THE BASS-THE GARLETON HILLS.

It

engirt by the sea. It was a fortress, in form of an irregular hexagon, so very strong in both site and structure as to be deemed impregnable. A proverbial saying prevailed for centuries, "Ding doon Tantallan! mak a brig to the Bass!""Knock down Tantallan! make a bridge to the Bass!"--the one achievement being reckoned as hopeless as the other. The castle was the chief stronghold of the Earls of Douglas from very early times till the period of their forfeiture. afterwards passed to the Earls of Angus; was the retreat of the fifth earl, "Bell the Cat," in his exploits against the Crown; made triumphant resistance, under the sixth earl, to the entire forces of James V., with the king himself at their head, but surrendered under a compromise with its governor; was recovered and re-fortified by the earl after the king's death; suffered siege and capture, in 1639, by the Covenanters; and was sold, in the beginning of the 18th century, by the Marquis of Douglas to Lord President Dalrymple, and allowed then to fall into decay. Its outer walls are still tolerably entire; but its interior is a labyrinth of broken stair cases, ruined chambers, and dismal vaults. Its former condition is described as follows by Sir Walter Scott:

"Tantallan vast,

Broad, massive, high, and stretching far,
And held impregnable in war.
On a projecting rock it rose,

And round three sides the ocean flows,
The fourth did battled walls enclose,

And double mound and fosse;
By narrow drawbridge, outworks strong,
Through studded gates, an entrance long,
To the main court they cross:
It was a wide and stately square,
Around were lodgings fit and fair,
And towers of various form,
Which on the coast projected far,
And broke its lines quadrangular:
Here was square keep, there turret high,
Or pinnacle that sought the sky,
Whence oft the warder could descry

The gathering ocean-storm."

44. THE BASS is an insulated crag, fully a mile in circumference, and about 420 feet high. Its northern and highest side is precipitous; and only its southeast side is accessible, and only at one point; and this point was long commanded by a small fortalice, now in ruin. The Bass was a hermitage of the Culdee St. Baldred, who died on it in 606. It became a stronghold of the family of Lauder; it passed, in 1671, to the Crown, and was used as a State prison for the confinement of some of the worthies of the Covenant; and after the Revolution, it held out two years for the house of Stuart, and was the last place in Scotland to submit to the new régime.

45. THE GARLETON HILLS extend | Garleton House, at the north foot of the about 4 miles east and west. They have no great height, yet make a conspicuous appearance, and command an extensive panoramic view. They consist of trap rocks, chiefly porphyries, merging into clinkstone. A tall monument crowns one of their highest points, to the memory of the martial Earl of Hopetoun,

Garelton Hills, was formerly a superb mansion, a seat of the Earls of Winton, but is now a ruin. Athelstaneford, in the same neighbourhood, 3 miles northnorth-east of Haddington, is an ancient church village, said to have taken its name from Athelstan, a Danish general, who was slain at it, in battle with a

16

HADDINGTON-GIFFORD.

Scottish army, about the beginning of riage of Queen Mary with the Dauphin of France, is about a mile to the east.

66

the 9th century. Blair, the author of "The Grave," and Home, the author of Douglas," were ministers at Athelstaneford. Gilmerton, the seat of Sir David Kinloch, Bart., stands a mile to the east. The mansions of Elvingston, Laverock Hall, Huntington, Alderston, Letham, and Clerkington, stand near the railway, between Longniddry and Haddington.

46. HADDINGTON stands on the Tyne. It was a royal burgh at least as early as the time of David I. Ada, countess of Northumberland, mother of Malcolm IV. and William the Lion, resided in it and fostered it. William the Lion also resided at times in it. Alexander II. was born in it. King John of England burnt it in 1216. Edward III. burnt it again in 1356. The English, in 1548, after the battle of Pinkie, fortified it, placed in it a strong garrison, and used it as the central point for commanding all the country between the Tweed and Edinburgh. They continued to hold it about eighteen months, in defiance of strenuous besieging operations against it, and at length were able to withdraw from it without loss of either men or stores. Its fortifications, excepting a few pieces of the wall, have entirely disappeared. It gives the title of Earl, in the peerage of Scotland, to a branch of the family of Hamilton.

