Chapter 10

TO THE PENTLAND HILLS.

ON three sides of Edinburgh, the country slopes
downward from the city, here to the sea, there to the fat
farms of Haddington, there to the mineral fields of
Linlithgow. On the south alone, it keeps rising until it
not only out-tops the Castle but looks down on Arthur's
Seat. The character of the neighbourhood is pretty
strongly marked by a scarcity of hedges; by many stone
walls of varying height; by a fair amount of timber, some
of it well grown, but apt to be of a bushy, northern
profile and poor in foliage; by here and there a little
river, Esk or Leith or Almond, busily journeying in the
bottom of its glen; and from almost every point, by a
peep of the sea or the hills. There is no lack of
variety, and yet most of the elements are common to all
parts; and the southern district is alone distinguished
by considerable summits and a wide view.

From Boroughmuirhead, where the Scottish army
encamped before Flodden, the road descends a long hill,
at the bottom of which and just as it is preparing to
mount upon the other side, it passes a toll-bar and
issues at once into the open country. Even as I write
these words, they are being antiquated in the progress of
events, and the chisels are tinkling on a new row of
houses. The builders have at length adventured beyond
the toll which held them in respect so long, and proceed
to career in these fresh pastures like a herd of colts
turned loose. As Lord Beaconsfield proposed to hang an
architect by way of stimulation, a man, looking on these
doomed meads, imagines a similar example to deter the
builders; for it seems as if it must come to an open
fight at last to preserve a corner of green country
unbedevilled. And here, appropriately enough, there
stood in old days a crow-haunted gibbet, with two bodies
hanged in chains. I used to be shown, when a child, a
flat stone in the roadway to which the gibbet had been
fixed. People of a willing fancy were persuaded, and
sought to persuade others, that this stone was never dry.
And no wonder, they would add, for the two men had only
stolen fourpence between them.

For about two miles the road climbs upwards, a long
hot walk in summer time. You reach the summit at a place
where four ways meet, beside the toll of Fairmilehead.
The spot is breezy and agreeable both in name and aspect.
The hills are close by across a valley: Kirk Yetton, with
its long, upright scars visible as far as Fife, and
Allermuir the tallest on this side with wood and tilled
field running high upon their borders, and haunches all
moulded into innumerable glens and shelvings and
variegated with heather and fern. The air comes briskly
and sweetly off the hills,