers, cotton-bleachers, and one who, upon my asking him, told me he was in the woollen line, ? (I usually class the whole under thfi common name of cotton- lords, an Irish episcopal clergyman once said to me)1 ? these were my fellow-passengers in the first cabin of a powerful storm-rocked steamer, passing from Belfast to Glasgow, towards the latter end of October. Poor Irish, passing, over to the manufacturing towns of Scotland, there to seek the food and labour they could not find in their own native Paradise, and clad in rags and clouded with sorrow, occupied the second cabin; while the rest of the vessel was crammed with live and dead stock, poultry, turkeys pigs, and oxen, which we mortals so happily prize when recovered from the woe and wretchedness of sea-sickness. We steered NNE.; for this north-north-east, or north-east, is the direction in which one coming from the west approaches the interior of Scotland, whether it be by the Frith of Clyde to Greenock and Glasgow, or by Loch Fine to Inverary;. or by Loch Linnhe towards Fort- William. In the same manner all the long friths streteh from south-west to north-east, and those on the east coast ? such as the Frith of Forth, the Frith of Tay, and the Moray Frith, ? penetrate inwards from north-east to nnrth- wost. The entire face of the country may be regarded as rent and divided iu the direction indicat...