irst sight, would seem to bid defiance to any feet save those
of goats and chamois; but patience and perseverance generally enable
mankind to overcome things which, at first sight, appear impossible.
Indeed, what is there above man's exertions? Unwearied determination
will enable him to run with the horse, to swim with the fish, and
assuredly to compete with the chamois and the goat in agility and
sureness of foot. To scale the rock was merely child's play for the
Edinbro' callants. It was my own favourite diversion. I soon found that
the rock contained all manner of strange crypts, crannies, and recesses,
where owls nestled, and the weasel brought forth her young; here and
there were small natural platforms, overgrown with long grass and various
kinds of plants, where the climber, if so disposed, could stretch
himself, and either give his eyes to sleep or his mind to thought; for
capital places were these same platforms either for repose or meditation.
The boldest features of the rock are descried on the southern side,
where, after shelving down gently from the wall for some distance, it
terminates abruptly in a precipice, black and horrible, of some three
hundred feet at least, as if the axe of nature had been here employed
cutting sheer down, and leaving behind neither excrescence nor spur--a
dizzy precipice it is, assimilating much to those so frequent in the
flinty hills of Northern Africa, and exhibiting some distant resemblance
to that of Gibraltar, towering in its horridness above the neutral
ground.

It was now holiday time, and having nothing particular wherewith to
occupy myself, I not unfrequently passed the greater part of the day upon
the rocks. Once, after scaling the western crags, and creeping round a
sharp angle of the wall, overhung by a kind of watch tower, I found
myself on the southern side. Still keeping close to the wall, I was
proceeding onward, for I was bent upon a long excursion which should
embrace half the circuit of the castle, when suddenly my eye was
attracted by the appearance of something red, far below me; I stopped
short, and, looking fixedly upon it, perceived that it was a human being
in a kind of red jacket, seated on the extreme verge of the precipice,
which I have already made a faint attempt to describe. Wondering who it
could be, I shouted; but it took not the slightest notice, remaining as
immovable as the rock on which it sat. "I should never have thought of
going ne