The country around Haddington is rich valley land, studded with mansions, and highly embellished. The mansions of Amisfield (the Earl of Wemyss), and Stevenston (Admiral Sir John G. Sinclair), are on the east, adjacent to the Tyne; and those of Monkrig (Alexander More, Esq.), Lennoxlove (the Dowager Lady Blantyre), and Coalston (the Marquis of Dalhousie), are on the south, on the way to Gifford. The small village of Abbey, where a Cistercian nunnery was founded in 1178, by the Countess Ada of Northumberland, and where the Parliament met which sanctioned the mar

It

The town itself stands chiefly on the left bank of the Tyne, but has a suburb, called Nungate, on the right bank. contains three principal streets, besides smaller thoroughfares, and has a wellbuilt, neat, and clean appearance. The Parish Church is the nave of a Franciscan friary, built in the 12th or 13th century. The nave, and the central tower, 90 feet high, are in excellent preservation; but the transepts and the choir are considerably dilapidated. The entire pile measures 210 feet from east to west, and 110 feet along the transepts. It has still an imposing appearance, and was anciently in such repute as to be called the Lamp of Lothian. Within it | is a grand Corinthian mausoleum of the noble family of Lauderdale; and around it is an extensive cemetery, containing some interesting monuments. The County Buildings are in the old English style, and were erected in 1833, at the cost of £5500. The Town Buildings are a patchwork of different erections, and at different dates, embellished with a steeple, built in 1831, and 150 feet high. The Corn Exchange is a commodious structure, with a plain but massive façade, built in 1854. A monument to the inemory of Robert Ferguson of Raith, comprising a base with emblematic figures, a lofty fluted column, and a surmounting statue, stands near the railway station. Haddington has a key post office, four banking offices, and a public readingroom. Its principal inn is the George. It unites with Dunbar and three other burghs in sending a member to Parliament. Its population in 1851 was 3883.

47. GIFFORD stands on a tributary of the Tyne, in a well-wooded valley, flanked by gently swelling ridges. It comprises two streets, transverse to each other, both well edificed, and one of them connecting by an avenue with the grounds of Yester House. It was the birth-place of John Knox, the Reformer, and of Dr.

John Witherspoon, the theological au- | extraction, obtained the lands of Yester thor. It has a post office under Had- from William the Lion; an heiress of dington. Yester House, the seat of the his line, in the time of Robert II., conMarquis of Tweeddale, is about a mile to veyed them by marriage to Sir William the east-south-east; and Yester Castle, Hay of Locherwart; and their descendthe residence of the ancestors of the ants were elevated to the dignities of marquis, famous for its "Hobgoblin Lord Yester in 1488, Earl of Tweeddale Hall," is further to the south. Hugh de in 1646, and Marquis of Tweeddale and Gifford, a gentleman of Anglo-Saxon Earl of Gifford in 1694.

18

THE WEST BORDER, AND THENCE TO EDINBURGH.

SECOND DIVISION.

THE WEST BORDER, AND THENCE TO EDINBURGH.

THE Caledonian Railway, connecting at Carlisle with railways from the south and the south-west of England, goes north-north-westward to Carstairs on the Clyde, splits there into two lines, towards respectively Edinburgh and Glasgow, and proceeds thence north-north-eastward, by the righthand line, to Edinburgh. The country traversed by it to Carstairs is, first, a low, flat tract along the head of the Solway Frith; next, the broad, rich valley of Annandale; next, a chain of defiles through the Southern Highlands of Scotland; next, the upper part of the Strath of Clyde: and from Carstairs to Edinburgh, first a bleak, moorish, broad-based range of semitabular hills; and next, the fertile, brilliant, undulated, hanging plain of Mid-Lothian. The Glasgow and South-Western Railway deflects from the Caledonian in the neighbourhood of Gretna Green, goes along the Scottish champaign sea-board of the Solway Frith to Dumfries, and proceeds thence Nithisdale into Ayrshire, toward Glasgow. Coaches, in connection with the railway trains, run from Dumfries to Lockerby, from Dumfries to Beattock, from Moffat to Beattock, and from Biggar to Symington. A railway from Dumfries to the Caledonian, either at Lockerby or in the neighbourhood of Dinwoodie, is under discussion; and one from the Tweed, by Broughton and Biggar, to Symington, is partly under consideration, partly in progress. We shall, in the present division, trace the routes by railway from Carlisle to Edinburgh, by railway from Carlisle to Sanquhar, by road from Dumfries to Lockerby, and by road from Dumfries to Moffat.

up