to north, in despite of the obstacles interposed by the Forth, the Ochils, and the Tay.
SHORE STREET, LEITH.
Of all the objects dwarfed and changed by the Bridge, Inch Garvie and its Castle have perhaps suffered most. Built long ago to protect the upper waters against the pirates that infested the Outer Firth, it has often since played a part in schemes of national defence. “Roy of Aldivalloch” held Inch Garvie with twenty musketeers against Monk’s troops, at the time of Cromwell’s invasion; and it was afterwards manned to repel Paul Jones. Now, looking down upon it from the summit of the great pier, it seems as if a good-sized stone would crush, like a toy, the queer admixture of old and new buildings huddled upon it. From this great height, both expanses of the Firth, with their bounding shores, lie spread below like a map.
The southern shore, now become once more rich in interest and beauty, has complacently drawn nearer hand. Looking westward, and withdrawing the eyes from the fine amphitheatre of hills that enclose the upper course of the Forth, Blackness Castle—one of the four royal fortalices specially mentioned in the Treaty of Union, and the scene of many stirring events in the national annals: Edinburgh, Stirling, and Dumbarton being the others—is full in sight, upon its peninsula. Nearer are the woods of Abercorn, whose history goes back to Roman times, and earlier; closer still, the magnificent colonnaded front, the sea-terraces, the deer-parks, and the stately lime avenues of Hopetoun House, the seat of the Earl of Hopetoun; and almost below, and on the hither side of Port Edgar Harbour, the ancient town of South Queensferry. The last few years have made “a mighty difference” in many ways to the little burgh, but have not materially altered the somewhat grimy features of its main street, which runs eastward, at the base of the hill, towards the Bridge, the “Hawes Brae,” and the “Hawes Inn,” where, it will be remembered, Jonathan Oldbuck and his young friend Lovel descended from the Edinburgh Diligence, and cemented acquaintance over a magnum of port, and where, also, adventures first began to overtake the hero of “Kidnapped.”
EDINBURGH, FROM THE FIFE SHORE.
Turning eastward, this southern shore is prolonged in the wooded knolls of the Dalmeny estate, and round the projecting point, and on the very sea-marge, is the old, but now renovated, Castle of Barnbougle, once the seat of the Mowbrays. Behind it is Dalmeny House, with beautiful sward and woodland extending as far as Cramond, where Lord Rosebery keeps a boat to ferry the public across the Almond water into Midlothian.
These latter objects, as has been said, are out of sight from the Bridge, but on the northern side one sees well into the deep inlet of Inverkeithing Bay, where the old royal burgh, dating from before William the Lion’s time, lies stranded in mud. It is still proud of having witnessed the last assembly of the Culdees, and the first movement of Scottish “Voluntaryism,” and boasts also of containing the “palace” of Queen Annabella Drummond, and the birthplace of Admiral Greig, of the Russian service. For miles the domain of Donibristle follows the advancing and retiring points of the Fife shore, which, now that the outer Firth opens up, recedes away northward as well as eastward. Within the half-circle of Dalgety Bay are the ruins of old Dalgety Church, and what remains of Donibristle House. The estate belongs to the Earl of Moray, the owner of Doune and of many broad lands in the north. The mansion was accidentally burned thirty years ago; but destined for longer remembrance is its burning, not accidental, three centuries since, when took place the tragedy of “the Bonnie Earl o’ Moray.” The “Bonnie Earl”—son-in-law of the famous Regent Moray—was in 1591 slain, as he was escaping from the blazing building, by Gordon of Buckie and other retainers of Lord Huntly, with the connivance, as was suspected, of James VI. The ballad-writers have their explanation, for
“The Bonnie Earl o’ Moray,
He was the Queen’s love.”
An Earl and Regent Moray of an earlier stem—Randolph, the companion of the Bruce and of the Black Douglas—had his home at Aberdour, the next indentation in this singularly beautiful coast. The line had soon to give place to the Douglases, Earls of Morton, who have ruled here for some five centuries, though their old castle, overlooking the lovely bay, with its projecting bluffs and shining sands, now a favourite resort for bathers and summer visitors, has been long untenanted. The wily and unscrupulous Regent Morton came hither to amuse himself with gardening, in the intervals when, from choice or compulsion, he was not in the thick of political intrigue. Edinburgh was always in view from Aberdour, and nature and simple country pursuits could not hold him long. Through the high beech groves and hanging woods, one of the most charming of walks leads for three miles to Burntisland. But the charm is no longer what it was, for the new railway line running athwart the slope has played havoc with the trees.
Outside Aberdour, and partly shielding the bay, is Inchcolm Island. It would need a volume to do justice to the islands of the Forth. Some we have already glanced at. “St. Colme’s Inch,” where, as Shakespeare tells us, the routed Norsemen were fain to crave permission of the Thane of Cawdor to bury their dead, is the most famous of them all—except perhaps the Bass. The square tower and mouldering walls of its Abbey, rising close to the narrow isthmus where the isle is almost cut in two by the sea, are still prominent objects in the view. The Monastery was founded in 1123, by King Alexander I., in gratitude for his miraculous rescue from shipwreck, and entertainment here by a hermit who followed the rule of St. Columba. It once owned rich possessions in half a dozen shires, granted in part by a Lord Alan Mortimer of Aberdour, whose body the monks flung overboard in a storm while crossing to the island, thus giving a name to the inner channel of “Mortimer’s Deep.” Invaders, pirates, and rebels, as well as the hand of time, have since sorely visited the island, but still portions of the old buildings stand, and are even habitable.
Cramond Island, almost opposite Inchcolm, hugs the other shore, and there is a road across the sands to its little farmhouse at low tide; while in the mid-channel there are many rocky islets, some of them the chosen resorts of cormorants and other sea birds. Further down, half-way between Leith Pier and Kirkcaldy Bay, Inchkeith stretches its length for nearly a mile across the Firth. Inchkeith, also, has harboured anchorites and stood sieges; and there are many curious legends connected with its coves and caves. But its most prominent feature is now the white lighthouse perched upon its highest crest; and barely visible to the eye are the powerful batteries that sweep, on the one side, Leith Roads, and on the other side the North Channel, between the island and Pettycur Point, where also great guns are mounted for the defence of the Forth. Then a long way farther out, at the very entrance to the Firth, and visible only in clear weather and easterly wind, runs the long rock wall of the May Island. In other days the May was a great resort of pilgrims, who held it a merit to reach a place so difficult of access, and barren women especially found a blessing in drinking from the well that had refreshed St. Fillan and St. Adrian. There was a religious house here connected with the Priory of Pittenweem on the adjacent Fife coast, but the monks found it by-and-bye most convenient to reside on shore. Though the light of faith has gone out, another light—a guide to the commerce entering the Firth—has been kept burning upon the May for two centuries and a half. Now its only residents are the lighthouse-men and their families, and its only regular visitors are myriads of sea-fowl.
The Carr Rock and Fidra Island lights mark, with the May, the entrance to the Firth; and scattered along the East Lothian coast, from Fidra eastwards, are numerous little islands, “salt and bare.” But none of them have the fame or the aspect of the “Bass.” This huge mass of rock, heaved up by some convulsion of nature, like North Berwick Law and other great bluffs on shore, presents seawards its precipitous cliff, rising sheer to a height of 400 feet, while towards the land it shows a green slope descending steeply to the landing-place and the remains of its old prison castle. The crevices of the rocks are filled with the nests of the solan-goose and other
